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Apple Developing Two-Button Mouse
An anonymous reader writes "Always the innovator, Apple is rumored to be developing a two-button mouse! Personally, I don't think it will catch on. Two buttons will be way too confusing for your average user." A few users noted a related Slashdot story from awhile back that discusses why Apple has historically avoided the two-button mouse. The article also mentions a revision to the AirPort Base Station with built-in optical audio.
In a few years Apple will invent something called a "pan wheel" which allows you to pan up and down in documents... They'll probably try and patent it as well.
I have one with five on my PC.
Oh, and my amps go all the way to eleven!
Two buttons? Don't you think that's a bit much, Mr. Jobs? :P
Back in my day, we didn't even have buttons. We had to move the cursonr, and *wait*!
Sig
...one button at the top end and one at the bottom end. Gotta think different.
Shh... d' ya wanna get sued?
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
They are really working on the i-something name.
the mouse itself is too confusing for your average user, did you remember when had hard time moving pointer to click the hyperlinks?
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
for another couple of weeks?
Amazing, a two-button mouse! And we thought Microsoft was innovative.
-- Cheers!
Why would Apple design a 2 button mouse? Is that not insane? Wouldn't it make more sense to design at least a 3 button mouse with a wheel? What would really be gained by simply adding a second button?
Another NDA link... somebody's gonna get punished with violating the law!
"We can build it, we have the technology"
what will become CmdrTaco's new reason to not use a macintosh?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Slashdot gets sued for giving out trade secrets. Apple demands to know who leaked this information, which would have revolutionized the computer world as we know it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I know what they'll do - have a front button and a back button - what could be more politically correct ?
This is not a signature.
"Apple is introducing a two button mouse just now? Why Windows had that in 1989!"
Actually....As a WinXP user, I will welcome my new two button mouse overlords.
I picked up an Apple Wireless Mouse and found that it was good enough for everything... except reading long pages. I'd rather have a scroll wheel than another button: the usefulness of the scroll wheel would far exceed having another mouse button.
Luckily, I have a lot of multiple button Logitech mice running around that I can use. But can anyone tell me how I can map f9 to the middle mouse button? Whenever I try, it just pops Expose open instead.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
A two-button mouse was one area where Jef Raskin and Steve Jobs had furious disagreements. After Jef's recent passing there's not going to be a 'told you so' response from him, which is a pity because - let's face it - Apple did get it wrong, hugely so, especially since the release of OSX.
Anyone who's used an OSX Mac with a two button mouse would probably agree that it's a much more productive environment.
It'll be white bread for SCO law-force...
Mcow.
How will the two-button mouse be anywhere near as cool as the current mouse? Maybe they'll find a way.
I wonder if they'll do a wired version as well. I dislike most things wireless or cordless because the battery makes it heavy and cumbersome.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
...and let me guess...it's being unveiled on April 1st?
G-Force music visualization
Most people don't seem to realize you can use whatever mouse you like on a Mac. I personally use my 5 button MS optical. And yes, all buttons are functional. :)
What is more interesting then the mouse itself, is the posibility that Apple is trying to position itself as a low cost, broad appeal vendor, taking on the likes of Dell. If they can take back a significant share of the market it would be one of the great all time comebacks in business history.
Let the copyright lawsuits fly. Microsoft will probably sue, especially since it has absolutely no basis on which to sue.
I kid, I kid. I also live near Redmond. Please keep the death squads away.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
There goes the usability!
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I'm wondering how Apple can "develop" something that has not only existed for years but that several generations of their own software has supported.
"Any man who says he can see through women is missing a lot" Groucho Marx
Microsoft innovates the 1-Button mouse as a whole new line of efficiency.
Bill Gates says: "One mouse button ought to be enough for anybody."
Every mouse I've gotten for quite some time has had a scroll wheel as well.
Let's hope this report is just missing some of the details.
TW
They should be more original. How about taking one button away instead adding one?
A minor correction - there will not be an optical out on the AirPort Base Station. The article mentions there may be in integrated optical out with new versions of the AirPort Express, instead of an external option.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
What's next? An eject button on their floppy drives??
Signed,
Me circa 1994
With all the people they're hoping to get that are supposed to be converting windows users because of the IPod, I'm sure a lot of people are confused by going from two buttons to one. I know it sounds crazy, but I tend to get frustrated when I use my friend' s Mac, because one mouse button should be simple, however I am used to two buttons, plus a scrollwheel, and a few extra buttons on a mouse, you rely on what you're comfortable with.
I'm sure this will help a lot of people convert over to Macs.
-Gamma
"Back button" is in common usage already. If they call them "To Button" and "Fro Button", they can apply for trademarks.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
If Apple does come out with their own two button mouse, will it be available as an option OR is it going to replace the one button mouse completely? Are we looking at the demise of the one button mouse?
For what its worth, at least as far back as the first OSX release (possibly earlier, but I am Not an Apple User) you could use any 2 button mouse on a Mac... I have used them on Powerbooks and desktop machines running various versions of OSX.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
A mouse seems best with three buttons and if button 3 is also buttons 4 and 5 (wheel) you got the best rat possible as long as its not "ergonomic". Its quite simple: The fewer clicks, the longer you last.
My first mouse had three buttons and I had an almighty 8088 PC to use it with - I still have that PC's MoBo in a box somewhere.
I wonder what's the big deal with Apple "innovating" a two button mouse when nearly every other manufacturer's have at least three.
Yup, Apple's two-button innovation will be a flop beyond Apple's own OEM market since all people currently owning Apple kit who care about 2+ buttons almost certainly already bought a normal non-Apple mouse.
Technical support will need to be aware that some people don't know which one of the buttons to double-click in the future.
Wasn't NeXT the 1st computer to ship with a scroll wheel mouse? And we all know that the computer that linux geeks love as a mac is just a rebranded NeXT.
If this is true, I might just buy another mac since I'm not going to buy a mac that comes with a mouse unless its got two buttons. (i got a mini mac but it didn't come with a special [aka retarded] mouse)
And for the people who claim you don't need a two button mouse because of the clever mac programming... pressing apple or alt at the same time is two buttons the way I count. To those that will preach that all functions can be done efficiently with a one button mouse have not been paying attention to what you can get with a two button mouse with all the new versions of the programs that come with os x.
Its about time... maybe two decades late but better late than never. Maybe next they can fix the retarded ibook mouse.
Nothing like a pointing device that has hexadecimal buttons. We still have a couple of these on A0 boards.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Apple seems to be like the Cathloic church. 20 years (or so) to decide that two buttons would be good, and how many years to decide the earth was round?
In Soviet Russia, asses suck this joke.
... you insensitive clod.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
They will invent the BSOD
Don't be silly.
At the very least, it'll be aqua, with a pleasant sound scheme and some nice graphics.
This IS a MAC we're talking about.
The Apple version of a BSOD may not be any more helpful than the Microsoft version, but it'll look DAMN good!
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Apple already has a blue screen of death and just to show they are more innovative than Microsoft there is also the: 'Black screen of death', the 'frozen desktop from hell' and my personal favorite the 'Spinning beachball of death'. And before anybody flames me for Mac-Bashing please note that I am speaking from my experience as a Mac user.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Although it pains me to say this, I really think they'll be able to make 'the switch' to the 2-button with little effort. Most Mac guys are not your 'average user'. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a shower:)
One more finger
the "foot mouse". It was a mouse you put on the floor and pushed with your feet. (Guess you had to be barefoot to work the buttons with your toes?)
Maybe Apple will put the two buttons on the SIDES of the mouse so you work them with your thumb and ring fingers.
I've got an eMac and an iBook that I love, and I happily use the one-button option Apple provides, but when I get bored of that I plug in the 5 button + scroll-wheel Microsoft branded monstrosity trackball. It all works perfectly. I'm assuming this move is to get people to impulse upgrade while they're buying a new system, and to quell the usual hand-wringing from the PC fanboys. I don't think it's going to be the default option.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
... some of whatever the author's smokin'...
Two buttons too hard for the average user?
With less than 10% of market share? And every other mouse on the planet more than 1 button?
Roll me one of those...
Visualize Whirled P.'s
From TFA:
Insiders warned that anticipation may continue to build for months as the company perfects the product.
In other words, "by the time you realize it's not going to happen (because no one has yet given Jobs a lobotomy) hopefully you'll forget we're the ones who said it."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's like im seeing double!
No but seriously, 2 button mice are great. Ever since I got my 8 button wireless logitech mouse I've been able to invent loads of new ways of using hotkeys on my mouse. The usefullness is incredible.
Hopefully the logic of 2 buttons will catch on and spread into their laptops (those 1 button laptops always kinda bugged me)
Not that I ever had a huge problem with the one button mouse, its just really hard to get people to consider switching to mac when they think right off the bat that you can't right click.
That being said, a 2 button mouse from Apple means that its one more mouse useful among any windows pc I have that needs a quick mouse replacement when one of them dies. I more than likely wont be using it on the mac itself.
I can't wait to see that... no, hear that... no, ummm... ?
According to TFA, it's going to be a wireless mouse. Argh! Why not supply a wired version as well?
I still prefer wired mice over wireless, for several reasons:
1. wireless mice are much heavier (due to batteries), making them more RSI-inducing.
2. having to recharge batteries is a PITA.
3. if laptop batteries are any indication, the batteries will 'wear out' and have to be replaced in 3 years (which is bad for cost and environmental reasons).
Either you're an incredibly lame troll, or sarcasm is just lost on you.
Clear, Dark Skies
Anyone look at the suggested retail prices for these?
Apple has just recently reduced the price of its wired mouse to $29 and its wireless optical mouse to $59. The two-button wireless optical mouse would likely debut at the $69 price point once reserved for the company's current wireless mouse.
"Jaws will drop," said one insider.
Now, I know what the Mac fans will say: 'Plenty of people spend far more than that on gaming sticks and PC peripherals,' etc, etc.
But why can't they make the mice cheaper? I had to pop out a few months ago to buy an Apple mouse for a client here in London. Not knowing any better, and needing the thing immediately for the client's OS X rack, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the prices for bog-standard and other Mac mice at Micro Anvika.
In the end I found a busted old iMac with a working hockey puck and just lifted that.
'Jaws will drop,' indeed.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
That reminds me of my Wife's first experience with a mac laptop. She inserted a floppy disc and we could NOT figure out how to get it out.
In the PC world you simply pushed a button right next to the drive. No such luck there.
After a few days I finally had to call a friend of mine to explain it to me. And to this day I don't understand why deleting the floppy icon from the desktop is more "insanely great" than simply pushing one button. Then again, maybe the emphasis isn't on the "great" but is on the "insane."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I got my 6 button mouse working on a mac with http://www.usboverdrive.com/ fine. I'll I want know is a similar app for windows, as I can only get 5 buttons to work how I want them:/
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
So you get to really see what we listen to ?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Adding mouse buttons? They should be removing buttons instead of adding them. Get rid of all those arcane input devices like mice and keyboards. I want brainwave control!
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
....I really don't:(
Welcome to the 1980s, Apple!
After all the years of Apple-zealots bashing Microsoft for their "innovation", the worm has turned.
"My [command]+[click] is easier and more intuitive than a [right-click]." Unless you only have one hand.
don't hold out for the wheel!!!!
because I have a habit of rolling the wheel when I try to click it.
I prefer designs that put a button under the thumb.
Clear, Dark Skies
I really did a double take on the date after reading that headline. With all of apple's innovation over the years this is one place where the have always dropped the ball on. Next thing you know we'll get a scroll wheel that can act as a 'gasp' third mouse button!
Later,
Phil
--- An anonymous reader writes "Always the innovator, Apple is rumored to be developing a two button mouse! Personally, I don't think it will catch on. Two buttons will be way too confusing for your average user." The article also mentions a revision to the airport base station with built in optical audio. ---
I think Taco went wrong with the Italic-tag, as it should read:
--- An anonymous reader writes "Always the innovator, Apple is rumored to be developing a two button mouse!" Personally, I don't think it will catch on. Two buttons will be way too confusing for your average user. The article also mentions a revision to the airport base station with built in optical audio. ---
Spot the difference.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
I'm sure it's a joke.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
I've got the Bluetake BT500 bluetooth mouse for my PowerBook. I highly recommend it for any portable device that connects to bluetooth. Small, good range, two buttons and a scroll wheel.
