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Apple Requires Three-Button Mouse for Shake 2.5
SpillerC writes "The requirements for the newest version of Shake (cross-platform: Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Irix) will require a three-button mouse on the Mac. Are there any other Apple-produced applications (Apple owns Shake) that require a three-button mouse? Will Apple release its own three-button mouse now?"
One specialized application that Apple sells requires a 3 button mouse, and you think this is going to cause them to ship 3 button mice standard?
Does Dell ship cad/cam tablets standard because AutoCad suggests using them?
What kind of nonsense news is this anyway? Can't the Slashdot editors tell a troll when they see one?
My understanding of Apple's position on multi-button mice is that they unnecessarily complicate the user interface. They give the user one more place to have to look to figure out how to do something. OS X supports multi button mice if you want an alternate way of doing things but Apple ships one button mice to keep programmers from writing stuff that depends on the additional buttons.
Shake is something which Apple acquired from another company. I suspect it will only require a three button mouse until Apple has a chance to rewrite it.
Having said that, one other Apple product which used a three button mouse was, the now long gone, A/UX (Apple UNIX).
I use Apple's ONE button mouse and works just fine. Control-click is not that hard, and if I wanted a two or three button mouse I would probably just buy one from Kensington...
Is it really that big of a deal that Apple doesn't produce one of their own?
But seriously, Apple will design new hardware for a single piece of software that very few use? If anyone can afford a third-party mouse, it's a Shake user.
Count on Apple simply rewriting the necessary code for version 2.6.
--
dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
just bundle a $20 3-button mouse with this $5000 app? Problem solved.
rooooar
Apple computer today announced that Shake, a recently-aquired software product, will sell for half price on Apple's own computer systems. The savings is approximatly $5,000.
In a seperate, unrelated announcement, Apple announced it would be releasing a new, multi-button mouse for use with Shake. The new mouse, initially available in a three-button model, will sell for $5,000.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
More probable is that Apple will require people buying the $5000 package, and possibly a $5000 G4, to also go out and buy a $25 mouse.
That being said, I'd probably buy an Apple wheel mouse if they made one. Doubt it'd happen, but a guy can hope.
--Dan
(Posted with a five button Microsoft Intellimouse on a g3 pismo.
Shipping one-button mice is not much of a safeguard -- half the Mac people I know use aftermarket mice. The real safeguard is the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Alas, Apple itself no longer seems interested in enforcing these guidelines, even for their own products. I've never used OS X, but I've heard complaints that it violates the MHIG right and left.
Apple doesn't sell a $5,000 G4. The most expensive stock model at the Apple store is $3,000.
Sure you can add stuff to get a G4 up to $5,000 in cost, but you can do that with any computer.
I'm tired of hearing people misrepresent the prices of Macs to make them look expensive. These lies to justify your own prejudice are annoying.
ESPECIALLY in the context of pointing out that Apple is giving its customers a $5,0000 discount.
Once again (Final Cut Pro, Cinema Tools, iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro) apple releases software that used to cost $50-$5,000 more at a great price, saving their customers %100-%50 of the cost and you guys try to use it to claim that Apple's products are overpriced.
How desperate are you?
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
You're being silly.
You ahve the option-- go buy an external mouse if you want to slow yourself down.
But to say you're not seriously looking at an ibook because it has only has one mouse button is silly. It doesn't even need that mouse button.
default mapping would not solve the problem-- you'd still be slowed down when you have to stop and think about which mouse button to use. Course you don't think you stop and think, but you do- your mind just ignores that it had to stop
Its unfortunate that so many people are ignorant about basic CHI science.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
an article on the subject of apple and mice at
macobserver
well, i think anyone paying all that money for an iBook deserves more than that
All what money? You can get a very nice iBook for $1200. That's right in line with what other laptops cost. The iBook isn't particularly expensive at all.
If you think an iBook is too expensive, don't buy a new one. There are great macs out there for $500 that are still better than the new PCs you can get for the same price (Remember you don't get something for nothin.)
And as to being intolerant- -the "two button mouse" issue was laid to rest in, what, 1983? Its a scientific question and it has been asnwered. That you flamed for apple not including a two button mouse shows either your ignorance or your bullheadedness at defying the *FACT* that second mice buttons slow people down.
Sorry, if you didn't know that-- its one of the standard issue, mac Myths that pc zeolots trot out, and so I gave the standard issue response.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
now this is a good point. perhaps this is really worth dwelling on a moment.
oh, i should mention, i'm a PC person.
so when i buy a PC, i almost as a rule buy a new mouse too. because most pre-packed PC mice just dont cut it. i need an optical mouse with several buttons. all there is to it. and standard pre-packed mice usually are not optical, and often wont have more than 2 buttons.
so. perhaps that's an interesting lesson here: the cost of a nice new mouse should just sort of be tacked on to the price of a whole new machine.
"iMouse"?
I see it rather the opposite way. If such a thing were to happen at all, the 3 button mouse would more likely take the "Pro" name and the one button(realy in a way "no button") mouse would fall into the consumer arena.
That said, a multi-button mouse would take a lot of design work, given Apple's clear design goal of not exposing moving parts. To this end, a solid-state scroll wheel inspired by the new iPod would probably be quite a nice addition. Perhaps a side to side rocing motion could complement the forward wrist motion to produce three "clicks".
Last december however I bought an iBook (impulse buy...mainly due to OS X), and after about one week you are completely used to it. Your second hand just rests near the "Option" key. I've become that used to it that now when I'm on a PC, I tend to push "Control"-click accidentally. Needless to say that doesn't work
One thing that is great about the Mac is the pr0n surfing with Internet Explorer. Press Alt-Mousclick on a thumbnail and the link will be saved using the download manager. This is the only reason I still use IE for Mac, because mozilla does not have this function.
I probably sound like a "Apple convert", but really the second mouse button is not needed. And on intel machines I never use the third mousebutton unless running Linux where it's copy paste.
((takes deep breath))
shake is not for the first time computer user.
As has been said thousands of times, Apple ships their computers with a single button mouse because it's less confusing. They aren't stopping you from buying another one (although persnally I'd LOVE an Apple-branded two button optical mouse. rock mouse body left / right for different buttons, but that's just me). No new mac user is going to spend a huge chunk of change on a new computer and then throw down $5000 for a program they've never used.
Think of it this way - would you edit professional level digital video on a computer without a jog wheel? Same idea - it's the right tool for the job.
Triv
I hate to defend this person's post, especially since I strongly prefer my 2-button Microsoft mouse to Apple's 1-button mouse, but there is one thread of truth here.
For expert users, 2-button mice allow faster access to commands in context menus than either 1-button mice with the Ctrl key or the use of the main menus. Duh. The speed of 2 buttons on laptops is debatable. For novice users, it's not that using 2 buttons is slower, it's that the 2nd button confuses them. Since Apple sells a lot of computers to schools with young children, they should probably keep 1-button mice as standard on iMacs and eMacs but sell 2-button mice for expert PowerMac users.
The real issue isn't that Apple doesn't offer a 2-button mouse, but that a 2-button mouse isn't ideal anyway. There are other gestures that could be supported by a new mouse such as squeezing, rubbing, etc. There's lots of room for innovation. A limited set of unique gestures is faster than context menus because there is no time to acquire the target. Context menus are modal and they require you to move the mouse and then choose a command.
The only reason we need context menus is that programs have so many menu options that it's hard to find the relevant commands. Over the years, toolbars and palettes were invented to let us avoid the menus but then they got so cluttered that we needed context menus. Now context menus are so cluttered in programs like MS Word that MS has to drop some commands in some situations, ruining the predicitability of what's going to be in the menu. A better interface would be to design programs and computers so that you didn't really need context menus.
Well, that was just a thought. And this explains why I am not a highly paid hardware designer.
If you ask me, the second-button context menus omnipresent in post-3.x Windows releases are really handy; the saved cursor travel time and convenience really add up. AFAIK, virtually all Mac apps that implement context menus (usually because of a port from Windows) make you hold down the button longer than a normal click length to invoke the menu. Does the amount of time spent by new users on differentiating the buttons really outweigh these?
What is the paradigm being broken? I had always thought that the cursor was a hand metaphor; and a hand is more of a multi-purpose tool than a single button mouse would seem to allow for.
Not that anyone one asked me. =)
Sure, if you cook your figures and find people who are speedy on two button mice and slow on one button mice you can produce a study that says what you want.
But the fact still remains that even "proficient" three and two button mice users are slower than they would be using a one button mouse.
You just assume the study is flawed and take that as a fact-- I'm sorry, you're going to have to SHOW the flaw in the study.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
On a one button mouse Mac, you press the Control key when you click the mouse button, and this gives you the right click.
In Mac OS 9, there is a wonderful free control panel called FinderPop that gave you a right click just by clicking and holding the mouse button.
It also added a bunch of contextual menu features. That's the nice thing about Mac OS, you can add menu items to the contextual menus.
Back when I ran BeOS on my Mac clone I got tired of clicking on modifier keys for the other two buttons so I bought a three button mouse.
Now I use that Mac as a dual boot into OS 9 for my son, and LinuxPPC for me. The mouse comes in handy, but my son prefers to use the one button optical mouse from my G4, since I use an MS Intellimouse Optical.
People need to realize you can plug any USB mouse into a Mac, doesn't matter how many buttons it has. If the company doesn't make drivers for OS X, you can use USB Overdrive to program the extra buttons.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
I haven't noticed a problem with the tracking, but maybe that's just me. The cord is only too short if you're not plugging it into the USB port on the side of your keyboard.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;