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Why Apple Makes a One-Button Mouse
IdiotOnMyLeft writes "There is a short article at Gear Live that tries to explain why Apple still sticks with a one-button mouse. It points out the fact that although it is perfectly possible to use a two-button mouse on a Mac for 7 years now, developers are forced to rethink their design approach and can't flood the right-click menu. No article of this kind would be complete without mentioning that users get confused with two buttons. There's a rumor that John Carmack once asked Steve Jobs what would happen if they'd put one more key on the keyboard."
That's not true. The majority of Floridians voted for Bush. Give them a little credit.
Certain people also get confused by quantum physics. Are we to abandon that now? Let's stop catering to infant minds.
I've got Control/Option/Command/Shift click. Chording these for even more options. You've just got two to four buttons to click. Obviously my penis is far larger than yours.
Besides, we all know the people with the _really_ large penises use the Command Line. What kinda small-dicked panzy are you using a GUI anyway?
In short, I use a multi-button mouse with a Mac all the time. It works just fine. The only thing I've found that is significantly inhibited by the single button mouse is gaming where I'm already using my left hand on the keyboard. For everything else, the single button is fine and for those of us who have to live in the real world and support otherwise productive people who aren't particularly computer literate, more blessing.
(I've never been modded Flamebait before...wonder what its like?)
Why?
So you end up with a system where you just don't have as much flexibility with the mouse as you would with a Windows or Linux GUI.
Is "flexibility with the mouse" what we're calling "craptacular" these days?
Context menus are just bad user-interface design. Period. The fact that you have gotten accustomed to them doesn't change the fact that they're bad design. In particular, it's wrong of you to expect everybody else to get used to them just because you had to.
so do I which is why I use one all the time on my Mac you moron.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
"Apple: the Atari 2600 of desktop computing."
Or howzabout "Apple: when you lack the coordination to play with serious toys."
There's something called the "home row". Take a keyboarding class. Likewise, a statistically-significant portion of the heavy-duty app market will not use Macs. A portion that, not coincidentally, uses computers to make the big bucks and has money to burn on hardware.Of course, Apple hardware is crippled by design by not having error-correcting data buses, so serious users would stay away even with a thousand-button mouse.
Man, they love to be apple users, and 2 buttons... "thats a windows crazy thing. we know better!"
And I've heard that Linux users get sexually satisfied by recompiling the kernel!
Frankly, haven't we come further than to have a comment presenting nothing but prejudice moderated "insightful"?!
Apple is targetting n00bs with their one button mouse.
Do you realize how much time is saved by having the right click button and the scroll wheel? Every time I touch an Apple I just think, "ok this is a waste of time".
And the author's claim that once you pick up a 2 button mouse you'd want a 5 button one? Nonsense. The scroll and the right click are essential. Anything more is just icing on the cake, but I can live without them just fine.
Just watch... the Apple fanatics will mod me a troll. But what I say is true.
eTrade SUCKS
Alright asshat;
If windows has 90% of the userbase AND complaints of having an additional mouse button obfusicating things are limited to anecdote / not statistically significant number of tech support calls then it follows that a second mouse button is not an impediment to computer usability. The hidden premise was there, very clearly implied, you just chose to ignore it to make it a straw man. +1 to asinine apple user.
I mean, I don't think anyone shit themselves when 'windows' keys started getting added to keyboards.
Apple, simply snobbery....