That is, it's small, but useable. It easily fits in your breast pocket (so long as you don't already have a pocket protector.... or breasts).
.\.\att Clare
OK, so why again did Apple say for so long that a one-button mouse was all we needed? Is the 2-button mouse just a nod to demand or have Apple changed their thinking on this?
Apple kept to a one button mouse for ease of us and to prevent user confusion. What the /. crowd seems to miss is that the mac is made for simplicity for the average joe who never used a computer. Most geeky folk who have a solid understanding of an OS will want as many buttons on a mouse as possible. For for people (like most of parents?) that are clueless navigating an OS with a two button mouse is confusing. While I was doing phone support for gateway last year I would have to explain the difference a right and left mouse click ever other call. It was like magic... at some point I would ask the customer to right on something for a menu and everytime afterwards when I would ask to click on a specific item they would then ask "is that a right click, or a left click"? After 3 times of this I would have to tell them click means left mouse button and right click is a right mouse button. I'm sure no apple support tech has had to deal with that. The mac version of a right click, being either ctrl + click or holding down the mouse button for 3 seconds to generate a menu, doesn't lodge an idea of different kinds of clicks in the users mind. I personally think apple should stick with a one button mouse and let the geeks buy a 2-5 button mouse (which has suported in the mac os since os 9) if they want.
What else can be said..
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Or it might be their "pro" mouse.
The original issue was that people didn't know how to use mice at all, so multiple buttons were considered confusing. These days there are relatively few people who haven't used a mouse and the vast majority are used to multi-button mice - which flips it around. Now it makes sense to provide the user something they are familiar with.
Clear, Dark Skies
...it's like music for your eyes.
Not to criticize, ok, exactly to criticize --
You do know W2K doesn't come with a mouse, don't you? It also doesn't come with a computer for that matter.
You are sorry you had to buy a mouse and plug it in? Poor baby, if you could afford a fucking $3000 computer, you think you'd be able to afford a fucking $30 mouse. Fuck -- you can even order 3rd party mice right from Apple when you buy your machine -- so if you were po' and used the apple loan to buy it, you could roll it right into that.
You are suck a fucking idiot.
Two buttons will be way too confusing for your average user.
Anyone who's done phone support with an "average user" will agree. Trying to communicate the differences between right- and left-clicking can be difficult. Never mind having the person learn in exactly which circumstances you have to do each one.
Probably because you gain a *lot* more functionality/convenience from a two button mouse, and arguably quite a bit less from three. I think they're insane if they don't add a wheel, but it wouldn't really have to be clickable (lots of folks really don't get that the wheel is a button).
I'm firmly in the 3 button camp (UNIX/Linux user) but two is better than none, and I can see why they're doing that - especially given Apple's "interesting" notions about mice.
I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who will buy an iBook the minute they have a two-button (or more) trackpad...
It's rumoured that Apple won't be involved in any more rumour after that recent rumour.
jeez! you can't throw it all at a user a once! the only way is to scale out those big features incrimentally.
I ALSO want apple to integrate a scroll wheel in a cool way. I propose blending a strip of laptop-style trackpad into the center of the mouse to serve as the wheel. Voila, perfectly smooth surface. It would be awesome.
What do you guys think?
Anybody else think that it's about time apple got off it's high horse and admitted that having a two button mouse is much more versitile?
Apple continues its innovative streak with the two-ended stylus. 99% of PDA users on slashdot have mocked the simplistic one "button" stylus for years and welcome Apple's innovation. A small permanent neodymium magnet embedded into each end of the stylus provides a different polarity which the PDA senses and treats as either a regular click or a secondary click.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Can I force-eject a disk without using a damned paperclip to press the button (there's a fucking button there, let us push it from the outside, dammit!)
I'd say that this (lack of a easy-to-use physical eject) is a good design.
Physically ejectable media is a really bad idea. It means that you can't do intelligent caching and I/O scheduling, because you don't know when the media will suddenly vanish.
Now, granted, Linux *does* do caching and scheduling on floppies, but it also assumes that the user knows what they're doing and will manually unmount before ejecting the floppy. Otherwise, any crying over lost data is your own tough luck.
You may have noticed that Windows floppy I/O performance sucks ass. This is because of the physical eject button. The thing is small enough that the OS could cache the entire disk in memory...but it doesn't know when the thing will vanish.
Putting a physical eject button that's easy to access on floppy drives is a really bad idea. There's a reason that all removable-media drives after the floppy use software eject buttons. The only reason the floppy drive lacked a software eject button back in the day is because it was slightly cheaper to build a drive without an extra motor, where *you* had to provide the ejection force.
I *do* think that Apple is about a decade overdue on the second mouse button, but, hey, I just think it's great that folks are going to have it available now (now if we can *just* convince them to make their laptop trackpads removable modules, so that third parties can make three-button scroll-wheel variants...)
Now that Apple itself is going to release two button mouses (mice, or whatever) I'm sure it won't be confusing anymore for Mac users. Of course, there will be *some* people who will still think that two-buttoned mouses are bad, but they'll either accept two-buttoned mouses as soon as they are released because Apple made the mouse incredibly different and awesome and innovative like noone else before and in a way only Apple can do -- or they will adapt two-buttoned mouses after using them for a while and seeing how Apple has done this right while noone else could and it's truly marvelous.
MacOS has had OS support for 12 buttons for a long time. Of course, an application has to have something it wants to do with all those buttons or nothing happens. But the use of the second button is standard in most apps, because ctrl-click defaults to the second button.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
When asked about the glory of a two button mac mouse Steve Jobs exclaimed "They'll build cities around it!" pfft
...the slashdot article text down as -1, unfunny? Seriously, the jokes about Apple and their one button mouse stopped being funny about... well... shortly after the first one was ever made.
Since you are planning to revolutionize the mac mousing world with 2 buttons, can you please make the friggin things just a little bigger? You make my hand hurt.
Thank you
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
Now, an Apple mouse with a scroll wheel, on the other hand...
You must think in Russian.
I think your sarcasm detector is broken. That is a pretty obvious joke.
Cursor? Luxury! In my days, we had to *type* when we wanted to do something. And we where grateful.
wait a minute....
I think a one button mouse is really useful and should come as standard with macs, it is a desigh philosophy they should keep to. It makes a world of difference to the people who are older and are just getting into computers.
Jonathanjk.com
As you can see on this page under "interfaces," the Airport Express already has optical out. What is the difference between this and what you're talking about?
We have two hands and two eyes. Many of us work on two monitors and some with two OS's on one box. Piano players and musicians use both hands when they perform.
What Apple should do is be creative and invent a way to have two mice hooked up. One mouse on each side of the keyboard.
Finally Apple decides to do something to make using their computer a little more productive. Granted, you can plug in a USB mouse with 2 or more buttons, but the fact that Apple finally cares enough to do it on OEM mouses....
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
How can this amazing innovation really make the front page of a website. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
--codguy
I use a 3 button / USB / IBM mouse with my powerbook, and it works quite well. No need to wait for Apple to realize how much the extra buttons simplify and enhance the user's experience.
--
JP
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
Try pushing that button while the computer is in the middle of writing to the disk. Then, after reformatting the disk and checking if floppy drive still works, you may have some idea.
What the article fails to mention is that the second (right) mouse button is simply a fail-over in case the first (left) button gets stuck. This should "nearly double the average lifespan of the apple mouse," according to inside sources.
Ladies and Gentlemen, start you middle fingers!
Wow, Windows must be amazing then. Nearly as good as the C64 paint-package which had a 2-button mouse years before that, and doubtless dozens of other platforms before that too. Windows must be twice as good as OSX because it is generally used with mice that have twice the number of buttons. Imagine if they put 20 buttons on a mouse. The computer it would be attached to could take over the universe which such unfathomable power!
Well, basically the trash stands as a catch-all for "get rid of" and has since the first Mac OS. You can drag toolbar items to the trash, you can drag dock items to the trash, connected servers, if you happen to be dragging and dropping some text and you drag it to the trash can a clipping will be formed inside of it with the text of the drag etc.
Basically apple wants to create the best "digitized office" for their users. They wanted as little as possible to be on the outside of the computer, more buttons == greater complexity, for a bad example, its the same reason some people can't even program their VCR.
--Dan
one more reason why macs will never win...
The airport express already has optical audio out. I picked one up last week and the the audio out is a dual purpose connector that works with a mini phono jack or with a mini SPDIF connector. I used an SPDIF cable I had from an old MD player with a similar connector and it worked great.
Hohoho, hahaha, slashdot sure is on the cutting edge of jokes these days. I mean, joking about the one-button mouse! How creative! Someone remind me again why I still check this site?
The Atari console, erm, original pong game, shipped with a scroll wheel. The mouse functionality was rather primitive however.
BTW, I doubt that machines will actually ship with a >1 button mouse. They'll be an upgrade if I know Apple at all.
'Retarded ibook mouse' ? Eh ? It came with a trackpad.
-S
.....with a built in ipod.
That's what the second button is for.
There has to be more to it than "a new two button mouse". I just don't believe that a room full of project managers and coporate directors have never heard of a two button mouse. Let's face it, one of them has had to have wandered through Staples, Worst Buy, CostCo, or Office Depot and seen the computer products available, including two and three button mice. What I think is happening is that they are trying to implement the behavior of the second button seamlessly into their operating system. Now that I can belive could cause them some headaches, since Microsoft still hasn't gotten their OS to run perfectly. But I don't know because I don't work for Apple, and the article was a piece of trash information-wise. I am certain of one thing though. Apple needs to have a long talk with there press liasion and hand that person a manual on technical writing. The article is short, very vague, and very easy to misinterpret. It is the job of a company's technical writer to ensure that whatever gets released isn't a problem in and of itself. This is where Apple dropped the ball, not in a *gasp* two button mouse being developed, but in a poor writer.
Surely the sea change happened with the new PowerBooks. They support a magic gesture that mimics a scroll wheel. I submit that this marks the public announcement of Apple's change of corporate mind. If Apple can ship a PB that does this, then why not a mouse ?
-S
I love Apple for the great stuff they do, but they're not above my criticism when the do something stupid. What I can't stand however, are the Apple zealots who will buy whatever Apple puts out (good or bad)...just because it says Apple on it.
This is the target buyer for an Apple two-button mouse.
These users still using a one-button mouse will praise Apple for being so courageous and innovative. These users with non-Apple two-button mice will likely throw away a working Logitech or other mouse in favor of having the "superior" Apple mouse.
Let's face it...if you needed a two-button mouse, you already have one. What's Apple's going to have that makes it worth dropping $69 (or whatever) to replace it.
Anyone who can throw a great D&D reference out there is ok in my book...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
Yeah, and try ramming your car into a tree while you're driving 90 mph. Merely because you can do something stupid, doesn't mean you will.
But your comment certainly shows what Apple thinks of its users' intelligence.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
1st of all:
One Button Mice are a good thing. Copmutern00bs ask the famous question "With which button should I click" far to often. Every time I say "Left button unless said otherwise" but it just won't sink in. Single Buttons are good.
2nd: Multiple Button Mice are good aswell. Nothing beats operating Expose or other main WM functions with those extra Buttons on a modern Logitech mouse. If Apple does the multi-button thing they should do it the right way. One big, main Button, a wheel (with option-click) and at least three other, smaller ones for middlefinger or thumb, mapped to the expose functions.
That way the switch would show the advantage imidiately and people would imidiately see that they should learn to use the buttons. Apple has 100% hard and software integration, they could test a solid default configuration for a multi-button mouse that convinces anyone of the concept without confusing n00bs.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
sheesh, i think that people are ready to say Apple is just about to invent *anything*.
.....check.
two button mouse? check.
video ipod? check.
palette pc? check.
kitten huffing?
seriously, you could post anything on AppleInsider.
Because, believe it or not, women aren't necessarily primarily attracted to men for their spelling ability.....
This misunderstanding might explain why geeks fail to understand their lack of girlfriends.
"But! But! My spelling's really good! How can you possibly prefer that other man to me just because he looks good!"
My Journal
Damn, if that is true, then why doesn't Apple include a "wife" icon?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
You've always been able to right click, they're just now getting around to adding a left click :)
...but I have stayed away from Macs since I can't figure out how to use a 1-button mouse. Maybe this will make me a convert?
I forgot what I wanted to say, but honestly, it was important.
Me no like this idea. Me like one-button hockey-puck mouse because it shaped like COOKIE!!!!
dum de dum de dum de dum de dum
In protest....after I upgrade I will refuse to use the second mouse button! :)
Unfortunately Steve Jobs has decided that the second mouse button will give the user an electric shock, there by proving that a one button mouse really is better afterall.
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
I read the headline on this article and practically had to be resuscitated. All these years Apple has clung to the classic one-button - it is practically an institution. It is almost as if Apple is saying that maybe they were wrong all those years. What's next?
Optical audio? What will they think next, acoustic graphics?
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Dragging a floppy to the trash can has the institive meaning of "delete this floppy", not "eject this floppy".
That is a bad design decision. Face it Mac zealots.
It's the mechanical eject button that is the insane design decision.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's already got an optical out. Just get an optical minijack to TOSLINK cable.
New punctuation.
Typing? Luxury!
back in my day, we had a wall of plugs and had to pull out and insert a bunch of wired jacks.
You kids these days never had it rough...
I told her that the newest wheel mice have tilting wheels. When she understood it makes horizontal scrolling easier, her face lit up and she said "Ooooh...that sounds wonderful! Tell my grandson Mother's day is coming!"
Yeah, that's exactly what I said to the friend who explained it to me.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Mac -1 button
MS Windows -2 buttons
Linux/Unix -3 buttons
Now we know why Linux is better.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Type? Hah, back in my days, we had to wake up at the crack of dawn, punch cards to get things done, and we didn't even have a screen!
Having one button is simply too confusing for ordinary users. New users are always asking "How do I right click with this?" Apple has heard their cries and has been working around the clock ever since the first request to engineer a new breed of mouse, with TWO buttons, possibly shaped like big mouse ears.
In another decade, who knows? With users already asking "Is there an easier way to scroll?", they may even develop a mouse with three buttons, with the middle one doubling as a wheel. It'll be the nose of the mouse with little eyes and whiskers drawn on the other buttons.
It keeps it safe, because you can 'accidently' hit the button on a PC case, which will cause it to spit out in the middle of reading/writing, causing a corrupted diskette. back to the topic at hand, A two button mouse is nice, but not necessary to run a Mac. You dont need two buttons to nagigate an OS (unless its Windows). And if it is really necessary to right click something on a Mac, I long gotten used to Control-Clicking, because my hands are on the keyboard more than the mouse. or my left hand is on the keyboard, and my right hand is moving the mouse.
Type?!? You were a spoiled child. We had to make punchcards with a dull butter knife.
I guess after a few days of searching you couldn't find the "Eject Disk" item under the Special menu, huh? (this is assuming it was pre-OS X)
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
OK, that is funny. Guess it's better than a picture of a vibrator or a butt plug.
support of the apple floppy design is a good test on the worth of someone's opinion about apple products. If they strongly defend it, they're not objective. If they say something like, "yeah, it's a bad design, however...", then they're probably an apple fan that will give you an honest opinion.
The reason the laptops need it most is that with desktops you can easily just add the two- or three-button mouse of your choice. But such mice don't work very well with a laptop actually in your lap.
What Apple really needs to do is release a gaming console system that ships with TWO F'N CONTROLLERS INSTEAD OF ONE!
now THAT would be "innovative"...ya...
hmmph. but no, Jobs and his brilliant room of dweebs comes out with a "new" 2-button mouse...yayyy for reverse evolution!
"I think, therefore I get paid."
That must have been nice. We had to learn to count using our hands. Luckily I have two hands so counting in binary is easy.
FTA - "The two-button wireless optical mouse would likely debut at the $69 price point once reserved for the company's current wireless mouse. "
$70 for a two-button mouse? That's just as insane as not having a scroll wheel. Considering you can get a Logitech 6-button wireless mouse w/ scroll wheel for ~$28, I don't know why anyone would buy the Apple product.
You had a keyboard? You were probably one of those new-fangled kids who started out on TTYs.
In MY day, we had to punch cards. We used an old European 4-hole punch that nobody wanted to punch the right patterns on the cards, because we couldn't afford time on a punching machine. Then we had to walk through 40 miles of snow, uphill both ways and submit the cards to our father the computer operator, and then we got force-suffocated with punch card chads for 3 hours if we were lucky!
And you try telling that to the kids of today, and they won't believe you!
I wonder if Apple is going to take AppleInsider to court to force them to disclose who leaked this information to them:
CONFIDENTAL - CONFIDENTIAL - CONFIDENTIAL
Apple 2005 business plan to dominate Microsoft:
1. Develop two-button mouse.
3. Profit!!!
CONFIDENTAL - CONFIDENTIAL - CONFIDENTIAL
Dossy's Blog
I have a Microsoft Optical Wheel Mouse connected to my Powerbook and the right mouse button and scroll wheel work just fine with the OS.
So basically all that this story has to offer is that one day an Apple brand >1 button mouse will be available.
What about if you need to be able to do that though? Try doing something truly 3d, like Homeworld (If you like it, please give me a hand with the video playback in the source port). Left click, right click, middle click, ctrl-click, ctrl-rightclick, alt-click all do different things, and I only ever increase that, because they're all useful and things I want to do. If you have another mouse button, that's twice as many things you can do with the mouse, *however many you can do with a single button mouse*. In fact it's more because you can click the two buttons together, but anyway, my point is why do Apple people never seem able to see this?
I am trolling
I feel better about myself when I read comments like this..
Boxing Equipment Reviews
You don't sound very objective.
That must be very tough development work. I always liked working on something that has never been done before, for the challenge. This one must be particularly hard as we all know there has never been a two button mouse in existance before. Perhaps they could get a couple of 'pointer' from their competitors to save some time?
And walked in bare feet to work&back rite ?
F that. How about Airport hardware gets some decent range? Before you tear me to pieces, let me explain. The Broadcom chipset Apple uses sips what, 30 mW? Hello! This is 2005, and all access points should be able to be cranked up to 300 mW. Now I perfectly understand that for laptops, power consumption is a huge concern. But c'mon; a base station is plugged into the wall. 300 mW is basically nothing. Really, though, an Airport card in combination with an Airport base station yields truly terrible range, while a Linksys and an SMC get really nice range (like, triple that of the Airport hardware). The Extreme's lack of range and complete lack of Linux support has really tempted me to get a PCMCIA wireless card. Apple, why don't you switch to prism54???
Take off every sig. For great justice.
All modern macs have an eject button on the keyboard which ejects the superdrive. This is especially advantageous because you can't accidentally hit the button while carrying the computer and have the disk come flying out (which is exactly what would happen with my old dell laptop). they even designed it so you have to hold the button in for 2 seconds before the drive will eject so that you don't accidentally eject the drive if you miss the delete key.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
Does he mean the term as used by Microsoft?
I don't even know how that can make a news. I could always plug in my 2-button USB mouse into a Mac and the mouse would work.
Substitute Apple in place of Chris or is it better to assume Apple is a Peter Griffin? Obviously, a two-button mouse can stand in for frisbee.
Chris: Dad, you should invent the frisbee, that's an awesome toy.
Meg: Chris, the frisbee is already invented.
Chris: Then how come I never heard of it!
Customize your Apple...
Mouse
O - One button
O - Two buttons [Add $200]
Like a lot of people, I have an Apple laptop and a DSL-Wifi router to avoid the need to plug a flaky D-link ethernet modem into an Airport base station
Obviously, I could connect an Airport Express to the Ethernet ports on my router, but would it be possible instead to have the DSL router providing the network and an Airport express also in the house, connected just to my stereo? I'm not sure if AirTunes requires an Airport base station to be the DHCP-issuer on the network in order to work.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I fail to see why one can't have a zero button mouse that simply executes the appropriate action after a predefined delay. After all, many of us have happily lived with X windows auto focus to foreground for years with no obvious detriment.
You said: "Personally, I don't think it will catch on. Two buttons will be way too confusing for your average user." I always thought Apple users were te elite of the elite. The cream of the crop of end users -eccentric at a minimal. To insinuate two buttons is confusing is fairly amusing if not down right degrading. But really, I'm more shocked at the "I don't think it will catch on" comment. I guess windows users are the smartest users in the world then???...
Dragging a floppy to the trash can has the institive meaning of "delete this floppy", not "eject this floppy".
Really? How does the trash can relate to deleting? Seems to me like dragging a disk to the trash can means "get rid of the disk". If you drag the contents of the disk to the trash can it would mean get rid of the contents or delete the disk.
I don't think that the idea here is to replace the one button mouse, just offer a choice to those who wish to use two buttons and don't want to go third party.
Presuming Apple does release a multi-button mouse, unless Apple sells it as a separate item, Apple either 1) will build out another model for each existing model that comes with a mouse or 2) will offer the mouse as a build-to-order option. Neither of these paths seems particularly good, especially the second one.
Or 3) Apple will ditch the single-button mouse.
blog
The fact that Apple has supported multi-button/scroll wheel mice since MacOS 8.6 tells me that Apple was too enamoured of their decision to "keep things simple."
With the MX-500, you could make special button assignments in MacOS X that could make for vastly easier navigation of multiple windows, for starters.
I know what they mean, but am I the only one that find that pharse funny?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
If they do, I hope it doesn't have a scroll wheel (as designed those things are murder on the finger) and I hope they don't ship it as default with their computer for all of the reasons outlined in the linked Slashdot article.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
if your cd comes out when pressing the button while the power's off you have a very strange PC indeed. If that's standard behaviour on Dell's I'm glad I've never encountered one =)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Microsoft brand mice. (Most likely made by someone else) has a really neat feature... The scroll mouse feels like jelly, it doesn't "hard click" when scrolling it's really smooth. I think that's actually kinda nifty.
What do you think get rid of means? The floppy is a container. If you throw a container in the garbage it is reasonable to assume that everything inside the container is garbage as well.
But I only have one finger...
How in the world do you DRAG?
Try pushing that button while the computer is in the middle of writing to the disk. Then, after reformatting the disk and checking if floppy drive still works, you may have some idea.
It's not like it has to be an either-or decision. Look at the CDROM drive on any modern PC. The eject button is not a physical hardware eject, but a electronic pushbutton that first checks with the operating system to see if it is safe to eject the drive. That is both user-friendly, and user-proof. The floppy drives were like this on many of the Macs for years and I cannot figure out why they stopped doing it lately.
It gets just plain rediculus when you have multiple tray-loading CD/DVD drives. The only way to open the tray to load a disk is to go to the menu-bar, click the eject menu, and then select the drive you want to eject. You can't tell me this is easier to learn or perform than pressing a button next to the drive you want to eject. The only possible explaination that I can think of, is that this is another one of the cases where Jobs made a decision based on what looked slick rather than what was easiest to use - won't want those ugly buttons fouling up the zenness that is the G5 case.
What in the world does Zamfir have to do with mice?
Why in the world would Apple want to merge his Pan flute (amazing though it is) with a mouse? I just don't see the usability benefits of this. Still, I'd love to see how Jonathan Ives and crew accomplish such an innovative design, regardless of any hypothetical advantages of a Pan flute mouse.
Oh, you said Pan wheel. That's what I get for typing faster than I can think.
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
...Once you become a more serious Mac user you really do want more than one button on a mouse!
This is especially true if you need to keep multiple windows open and are running an image-editing or multimedia-editing program.
There's a very simple explanation: you don't want people to eject the floppy while the system reads or writes to it. Especially, if, like on the first Macs, you actually load the system from a floppy. Letting the system manage the ejection of floppies (instead of the hurried user) was a simple way to avoid problems, loss of data, system crash, you name it.
Besides, one of the first times I encountered a floppy was sometime in the eighties on a friend's Commodore or Amiga. Believe me, he didn't like when I pushed the little button to eject the floppy while the system was writing to it. But for me, I had no clue the system was still using the floppy. All in all, the ejection of floppies on a Mac is surely unnatural, but is not something totally stupid as PC zealots would want you to believe.
Yeah, and try ramming your car into a tree while you're driving 90 mph. Merely because you can do something stupid, doesn't mean you will.
I don't need to assume, I KNOW you have never worked a tech support job in a school environment. I came to love the "I can't get my floppy ejected" whine, over the "I ejected the floppy and it made a really loud sound and now I can't read it" whine.
If you're smart enough to find out how to eject a disc on a Mac, good for you. If you're not, good for you, someone else figured out a way to protect you from your own stupidity.
When I throw things into the trash can in my kitchen, it doesn't magically jump out the side of my house.
So how do you remove a disk if the machine has a power supply failure? How do you eject the disk if your operating system fails to boot? The mechanical eject button is there for a good reason. Real computers allow you to remove disks with or without power and without completely destroying the drive that they are inserted into. Apple computers are toys.
As others have pointed out, it's not because one can that one do ; moreover, there's no logical connection between "no floppy button" and "trash floppy icon to eject". On some hardware (Sun), floppy drives have no eject button either, and you trigger the ejection mecanism either with a "eject" command line (just to kid Mac's supporters a bit), or via menu attached to the icon. I suspect no die-hard Mac addict would admit it, but it's the silliest shortcut ever made in GUI history.
Because they want a two-button mouse with an APPLE logo on it. That's the part I don't get.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
The way these buttons should be labelled is obvious.
The right button, you'd call the right button.
The other one, you'd call the wrong button.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
Hell just froze over and my frogs grow hair!
Or you could just right-click on the drive itself and tell it to eject. That honestly makes more sense to me than pressing buttons on the front of my tower.
As for floppies, *I* haven't seen a floppy with a smart eject system on any PC I've used. They're all simple, stupid physical released buttons. I'd much rather have my system eject it when it's done working than have to sit and watch the LED on the drive to make sure it's done before I hit eject.
When you click and drag a removable drive or network share's icon anywhere on the screen OS X changes the trash can icon to an eject symbol. If that is too difficult for you to comprehend then perhaps you should choose Eject Disk from the appropriate menu, or control click on the drive's icon and choose eject from there. Or maybe you should just try the eject key on the keyboard? :)
Shortcuts in ANY OS are not always intuitive. (Ctrl-V to paste, anyone?)
Firefo... oh, wrong topic.
It's more like having a car that explodes if you hit the gas when a little light on your dash is blinking. A light that is both hard to see and intermittent.
When placing 2 buttons left-right, it is extremely likely that people mix them up. However, when placing a big button on the front and a little button more to the back (for example), all those problems are gone. I really hope that Apple doesn't come out with just another me-too two-button mouse, but understands that button placement in a new way can make it a lot easier for computing newcomers.
The eject button is not a physical hardware eject, but a electronic pushbutton that first checks with the operating system to see if it is safe to eject the drive. That is both user-friendly, and user-proof. The floppy drives were like this on many of the Macs for years and I cannot figure out why they stopped doing it lately.
Huh? I don't believe Apple EVER made a floppy drive that had ANY form of an eject button. (They only had eject pin-holes.) I'm assuming you mean Apple made CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives that had electronic eject switches on them for years, and abandoned them during the later G4 models, which would be true. As a result, however, I now have my Mac mini with no obtrusive buttons on the machine, but just as easy to eject a disk. Hit the keyboard eject swith. Same thing, different location.
Re "The floppy drives were like this on many of the Macs for years": No they weren't. Apple never made a Mac with a floppy-eject button. You may have been using a Mac with a third-party external floppy disk.
As to "why they stopped doing it lately", well, ignoring the fact that they never did it to begin with, they're not doing it now because Apple hasn't shipped a machine with a floppy drive in years.
Also, Apple keyboards have an eject button on them. It'll eject the CDROM drive for you (although I don't know how it handles multiple drives)
In the meantime, the majority of people who are confused by multi-button mice get a simple, single button. It fits their needs perfectly. Apple's design philosophy is about simplicity, not about lots of buttons.
As a Mac user, naturally I am afraid of appearing like an individual and thinking for myself. Does this two button change mean that when confronted by people critisising the Apple "single button" policy that I'm supposed to now argue that one button is better still or not?
> Back in my day, we didn't even have buttons. We had to move the cursor
Move the cursor? You young whippersnappers have it easy. Time was, we didn't
have a cursor, and if we wanted to insert a word, we had to retype the whole
line -- and we liked it, because it was better than using punchcards. Why,
before white-out was invented, we had to retype the whole page to make a
change, but did we complain? No, we were happy we had carbon paper, so we
didn't have to retype it twice! My great grandpappy carved his own quill pen,
and he was just happy he didn't have to make his own India ink...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The user is trying to say "give me the disk (I want to keep it)", and moving something to the trash means "throw this away (I don't want it)". These are opposites!
From a UI perspective, ejecting is more closely related to printing (the user gets a physical object). So should I drag documents to the trash to print them?
More to the point, why treat disks (root directories) and folders (subdirectories) so differently? They should be the same from the user's perspective.
-Yndrd1984
P.S. If I drag a hard drive to the trash, does it eject? That would be impressive. :)
The one-button mouse is a godsend for people who have no GUI-experience!
How on earth am I going to explain my mom that to do one thing, she has to click the left, and to do the other, she has to click the right button? She already gets confused at the possibility of having more than one application open.
The concept of point-and-click is screwed up by adding a contextual menu-button - that's click and point (and click again).
I know every function can also be reached only using the left button, but how would I have to explain to my mom not to use the right one (which would confuse her)?
I think Apple always made the right choice: make things simple up front. And anyone who wants more, can do so (command/ctrl/option-click or get a multibutton mouse).
Solution: the button on the disk drive sends a request to the OS to dismount and eject the disk, and then patiently waits for the signal to eject before doing so. Holding the eject button down for n seconds causes the drive to stop waiting for the OS and eject the disk anyway.
This is, not coincidentally, similar to what the power button on a PC does now.
"This quote is a product of the Frobozz Magic Quote Company."
Of course. But since draging to the trash was a shortcut for SPECIAL->EJECT I give it as much slack as I give CONTROL + 'X' meaning cut or ALT + 'F4' meaning close window.
But then this is an old problem. I belive that since the first OS X release draging a disk turns the trash can into a eject icon. Do people still complain about UI problems in Win98 that are fixed in WinXP?
yknow... in my 20+ years of using computers.. ive never once ruined a floppy disk in this manner. Accidently or otherwise.
not once.
but it happens nearly every time i use a mac that i forget to get my floppy out before shutting the machine down & then have a major fight getting it back.
In fact, if you a real mouse into a MacOS/X box it already works that way. The wheel works out of the box too. Almost like all the developers use proper mice ;-)
The only reason I haven't bought a Powerbook and switched is the god awful keyboard action and the stupid touch pad. Time to go to the leaders (IBM), just like you went to them for your CPUs and learn a thing or two from the thinkpad keyboard and the trackpoint. Yes, the trackpoint, God's own answer to pointing devices.
R-S
Yeah, it's a relic of times when the Mac was floppy-based and had to do a lot of disk swapping. You needed a way to eject the disk without actually unmounting it, so they had to distinguish between the 'Eject' command (in the menu) and the 'Unmount' (drag to trash).
On the other hand, clued users were able to grasp this instantly, and non-clued users were able to grasp it after a minute. Compare this with the amount of time it takes to get a dumb PC user to figure out the difference between the right and left mouse buttons (which ranges from many, many years to infinite, as some users will confuse them their entire lives).
Also, since OSX, the trash turns into an eject icon when you grab a disk. And there's an 'Eject' button on the keyboard. So this complaint is now moot.
As a Mac user, naturally I am afraid of appearing like an individual and thinking for myself.
LOL. Given that Apple's market share is about 2%, how can choosing a Mac and ignoring what 98% of the public does costitute "afraid of appearing like an individual?"
Choosing a Mac has got to be one of the most "individual" statements you can make.
Nice troll, skinflute.
What the hell is a floppy drive?
Sincerely,
Me, circa 2004..5
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Been using floppies for some 20 odd years and I can't recall this ever happening to me.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
I have been looking around for a bluetooth 2+ button mouse to use with my powerbook and I can't seem to find a decent one that works with OSX.
Most of them come with a dock / hangup charger that also acts as a bluetooth hub - which I don't need my laptop has built in blue tooth. The whole point is to eliminate wires, not have some stupid hub that I have to have plugged into my laptop anyway - I might as well stick to my usb mouse.
If apple designed a 2 button bluetooth mouse (hopefully with a scroll wheel) I would be very happy
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
I'd have to 2nd that - the Apple logo is a contributing factor.... that's why MacMice (shady company or not) has something going for them. While it's not an Apple logo mouse it does look identical - just with two buttons and a scroll.
Also, not everything has been invented - Apple had a patent approved about a year ago to include a wheel like the iPods on their mice so that you could scroll vertically & horizontally or just disable it and use the one button.
The Logitech VX500 wireless mouse is a true innovation as it uses trackpad technology as well.
Apple could easily step in and get Logitech (who makes their mice now) to make a mouse for them that raises the bar. I would assume that the VX500 will be something like the new Apple mouse if it materializes.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
pc gripe 1: macs are too expensive.
answer: mac mini
pc gripe 2: one button mouse sucks
answer: apple two button mouse (hopefully with wheel)
Apple selling a two-button mouse - not surprizing at all.
Apple shipping a two-button mouse with all Macs? Very suprizing.
If Apple starts to make two buttons sandard, that also means changing the whole laptop line. That's why I think the two-button mouse willl be an option, or perhaps ship with Powermacs only.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To Eject a disk in Mac OS (any version) you choose the 'Eject' command from a menu.
This is the primary method, just like opening a folder is done by clicking on it, then selecting 'Open'.
The 'drag it to the trash' thing is a shortcut just like doubleclick. Shortcuts benefit from being memorable, and the drama surrounding 'eek, the trash' surely serves that purpose.
I'd call it great design.
J
In real life you are:
1) A man pretending to be a woman on the internet.
2) Not married
3) Currently "abstaining" from sex
4) Trolling Slashdot
5) All of the above
No, they modded it exactly as it should have been -- flamebait and overrated.
Your post was rated a Troll because thats what it was.
I personally would have rated it the same if it was a letter to BillG or SteveJ. It wasn't informative and anyone using their Karma to up the post in the first place isn't worth it.
As such, I only write posts that I care what people have to see with my account. Others, like this, are anonymous so that people can ignore them if they so choose (this is an option for anyone logged in).
People that worry about karma and have to post about it are idiots. I could care less if my karma on my login is rated down -- but I only let it get rated down on topics that are close to what I believe -- and when that happens, so fucking what.
What are you, 16 with a bad attitude?
I've been wishing for years that Apple would design a trackpad button that looks like one button, but can actually be pressed on either side for a left and right click.
The default software configuration would be for both sides to just be the same single button. Users would never have to even know there was a second. But a Power User, not intimidated even by such an arcane thing as this, could enable the second button.
Rome. Recent rumors indicate that God is considering dropping support for the five digit hand. Indicating that five digits is simply too complex for the average non-diety to master smoothly, a single digit version is to be released in the near future. Those more advanced primates who wish to continue to use "tools" will have the option of pressing the other single digitted appendage to their nose to access alternate uses for the primary digit.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'm an absolute fucking dork/dweeb/nerd/etc., with over twenty years' home computing experience, and I've never thought having multiple mouse buttons was a good idea (except for video editing). Contiunually orienting your hand correctly so that you can right-/left-/whatever-click or scroll on your mouse puts a huge cumulative strain on that wrist and shoulder.
Because I've never used Windows (or any Linux interface that mimics it), I've never caught the habit of constantly clawing around off in the distance to do even the simplest tasks, so to me it seems crazy. The keyboard's right in front of you; why reach past it? If you can, it's best not to use a mouse at all, but if you need one, with a one-button mouse, at least you can hit a control key, then just swing your hand over and shove and slap the mouse, and it does what you want without wasted fine movements.
Really, I don't get it.
Apple's one-button-ness is one of the last signs of hopeful thinking that maybe Microsoft really doesn't own us all. Too bad they actually do.
While I personally find the lack very frustrating (and get annoyed by "new" Linux apps that fail to support it - grr) I've actually spent a lot of time finding out how to turn it off for my users.
.xsession scripts, since *NOTHING* appears to let you disable this behaviour without disabling the button.
Lots of them simply can't scroll without clicking. They scroll around emails and word processing docs, pasting random crap everywhere. It's terrifying.
I eventually ended up remapping the middle mouse button to a non-existent button using xmodmap in their
Personally, I don't think it will catch on.
Bet you said the same thing about the Ipod. We're techs... marketing geniuses. Keep your day job.
I planned on inserting something witty here but never got around to it.
"Personally, I don't think it will catch on"
HAHAHAHAHA
Will code a sig generator for food
The jokes in the corridors about the one-button nature of the apple mouse are certainly many, but I've also heard some interesting discussion that it has a positive influence on UI design. Notably, because you're limiting the default user inputs to one button, you're requiring designers to think meaningfully about what the most important features are, and to put them someplace readily accessible. In other words, it makes it less tempting to just pour more and more "features" into the right-mouse-button menu.
Or you could just right-click
Therein lies the rub for a one button mouse...
No it absolutely did not.
The Lisa mouse is easily recognized by having a beige color scheme similar to the original Macintosh mouse, but with a different connector, a wider, shorter button, and somewhat different case styling.
This is a Lisa mouse.
The second mouse seen here is the original Macintosh mouse, IIRC.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
So what's the point of this story? Why slam Apple?
Apple computers WORK with any mouse you want, they just don't SHIP with a multi-button mouse. So it must not be the case that you think Apple shuns multi-button mice... it doesn't. It just doesn't manufacture them.
Do you think that the lack of a multi-button mouse has spelled the doom of Apple? If they ship their computers with a multi-button mouse, will hordes of users run out to buy Apples -- users who were holding back because of their revulsion of a single button? Probably not, eh? So that can't be your point...
So what is your point?
Knew Apple would manage to fuck it up.
> Huh? I don't believe Apple EVER made a floppy drive that had ANY form of an eject button
You never owned an Apple ][, then.
(But you are right. Macinstosh *never* had eject buttons. MFS, and later HFS would not support ejecting an unmounted disk safely)
Apple has classically supplied Mac users with single-button mouses while supporting multi-button ones for a valid reason. They do this to keep developers from hiding functionality in layers of contextual menus.
If you notice, in every properly developed application for Mac OS X anything found in the contextual menu can also be found in the menu bar, and sometimes either other places. The contextual menu should be used as a short-cut to functions, not the only place they reside.
In working with Microsoft Powerpoint (Microsoft embraces just about as many standards on the Mac as they do in Windows) there are many functions that can ONLY be accessed through contextual menus.
Sure this is fine if you've found it before, or someone has told you about it, but when someone learns a new application, it does'nt make sense to have some functions accessible by an expected means and others embedded in contextual menus (which tend to be wholly unorganized compared to the hierarchical structure of the menu bar.)
Most flavors of UNIX, along with BeOS solve this problem by making the contextual menu just a vertical menubar menu. Each method has tradeoffs. In the end Apple is just making it so that Developers know that they have to code for the greatest cross-section of mac users, who may or may not have a multi-button mouse.
It's been long overdue, but Mac will finally open up to pr0n.
Hurray!The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
I remember on some of the older PowerPC's in the computer lab back when I was in elementary school, the power button was right where you'd think the floppy eject button was.
I don't think I can count on one hand how many times people have switched off their PC's when trying to eject a floppy!
OMFG you said "skinflute"! That's SO funny I think I might DIE! Dude you should be on stage!!!111eleven
But since draging to the trash was a shortcut for SPECIAL->EJECT I give it as much slack as I give CONTROL + 'X' meaning cut or ALT + 'F4' meaning close window.
Doesn't follow. Meaningless keyboard shortcuts for menu items are something that generally just have to be memorized. However, we're talking about a visual shortcut here. It's similar to the inanity in windows where if you drag within a disk, it means move, but if you drag across disks, it means copy.
belive that since the first OS X release draging a disk turns the trash can into a eject icon
Which barely helps, since now the user will wonder why the trash can is changing. You have to approach these things as a new user. If you're familiar with Macs, of course it makes sense that you drag a disk to the trash because that's what you've been doing for the last 10+ years. If you've never seen a mac (and are familiar with trash cans), it just doesn't make sense to drag a disk to the trash to eject it. After all, the trash is where you put stuff you want deleted; stuff you don't want. Remember, you really have to look at these things as someone who does not use computers 10 hours a day.
...and finally, the temperature in Hell today a cool 32 degrees. ...and we wish everyone a happy April Fool's Day. ...serveral witnesses spotted the pig circling overhead for hours while.... ...and finally tonight, Apple Computer is reporting developing a two-button mouse. Film at eleven.
"(which ranges from many, many years to infinite, as some users will confuse them their entire lives)."
id say it ranges from 1 or 2 seconds to infinite.
It did not take me many years to figure out how to use the other button on the mouse. I've had to explain it to a few clueless users, but ive found most people catch onto it pretty quick.
You get out a paperclip and use the emergency-eject hole on the front, which has been there since Apple's very first 3.5" floppy drive back in 1984.
> support of the apple floppy design is a good test on the worth of someone's opinion about apple products.
:-)
Having the floppy software ejected is great, for many reasons:
* User can eject floppy without losing data
* Computer can eject floppy when asking for a new one
* OS can cache content, and be much more efficient at writing
* NeXT did it too
Not having a floppy eject button is bad. It should send a software interrupt to the host and ask the OS to software eject the floppy.
Dragging the floppy to the trash to eject it is bad. A good UI would have been to have an actual eject button on (or next to) the floppy icon.
So what this makes me ?
Come on people, this is funny. And makes a good point too! God I hate zealots.
"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!"
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Funny how they push ahead with this after Raskin's death. I wonder what he'd think.
Sadly, it's not a joke. Back in day a PC user (with an advanced CS degree) with a new Mac complained to me that the power button on her Mac IIfx (IIRC) was way in the back of the CPU, and, oh, by the way, why did Mac complain on startup that it was not properly shut down?
This was around the time that it was possible (and not unheard of) to exit Windows 3.x to the C:> prompt and turn off the box before the OS finished deferred writes to the hard drive.
I'm specifically talking about dumb users here. Competent users pick it up in seconds. The sort of people who regularly call help desks take a long, long time.
Seems easy enough to take the current Apple mouse and add an iPod click wheel to it. There you go, 6 programable buttons and a scroll wheel.
Such a solution would also be easy to add to the PowerBook G5, give it a Click Wheel as well.
Yes, yes, it is a long-known hiccup violation of human interface logic that has been chewest over within the Mac community since the earliest days. But not since before even OS 7 or 8 has that been the best or most obvious way to do this. I mean ... did you or your wife even bother to look in the Finder menus? If you didn't, you are dumb. If you did ... what is it about the 'Eject' menu item that you didn't understand? That you had to select the floppy first? If you didn't understand that basic interface principle after days of trying to use your Mac then you are also dumb. It's a Mac. There are multiple ways of doing almost everything. (There are at least two more ways I know of to eject floppies beyond the ones that I've just discussed.) You didn't discover a single one of them? That's a very fishy story. I doubt you really tried for more than a total of about ten minutes over those so-called 'days'.
" That honestly makes more sense to me than pressing buttons on the front of my tower."
presumably, since youre ejecting the disk, youre going to have to reach over to the drive anyway (to switch disks or whatever) why not put the button there since youre going to have to reach over there anyway?
"As for floppies, *I* haven't seen a floppy with a smart eject system on any PC I've used. They're all simple, stupid physical released buttons. I'd much rather have my system eject it when it's done working than have to sit and watch the LED on the drive to make sure it's done before I hit eject."
the LS-120 drives had a soft eject system similar to a cdrom drive. LS-120 was a zip-like drive that had special 120mb floppies, but could also read & write standard floppies.
they were short-lived (iomega won the format war), but excellent pieces of hardware.
Yeah! two button mouse will increase the work load of all those MAC users. Join the rest of the world.
After 20 years intensive research Apple discovers that a majority of its users have more than one finger on each hand. Always a leader in productivity, two-button iMouse to be released this year! Further news at 11.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
First Apple shuts up that "Apple laptops unfit for UNIX users" snapperhead by putting USB-based keyboards in the January 2005 PowerBooks.
Then they got rid of the "Macs are too expensive" crowd by releasing the Mac mini.
Now they're working on a two-button mouse?
What will the Wintrolls have left to whine about?
Interesting that you and the previous poster got into computing around 1985 or so. You missed the dreaded "don't forget ctrl-C before removing the floppy or you will ruin it" curse in CP/M. Fixing this was the one great improvement MS-DOS 1.0 had over the older system.
This was done by changing all disk operations from "write back" to "write through" (to use cache terms). Unfortunately, the cost is a reduction of several times in disk performance as the head constantly moves back and forth between the middle of the floppy (where the file is being accessed) and the first tracks (where the FATs are). This allows you to yank out the disk at any time with a very low probability of damage and also makes it likely that you will still have your data after a power failure.
For the floppy-only 128KB original Mac it is likely that this loss in performance would have been unacceptable. So Apple selected a "write back" scheme and prevented you from removing the disk without telling the software first so it could save all of its buffers. For the rarer case of a power failure the file system stored redundant information which the built-in disk repair utility could use to make up for any unsaved data.
After browsing apple-history.com, I see you are right - the built-in drives don't have buttons. Ah, these are the drives I was thinking of - it is the second one down. I was confusing the drives on the IIgs with the mac. Sorry.
The Software Eject Floppy is really a relic of the era when Macs shipped with no hard drive and the system software was on floppy. In those days the Mac would eject the program disk and say "Insert 'System Disk' NOW!"
When floppys became temporary storage, it really didn't matter all that much, and Apple kept the feature only because it was sorta a trademark for them.
Here is the story of how they got that cloverleaf symbol.
Try pushing that button while the computer is in the middle of writing to the disk. Then, after reformatting the disk and checking if floppy drive still works, you may have some idea.
I got a bonus this week so I decided to try this out. It was everything that I imagined it to be. Thank you.
You never owned an Apple ][, then.
We didn't have buttons on those either. Just a manual slot cover.
In the PC world you simply pushed a button right next to the drive.
NO! NOT THAT BUTTON! THAT'S THE POW...
On an old Macintosh shitbox I used, using the "eject disk" function would leave a shadow of the disk icon on the desktop. WTF? Was it still "mounted?"
Hey I got one AC! Those PowerMac G5's are freaking heavy.
Aha! I can tell you never learned the magical Shift-Command-3 shortcut for ejecting a floppy on a Mac. Of course, this is even less intuitive.
I think that the design decision they made was about two things: creating a sense of safety, and making sure the OS knows what you are doing.
By requiring you to eject the disk via a software command, the OS can always tell if the disk is in or out. On older macs with only one drive you could eject the disk, but leave a "ghost" of the disk on the desktop. This made it possible to copy one floppy to another with only one floppy drive. You could insert the first disk, eject it, insert the second, and then drag the second disk onto the "ghost" of the first disk.
As someone else pointed out though, they could have put a non-mechanical eject button on the drive linked to the OS.
The "data safety" issue: Have you ever pulled a usb memory accessory off of your PC without first "unpluging or ejecting your hardware?" Windows and Mac both grumble at you when you do this, warning that you may have lost data. To an advanced user this is an annoyance, but to a novice user, this is a bad experience that leaves them wondering what damage they have done. By always letting the OS override whether the disk could be ejected, the user no longer was responsible for potentially damaging data by ejecting the disk at the wrong time. This creates a better user experience in the long run because the user no longer is part of the equation of data loss from the floppy. It reduces worry at the expense of making the process of ejecting the disk more complicated.
On a totally unrelated note: I do think Apple deserves credit for being the first to ship a desktop PC with no floppy drive (the original iMac). At first I thought this decision was crazy -- but I don't think I've used a floppy disk in the last three years. Sometimes design decisions should show leadership, not always attempt to do whatever users want. In this case they took a big step forward.
In pre-OS X, you could also choose "Put Away" from the File menu in the finder. Command+Y is the quick key.
Yes, dragging to the trash is weird and they would have changed it a long time ago if it weren't for the fact that everyone is already used to it. SO, instead they came up with "Put Away" which makes more sense anyway.
There is also an "Eject", but you don't want to use that as it leaves the grayed out image of the disk still on the desktop. This was used in the early days to allow the user to utilize more than one floppy (i.e. copying, etc.) at a time in one disk drive.
In OS X, you can use Eject and it will do what you want. Plus, the trash changes to an eject icon when you start dragging a removable volume.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Honest mistake.
On a vaguely related note, my dad had a PowerMac 6100 for a long time. One feature of this case design was that it had the power button on the front, right below the floppy drive.
My father's a computer geek. He's been on the Internet since it was called the Arpanet. His first Unix experience was hacking the source code so it would run on a customized PDP11 his company was using.
He bought a Mac in 1984, and has been an ardent Mac fan ever since, although he works with PCs a lot for work.
Even with all of this, when he got the 6100, he had to put a stapler in front of the power button to keep himself from turning the power off accidentally every time he wanted to eject a floppy.
Apple is stealing the "two" button idea from Microsoft, this is outrageous, how dare they pirate this idea. Oh wait a minute this is /....um let me start again.
What a beautifully, simple, and elegant idea, a two button mouse. Only Apple could have come up with something like this.
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
That's what the little hole is for. Even a PC guy should know that if he's worth anything. Everytime I install something on a PC I forget that a large number (a vastly larger number than on the Mac) of installations or system settings changes require a reboot, and I forget to backup all my documents first. Does this mean the PC sucks? No this means that my habits were acquired on the Mac. Obviously, if you were a regular Mac user, your floppy (or CD) ejection habits would cease to be an issue.
you know what he/she meant. your point is useless. And the one true sign that Apple is fully onboard with the multi-button mouse is when laptops come with 2 buttons
(that is patently false. laptops have come with more than 2 buttons for years. One for each letter in the alphabet, numbers and special characters. Just not 2 buttons below the trackpad for the mouse click....blah, blah, blah)
My point was that although I actually like OS-operated floppy drives because they're more secure, especially in multi-users setups (and yes, back in the 80's, I've seen prolog-based accountancy packages actually backuping on floppies in multiuser environnements - chilling), the Apple's "trash to eject" shortcut is as dumb as can be. Any user in his right mind, save apple's worshipers, won't ever dare slipping the disk icon over the trash in the legitimate fear of wipping the disk clean. Not everybody, moreover given previous exposure to "Microsoft sense of ergonomical design", is eager to trust his computer to actually help him instead of pulling the trigger once the gun is aiming at his foot.
But I find the one button mice a lot more comfortable, as my hand doesn't have to be glued to the thing in a pre-determined position in order to click it. Oddly enough, I was a fan of the hockey puck mouse before it, as I was one of the only people to use the thing correctly, by steering it with my fingertips, leaving my hand parked to the desk. Same with my ibook, I leave my thumb laying more or less horizontally over the single button. If apple goes to two button laptops, I'm pretty much fucked. =/
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Feverishly working? How hard is it to steal a Logitech mouse, paint it white, and charge $200?
Just watch. Apple will develop it so that it will only function on mac machines. And Apple probably found somebody who dreamed up some nifty variation on the ordinary mouse. I mean, come on, it won't just have two *ordinary* buttons or a *normal* scroll wheel. It's got to have some bling that makes it distinctly mac. People have to have an awestruck reaction when they see one. Then they'll sell the things for 100 bucks and all the mac zealots will get in line and happily fork it over. How do you think Jobs got to be a Billionaire anyway!?
Does this mean that His Holiness Steve might have been (dare I say it) "wrong"? Oh my....
Unless you're shopping for bargains online, $60ish is about what you'll pay for a good full size bluetooth optical mouse these days. And they're actually rather hard to find. Most retail joints seem stunned at the very idea that I'd want a full size bluetooth mouse. I just want to reduce my desk clutter, but they keep asking me how it will fit in my laptop case.
And yes, it will be bluetooth. How do I know? Apple's invested a lot into making bluetooth a part of the mac experience. Lots of macs come with bluetooth now, and they have an excellent bluetooth keyboard and mouse already.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
You never owned a laptop, did you ?
Hi,
:-)
two buttons are bad for your health:
1 Button = 1 hand on keyboard + 1 hand on mouse (for alt and control key use)
2 buttons = 1 hand on mouse + one hand to insert pies/cakes into mouth
Therefore two buttons = unhealthier computer use due to sudden uptake of pie/cake
Wouldn't that qualify as a form of eject button ?
I know this will bring the thunder down on me, but it's too funny.
f
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gi
I'm also sure I'm not the first to post this link.
Exactly! I always wondered why no-one bothered to hack a version of scandisk.exe that would say "Because Windows was not designed properly, one of your disks has to be checked for errors."
Do you see that LED on the front panel of just about every PC floppy drive ever made? Do you have any idea what that is for?
Here is one thing I have noticed. We have an eMac at home and two of my three kids are preschoolers. They have a very easy time using the zero (what I mean is that the entire mouse is one big button) button mouse from Apple. It is not too big too. At the library they have these two button plus scroll wheel Microsoft ergonomic mice connected to the computers for the kids. First of all those mice are way too big and there is this big hump at the base of the mouse that makes it very difficult for my kids to use. Since they have to hold the mouse near the top, very often the mouse will turn to the side and then the motion is all wrong relative to what they expect the cursor to do on the screen. The fact that the scroll wheel is in the way and that there are two buttons also causes confusion. What happens is that they end-up just clicking repeatedly until they finally click on the left mouse button and if they click on the scroll wheel their hand rolls off.
On the other hand the size of the current Apple mouse is just perfect. It is not too small for an adult and not too big for a child. Because of the size and the fact that the whole mouse is one big button, my kids can hold the mouse near its middle, and then it does not rotate while being moved.
I have heard the argument that once you start using a computer long enough you start wanting extra mouse buttons. What I think is that those people are not sophisticated enough. Even when I was using unix primarily, I configured fvwm and vim so that I could do almost everything from the keyboard. Today there are keyboard shortcuts for almost anything on OS X plus a bunch of small apps to add even more shortcut functionality. I really do not miss a three button mouse all the much at all. In fact I use SideTrack on my iBook and think that is perfect for the times I need to copy and paste in X11.app. Maybe Apple should make a compact keyboard with a trackpad instead of a two button mouse. If that keyboard was wireless, it would be perfect for sitting on the couch too especially with two finger scrolling.
One thing about OS X that is very frustrating is that I have not figured out an easy way to use the built-in spell checker with only the keyboard. If anyone knew an easy way to pop-up that menu with suggested corrections, I would really appreciate it. Also using the accessibility features and that spelling dialog box with only the keyboard is really annoying because the things you want to do are too many key presses away, so that is not really a viable solution...
This was so people could transfer files directly from one floppy disk to another, by dragging files onto the shadow disk; the Mac would then ask you to insert the disk you took out. An important capability in computers without hard drives.
One problem with this was that, if you tried to open a "shadow disk", it would pop up a dialog box saying "insert disk <whatever>", which would prevent any other action, and which had no button to cancel it. You could close the window with Command-. (the usual Mac means of cancelling things) but that was not stated in the window. That was an interface problem.
The story says "jaws will drop." Apple will probably have the left button take up most of the mouse, with the right moust button being shifted more to the side.
I wouldn't be surprised if a scrolling track pad was added on the left of the mouse where the thumb rests, because an ugly "scroll wheel" on top wouldn't be aesthetic. Not to mention how unusable it is. Two-button mice strain my tendons, especially that scroll wheel. I actually prefer one-button mice when I can use them because I can easily rest my finger in the center of the mouse. Your hand feels amazingly more comfortable when you do that. And, of course, Ctrl-click does the same damn thing. But the point is you don't even need the right mouse button on OS X because the functionality is exposed elsewhere. I think it's a point in OS X's favor that it's so functional, you don't even need two buttons to use it--just one.
Expect Apple computers to continue to ship with one-button mice by default. The two-button mouse will just be another upgrade option when you buy it online, or something you can pick up on your way out of the retail store.
I can tell you never learned the magical Shift-Command-3 shortcut for ejecting a floppy on a Mac
That's the shortcut to take a screenshot. Eject was cmd-E.
I remember back in the school days when people were always needing paper clips to retrieve their floppies from the Apple labs. The funniest thing was when a disk the Mac didn't recognize was inserted (such as a FAT12 MSDOS disk), it would not eject it, and you needed the paper clip. Another favorite was when the computer crashed (extremely common), when it rebooted it wouldn't realize it still had a floppy in it, and thus wouldn't eject it, so you needed the paper clip. A simple solution would be to have the computer go through the eject motions whenever you told it to eject, even if the computer thought it did not have a disk in it - but something so simple was never implemented. This even continued on with some Mac CD drives (like the early iMac) - put in the wrong CD and you were stuck taking the computer apart. Stupid stupid stupid.
On the other hand, I don't remember anyone having problems ejecting disks at the wrong time on the PCs. People seemed smart enough to realize whirring sound + LED light = do not eject.
Is selecting the menu item "Eject disk" intuitive enough for you? (Or "Put away" in newer systems.) The trash-can method is an alternative method, but you don't need to know about it to use the Mac.
institive
Do you mean instinctive, intuitive, or intrinsic? Or something else?
my blog
Eliminate the keyboard.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
If Steve Jobs can make 'shuffle technology' sound revolutionary, I can only imagine how he will spin a two button mouse.
they'll have multi-mouse-buttoned laptops. that's really what's kept me from wanting a TiBook...
This has to be one of the stupidest, non-news events turned to news I've read on /. in a long time.
2 Button mice have been around since windows 3.1.
Big Deal.
Actually, I guess it's weirder. I think when you open the slot, it lifts the drive head off the disk. So you could actually leave the disk in place in the drive while screwing up the writing :-)
Not that this is an ideal solution, but if your keyboard has an eject button, you can also hit eject and option-eject for the different drives.
1) Apple uses USB which is an industry standard, as opposed to the proprietary ADB that was used until the mid to late 90s, so now any mouse, even mice developed for windows can be used with a mac, thereby reducing the need and the pull on developers to develop mice specifically for the mac.
2) Apple has shifted its strategy to be more aggressive, particularly in retail, to the detriment of individual resellers, and is now doing the same in the hardware space.
3) The iPod is such a phenominal success that apple doesn't need to draw hardware makers to the mac platform anymore.
4) Apple sees cross-over potential. Apple could very well believe that with the iPod's success and the standardization of peripherals, Windows users could want more apple hardware. This could be for the "reluctant switcher," someone who loves apple products, owns an iPod, loves apple's image but doesn't have the guts to make the switch.
5) This could be a considerable gripe of windows users that apple surveys to find out obstacles to get them to switch to a mac. Perhaps this is a sign that apple is making a more aggressive switch campaign.
No matter what, I like the move. I remember trying to use the hockey puck mouse on my first iMac and nearly going insane. At this point I use nothing but kensington mice, but for a first time user, I think it improves the out of box experience considerably.
Fuck off!
How odd, in the LC2 and Performa 475 days (8 or 9 years ago?) our Apples never worked the way you describe. When you inserted a disk it didn't know, it offered the option to format it for you, along with an eject button should that not be what you had in mind. And IIRC disks that were in the drive when the computer was booted were automatically ejected after it was determined they weren't boot disks. I don't think I used the paper clip more than once or twice in 2 or 3 years, and I don't recall why I used it... it might have been just because I was curious how that worked.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
http://images.google.com/images?q=apple%20lisa%20m ouse&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wi
Just incase the other sites with these images get Slashdotted...
Sorry, Mr. Perens.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Reread my reply. I was agreeing with you. My post was saying (basically) "Yeah, it's a dumb way to do it, but they had a reason for doing it that way."
Four figure ID and can't do hyperlinks. I could eat alphabet soup and shit better comments.
The original Apple Macintosh interface had a strict subject-verb grammar. You selected something (the subject), and then went to a menu item to indicate what to do with it. This is limiting, but very easy to learn. Verb-subject interfaces are also possible; those are the ones where you go into a "mode", and the next thing you click on is operated upon in that mode. Today, verb-subject interfaces are usually associated with toolbars.
Most of the "shift-click" stuff is an attempt to express verb-subject grammar. Badly. It's usually better to stick with subject-verb. Select, then indicate what you want done. Indicating what you want done can be a keypress, or a right-click floating menu.
I have not had a single laptop that will eject the CD when the power is off.
im quite aware of the paper-clip trick... and compared to simply pushing a button.. it is a major effort to hunt down a proper paper-clip (use too thin a paper clip & itll bend around in there yay) poke it around in that lil hole & find the right thing to push on in there.
i really dont see what would be so bad about having an eject button.
"Everytime I install something on a PC I forget that a large number (a vastly larger number than on the Mac) of installations or system settings changes require a reboot, and I forget to backup all my documents first. Does this mean the PC sucks?"
I dont know what youre talking about here... rarely does installing a program require a reboot, unless youre installing drivers or something. I dont know why youd decide to install your new drivers in the middle of writing a term paper... sounds kinda silly.
When you click and drag a removable drive or network share's icon anywhere on the screen OS X changes the trash can icon to an eject symbol.
Dammit, you've convinced me.
When this was first explained to me, I thought it meant that the when you dragged a drive/share icon over the trashcan, the trashcan icon would transmogrify into an eject symbol. This would be daft.
But if I understand you correctly, as soon as you click and hold on a drive or a share, the trashcan disappears (because deleting a drive is impossible) and is replaced with an eject symbol.
This suddenly makes sense to me. I suppose it would make even more sense if the trashcan were to quickly swoosh offscreen, and the eject icon were to swoosh on to replace it. In other words, the object is not changing its behaviour and appearance: a different object is positioned where the old one was.
Are there other areas where Aqua rearranges the desktop depending on context? I can imagine, for example, if you start to drag a file, some area could empty itself of icons that wouldn't accept that drop, and populate itself with icons appropriate to the format of the file being dragged.
I need to try out OSX, just so I can be more informed, but the cost! the cost!
Please stop being on my side. You make my side look bad.
In your favorite environment that supports "X-Windows cut 'n paste", do the following...
The results aren't very useful in most contexts... the pasted text will be "inserted" or "appended" to the existing URL.
I suspect that for most users, the X-Windows cut 'n paste model would be harder to work with than the existing model.
What is Apple/Jobs thinking! The one button mouse is elegant and simple. Easy to use, straight forward... and just damn cool. Apple should let the PC crapoids keep their nifty spinning wheels that don't do anyhing in most applications and their dozens of buttons that don't seem to do anything... or worse yet do something completely different depending on what app you are running. No thanks, I'll keep my one button mouse and the increased productivity that goes with it.
Dogs and Cats! Living together!
Two Button Mac Mice!
MASS HYSTERIA!!
i dunno if this is still the case with modern macs, but i remember on the old toaster-macs if you left the floppy in when you shut it down... after rebooting, the system would no longer know it had a disk in the drive, and would therefore not give you the option of ejecting.
im sure theyve rectified that since then. but our solution was to keep a box of paperclips in the mac lab. nearly every machine had an assortment of mangled paperclips scattered about it.
I think my english skills (lack of, that is to say), is badly showing. Sorry about my misunderstanding.
Since when did this become "The Onion" ?
"Or you could just right-click on the drive itself and tell it to eject."
Good thing apple is putting out a two button mouse.
This sounds good. Unfortunately Jobs has decided that the clutter of the extra button will be offset by a sleek perfectly round design.
Of course there are THREE ways of ejecting a cd/floppy: 1) Drag it to the trash 2) Hit the eject button on the keyboard OR: 3) CLICK THE EJECT ICON NEXT TO THE DISK IN THE FINDER
I've watched various people start to learn to use a computer (Mac or windows) for 20 years now. The general non-technical public can't learn nuthin' right! Whether it's a one-button or two-button mouse, an incredible number of folk can't understand that not every darn thing needs to be double-clicked. I try showing them that various stuff (like formatting buttons in toolbars) require only one click, but no luck.
If they can't figure out one vs. two clicks, they'll never grasp the concept of a "contextual menu."
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The 3.5" superdrive for the Apple IIGS had an electronic eject button. The Apple IIC+ also had a built in drive with an eject button.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
A corded mouse is cheap, sure.
Bluetooth mice are not so cheap. Keep that in mind before you go pricebashing. $50-$70 depending on quality is a pretty reasonable price range for a bluetooth mouse.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Start->Shutdown is also pretty stupid, I think at least in OS X when you drag a volume it changes to an eject icon from a trash bin helps.
But you're wasting your money getting a mouse you won't use included, and you still can't use command-click to do other useful things you want to. I value simplicity but I value functionality more.
I am trolling
Unless you stick a safety pin in the little hole if it's a tray loading drive.
if dragging a disk to somewhere used to be a trash can is dumb, talking something you don't know is dumber.
I understand why you don't understand.
The reality is if you are draging a disk, the trash can becomes a "Eject" sign magically.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Methinks Apple needs to make their Pro mouse with a Synaptics touchpad covering the entire top for scrolling. Just drag your finger down anywhere on the mouse and you scroll. It would be better than a scroll wheel because it could be multidirectional and Apple could keep their smooth the-whole-mouse-is-the-button design without an ugly wheel sticking out of it.
As a partner in a computer training company I taught more than 10,000 (probably closer to 12,000) people how to use Windows and Macs.
As for the quote from the tech support person who claimed that having someone use the right mouse button caused the person to evermore ask "right or left" when asked to click: That's ridiculous. You just say, "If I, or someone else, or a book or manual instructs you to 'click' on something without telling you which button, you use the left button." You explain that the left button is the "default" button and then go into a brief explanation of what "default" means.
Here's how to explain "default."
The "default" is what's expected in the absence of any other instructions. The default hamburger in diners and other traditional restaurants is usually just meat between two buns (with perhaps some garnishes on the side). At McDonald's and other fast food chains the default includes ketchup, pickles, onions and sometimes more.
Once you understand the default configuration of burgers at the place you eat, you know what to expect.
Insert witty sig here.
If Apple offered a choice of a two button (+scroll wheel) and a three button mouse, we can put to rest one of the biggest misperceptions of Macs. This one button only philosophy from Apple has hurt its image among potential switchers for a long time. Its been with Apple's image so long that it has left an indelible impression of being not a serious computer by many who are unexposed or uninformed about other platforms. Imagine if Sony came out with the Playstation 3 with a joystick that had a single fire button like the Atari 2600. With a cursory glance kids would dismiss it as lame game console and make fun of those who owned one, even though it is using a revolutionary processor like Cell.
I've only recently started to endorse the use of Macs in my department in the last two years when Mac OS X looked promising and ready in Jaguar ver 10.2 . One of the obstacles I faced was the myth of the one button mouse and I wish I didn't have to go through that argument every single time, because it gives me less time to show other really powerful and cool features of Mac OS X. Imagine how this must waste the time of every single Apple sales rep or individual that is trying to introduce a Mac to a potential switcher. If Apple still wants to offer a one button mouse and make it the default choice thats fine. What irritated me was the lack of choice from the Apple Store. A person can change the memory, CD/DVD drive, harddisk, remove the internal modem on PowerMacs but you where always stuck with the same old one button mouse.
What happens in my department is that the one button mice don't get used much and I have to spend extra money on getting a multi-button optical mouse. I'm sure everyone has their anecdotal story of how a user with a multi-button mouse didn't understand how to use left or right mouse click. I have my own where a 86+ year old professor had a hard time with the multi-button mouse I switched him to because his hands are quite shaky. For the rest of my department 99% of them seem to be able to handle a multi-button mouse just fine.
If you have Apple Shake or Alias Maya you MUST have a three button mouse. This is Apple's own software that requires it, so why has it taken so long for Apple to offer a real "choice" for its consumers is beyond me, because this policy in my opinion has done harm to sales and put plenty of potential Mac buyers off. Sometimes there seems to be a culture of stubbornness with in different divisions at Apple. Like they know what is best for you. Take for example the infamous puck mouse which by ergonomic standards failed the test. It was released for 3 product cycles before Apple finally changed it to its current form. The overwhelming feedback it got and reviews of the mouse should have made Apple change it after its initial release, but in the face of plenty of criticism they bore it. I bought a cheap plastic device called iCatch for those puck mice back then to solve the problem. When Apple bought NeXTStep they brought in many new ideas, but the one thing that they kept was the one mouse button ONLY policy from the old Mac days. I'd rather see Windowshade, Tabbed Folders or NeXT shelf, customizable Apple Menu come back and see the one button mouse leave as the ONLY choice. For user base who love their one button mouse Apple should keep offering this mouse. These are the legacy users and its important to support them. Many Apple migrants come from Windows, Unix, Linux and other platforms and its about time we see this change.
Many scientists, researchers and scientists use X11 on Mac OS X and its essential to have a three button or two button (+ scroll wheel) mouse. I use a five button Kensington Optical Elite and programmed buttons 4 and 5 to use Expose functions. It makes my desktop experience my easier with these powerful features.
I can only hope that news is true and it would only help Mac sales, but they would need to market multi button mouse for a few months to undo all those years of misperception.
After switching to OS X a few months ago, I've discovered that I no longer miss the right mouse button!
One excellent reason is the terminal
Another is the fact that control click, command click and option click all do the same things in pretty much every program (I can't say what exactly, it's that intuitive)
All I know is that when I want a new tab in firefox instead of a new window, I always make the right kind of click
nevertheless, I like multibutton mice, and now that I see this discussion on slashdot, I'm going to go get me a USB wireless mouse with a scroll wheel. I've forgotten how nice those were...
shooting is not too good for my enemies
unless i get a new mac with a two button mouse, i'm happily sticking to my one-button apple optical mouse. how it rocks rather than having buttons that click makes it so much easier on my RSI-plagued right hand. not to mention scrolling kills my fingers.
None of which, in my experience work, because the Mac I use at work (the stupid slot loading CD-ROM iMac) locks up frequently when I insert disks.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
In other news, Apple also announced a future mouse using six buttons. Steve Jobs was quoted a saying, "We want to be ahead of the curve, since we screwed up last time and waited 20 years before catching up with other 2-button mice. Besides, we want to anticipate demand when humans grow an extra finger approximately half a million years from now.."
Microsoft has already responded by announcing a 10-button mouse, though speculation is that it will be released too late, when humans no longer require limbs and already have started using brain waves to control the world.
One word... Abacus
Sean.OutaHere()
Well, basically the trash stands as a catch-all for "get rid of" and has since the first Mac OS.
Well, kind of.
The drag to the trash was a shortcut for people that knew and never mentioned by Apple. File->Eject was the official way. (why it took someone a few days to find File->Eject is beyond me).
Anyway, Apple tried to kill the behavior in System 7, but testers had grown so accustomed to the behavior that Apple couldn't kill it. They had improved upon the 'Eject' idea with File->Put Away, that would not only eject, but unmount file servers (you don't eject them either) and would take files that you moved to the desktop and return them to where they came from - yes, it tracked all of them.
Turns out nobody used it, apparently except for me.
OS X comes around and AGAIN Apple can't kill it, so at least decides to turn the trashcan into an eject icon. These days, I never see anyone do that anymore - the sidebar inserts an eject/burn/etc. icon next to the volume label which is, well, just terrible useful.
Two buttons will be way too confusing for your average user.
The average PC user has a two-button-plus-scroll-wheel mouse, and knows how to use it just fine.
The average Mac user gets confused at more than one button on a mouse.
Now I think I understand why Mac users think that Macs are wonderful.....
No, you just don't understand the analogies. You have equated "place in trash" with "delete". Which it isn't.
You put things in the trash you don't want in/on your desktop. You delete items by emptying the trash. Two separate actions since about System 6.5 if I remember.
If you think of it this way, there is no problem. Face it User With A Poorly Designed Knockoff Interface.
Finally, Apple gets off its high horse a bit. Of course the GUI itself wasn't invented at Apple either but Apple was happy to borrow GUI ideas invented BEFORE the Lisa/Mac came out.
You know, Microsoft's success isn't TOTALLY attributable to Gates' aggressive business practices. One of Microsoft's strengths is that they will take any great idea from anywhere and use it. They aren't too proud to use what is literally the state of the art.
Apple should have admitted its mistake and offered two button mice long ago.
The right mouse button is the opposable thumb in the evolution of the user interface.
Insert witty sig here.
The ROM drives had these buttons. The floppy drives, to my knowledge, never did, and I have macs ranging from an 8500 back to 512K with a SCSI and RAM upgrade. I agree, though - haveing those buttons wouldn't really be a bad idea...
"Ad infinitem et ultra!" - Buzz Lightyear
All you people who think we need more than one mouse button, get a life! Apple says we don't... and we don't! Just stop yer criticizing us... and most importantly stop criticizing Apple.
Now if Apple would just get off its butt and introduce a wireless keyboard - or any keyboard - with a Trackpoint - that's the new button we need!
Always the innovator, Apple is rumored to be developing a two button mouse!
:)
:D
How cute
Oh and trying to configure airport is a pain - been trying to fix my g/fs airport (i am a pc guy not a mac guy) and man, what I wouldn't give for a command shell prompt on a mac
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
This is a little OT but if you're thinking about getting a Mac don't bother with the bluetooth mouse. It's very sluggish. Originally I bought their bluetooth mouse and it was horrible. I returned it and got the Logitech MX700 bluetooth optical mouse. It was better but it's not nearly as solid as a wired mouse. At least not compared to a wired mouse in windows. I have to run out and buy a usb mouse for my Mac mini. So at least I hope the problem is the fact that it's bluetooth.
Delay could be used for focus but for other task I would suggest an icon similar to a right arrow/chevron/etc that once highlighted executes the task.
In some cases we already see delay based options with the behaviour of the mouse over the corners of windows. (don't know what it does on Mac, I have never used one)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's about fucking time. Every time we buy a lab full of macs, I have to order as many two-button mice. I've got a stack of one button mice sitting in my office that no one wants.
-ted
I would sell my IPod for the features of a second button on my mouse!
The trash can icon changes into an eject icon when you drag a floppy.
Honestly I don't know which is better. Dragging the icon fits in nicely with the overall feel of the slot-in drive in my Mac, but I *can* press a button right next to it too if I like (F12, and the key also has the eject icon).
How about having no buttons at all? Just make the front top half of the mouse a big touch sensitive surface. Tap the right side for right click, tap the middle part of middle, make clockwise circles for scrolling, etc...
You youngsters and your 3.5" floppy disks!
I'd imagine Railroad Tycoon III is also rather difficult to play without a multi-button mouse.
P.S. If I drag a hard drive to the trash, does it eject? That would be impressive. :)
If the hard drive is unmountable (i.e. not the drive from which OS X is booted), then yes, it actually does unmount when you drag its icon the trash!
The system doesn't have a button to eject it and they count on the user KNOWING that deleting the icon will eject it? I wouldn't even think you could delete the icon to start with. Why would you delete something that isn't a file?
or get rid of the contents of the disk?
This is only my experience. (of mirth and woe)
I had a MS mouse. It was optical and it worked great 5 buttons and a wheel. I loved it. Then the started working intermittantly, which ended the affair. It was the wire that had gone flakey....
Alas now logitek for me. Not as lovely but much more reliable.
Not a representative sample, although my friends MS mouse died in a similar way..I hope they've improved them
And she hasn't quite got the point.
She is not a stupid woman either. Techno-babble just doesn't interest her.
There are power users (for whom three buttons and a scroll wheel aren't enough) and there are the others who, like my wife, are a bit mystified by the whole thing.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Try pushing that button while the computer is in the middle of writing to the disk.
Yeah yeah, and try exiting your car while driving down the freeway.
PC users seemed get by for 20 years just fine without premature ejectulation.
Plus there's no reason why cdrom drives can't have buttons. The powerbooks do, why don't the desktops?
Apple: Protecting you from yourself for 20 years!
Perhaps in the Slashdot tradition someone will hack an Airport Express for an external antenna/amplifier connector and post links to a "how to" article.
Using an external antenna instead of more power has several advantages. Adding an appropriate external antenna helps both transmit and receive. Boosting power helps transmit only. Given equally well designed receivers and levels of interference, if it really takes 300 mw to send a signal over the path you're dealing with, it'll also take 300 mw on the other end to send a signal back to you. Having a large imbalance of power levels only generates more interference. The old phrase relating to illegally amplified C.B. radios, "all mouth and no ears", comes to mind. Imagine trying to carry on a conversation with someone up the block outdoors. What good does would it do to use a megaphone to speak to them if they didn't have one to reply with? All you'd do is annoy your neighbors.
When the location of users permits use of a directional antenna one can simultaneously boost the transmitted signal range, boost the receive signal range, reduce the level of received interfering signals from other directions, and reduce the level of transmitted signal causing interference in other directions.
Some might think that an amplifier with a receive preamp might boost receive performance to match more transmitter power. But receive preamplifiers may actually degrade performance of a good receiver since their internal noise level (which is what masks a weak signal) isn't any lower than that of a well designed receiver, and boosting nearby undesired strong signals makes the possibility of poor performance due to signal overload more likely. If an antenna is located some distance away from a receiver a preamp AT THE ANTENNA helps because it prevents the signal loss in the interconnecting cable from reducing the signal relative to the level of the input-circuit generated noise in the receiver.
I, too, would like to see better wireless range in Apple's products, but I believe it'd require power increases at both ends. Improved power management could help make increased power less taxing in a laptop. A laptop could probably be designed to automatically reduce transmit power as the incoming signal gets stronger, since that would be an indication of a lower loss path between the laptop and the access point.
Interesting story, but what's a floppy disc?
Is selecting the menu item "Eject disk" intuitive enough for you?
But which disk will it eject? My dvdrom? My cdburner? One of my mounted Appleshares?
Even worse, before OS X Macs had both Eject and Put Away menu items. If you Put Away a floppy, it would eject it and unmount it completely. If you Ejected a floppy, it would eject the disk but it would stay half-mounted, and eventually the OS might ask for it back with a global modal dialog which wouldn't go away until you put the disk back. This sucks if you work in print production and the floppy has already been handed back to the customer. Eject sounded like what I wanted to do; the phrase Put Away didn't mean anything to me. When I first started using a Mac I was always using Eject when I meant Put Away, with irritating results.
Ejecting a disk is much more sane now in OS X. The Eject menu item does just what you'd expect it to, and there's no Put Away menu item anymore. The icon of the trash can changes to an Eject button icon when you select a removable disk, making it more obvious what happens if you drag a disk to the trash.
My list of things that bug me about Macs has always been shorter than my list of things that bug me about Windows or Linux, but Macs are still more than capable of irritating the hell out of me.
Has anyone else noticed that in the past few months Apple has done everything /. users have suggested?
Everything from upping the specs of the mini, to -and I think the list is pretty long- a two button mouse.
Start making ridiculous demands! Who knows what we can get out of them!
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Now the poor sops giving Mac tech support will suffer the infamous dialog:
TS: "now, right click..."
ID10T: "Err, where do I write it?"
TS: "No, I mean you should click your right mouse button."
ID10T: "I only have one mouse and it is on my left!"
Come on, are you serious? You would need to keep your mouse in constant motion while doing things like: /.
- thinking
- talking on the phone
- going to the bathroom
- reading
not to mention what you would do while webbing through p0rn
come on fhqwhgads
Please do not negatively meta-moderate the 40% who have chosen the parent post to be 'Over-rated'. These two people represent our "West Virginia" contingent (also the only two people in the state who can read). They consider the weekly bathing routine to be normal, and do not realize the rest of shower more regularly.
Thanks for yor attention.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Damn, a two button mouse would require a weeklong class to master! Some little iMac pwnd script kiddies may pop a artery over that extra mouse button. This is just another reason some people shouldn't use computers, lack of genetic diversity and complete and complacent ignorance for beneficial technology. Personally, I use my right mouse button and scroll wheel constantly; I would refuse to use a single button mouse. If one mouse button is going to confuse the average Apple user, then they should be flogged with 8" floppies and forced to live with the Amish.
Peace,
Caz
My Tangerine "My First Computer" iMac says differently.
I really agree with what you said. My only Mac is a PowerBook, but I use an old Microsoft mouse with it. I like having the right mouse button and scroll wheel on the mouse. However, I absolutely hate two buttons on a laptop. When using the trackpad, my thumb naturally rests where the right mouse button would be. When I use PC laptops, I always have problems with pressing the right mouse button by accident. It is so nice not having to worry about which button your thumb it is on. Also, I just tried putting my thumb where the left button would be, and it put my hand and wrist at a weird angle. Long live the single button trackpads!
"he was just happy he didn't have to make his own India ink..."
:-)
India ink came in solid sticks or cakes, and had to be suspended in water by the user.
If he used India ink, he would have had to mix his own.
Yes, there are women on Slashdot. Deal with it.
is that there is no option for non-Apple fans. One can either be objectively pro-Apple, or unfairly biased pro-Apple. Excellent test, because there are no other valid opinions about Apple :)
Ok, here's some more history. MacOS used to have a menu item labelled "Put Away." The idea is that you put a file on the desktop to work with it, then you "Put [it] Away" when done. The file would return to where it was before you moved it to the desktop. For disks, the idea is that you would insert the disk and then "Put [it] Away" when done with the disk. This would spit the disk out of the drive so you could put it back in the disk carrier (or whatever "away" is.) The shortcut for "Put Away" was Command-Y.
"Put Away" is distinct from "Eject." When you "Eject" a disk, the OS retains a 'ghost' image of it so you can still copy files to it. (Remember, that the original Macs had only one floppy drive... this was the only way for users to copy content from one disk to another.)
For some reason, some moron at Apple decided that "Put Away" or Command-Y was too hard to hit and so made it so that floppy icons dragged to the trash would put themselves away. This is a bad idea because:
1) There was already a way of putting a disk away that made a heck of a lot more sense.
2) Floppy disks are the *only* things that behave weird when you drag them to the trash icon-- everything other icon will move itself into the trashcan.
Then again, another part of the problem is educational. When I show people the *original* intent of the "Put Away" menu item, they at least understand why Apple designed the system that way. (And why the "Eject" command leaves a ghost image behind.)
For some reason, most people learned "drag to trash to 'Put Away' disks" without learning the other functions of the "Put Away" menu item, or the difference between "Put Away" and "Eject." