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."

Comments

Forced to rethink?

[Faust7]

developers are forced to rethink their design approach and can't flood the right click menu.

What? In a lot of applications, if you hold down the button, you get the equivalent of a right-click menu. How in the world does this restrict developers?

Re:Ease of use

[TheRaven64]

While there are a number of historical reasons for creating a 1-button mouse (which even Raskin now thinks is a mistake) I think the popularity of portable Macs has something to do with why it's still done. I have never seen an ergonomically designed multi-button trackpad/ball/point. Every one I have seen puts the buttons together at the bottom, which means you have one finger (well, thumb) controlling multiple buttons. This is not convenient, and leads to wrong-clicking and no speed advantage (since you need to move your thumb to switch buttons). Putting a second button above the trackpad might be feasible, but I'm not convinced.

The reason they keep the one-button mice on the desktops is so that developers don't expect users to have multi-button mice.

I love this topic

[RetiredMidn]

When the Mac first came out, many people (typically Microsoft users) sneered at having a mouse at all because it required removing one hand from the keyboard.

Then Microsoft eventually adopted the mouse, and made the design decision they often do, that if one is good, more is better, and two-button mice became common. As GUI applications adopted contextual menus off the right mouse button, Apple adopted CMs via control-click. Now the complaint from Microsoft users was that Apple required you to keep one hand on the keyboard. (Assuming they didn't need two hands to use the mouse, I wonder what they needed the other hand for.)

One advantage to using the keyboard modifiers for the mouse clicks is that a meticulously designed application can provide visual clues about what will happen if a modified click is performed ahead of time. For example, when the Control key is down, Apple's Finder decorates the cursor with a small menu graphic to indicate the availability of the contextual menu.

Look, a user is not brain-damaged or deficient for not caring to remember the function of alternate mouse keys. A large number of users (probably 0% of the /. crowd) view the computer as an auxiliary device that's supposed to assist them at their Real Job while distracting them as little as possible with the need for special training and knowledge.

Even some of us who are power users and unafraid to learn non-intuitive gestures (I used to "fat-finger" bootstrap code into PDP-11 consoles using binary switches) are just as comfortable with a single-button mouse and alternative techniques to accelerate our work. It's neither better nor lamer; it's just another way of getting things done.

Finally, Apple is perfectly accommodating to those of you who prefer something other than what they offer as standard. If you prefer another mouse with 2, 4, or 7 buttons, the online store will sell you one, and the OS will support it. No, you won't get a credit for deleting the standard mouse (where offered), but last time I checked (three minutes ago), neither does Dell.

Re:Macs

[dtfarmer]

ok, you know a joke just isn't as funny when it has to be explained, but sometimes it has to be explained so the person whose head it flew over figures out no malice was intended...

For over 6 years, there has been a popular mac troll about a designer trying to copy a 17 meg file which is taking over 20 minutes on his PowerMac 9600 at work, and that the same thing would be done in 2 minutes on his 'old' 486 pc at home.

I seem to remember the troll containing the phrase 'an exercise in frustration' - so you see when the original poster used that phrase about use of the mac at work being an exercise in frustration, the reply of 'stop trying to copy that 17 meg file' is inherently funny - get it... it's *funny*, "stop trying to copy..."

oh, screw it, I give up...

Re:It has the opposite effect.

[tm2b]

Because Apple has this quest to "be different" it just lowers the usability of their system.

Um, dude.

Apple has been shipping a one-button mouse longer than anybody else currently in the computer industry has been shiping any kind of mouse.

In this matter, it's not Apple that's being different. They were here first.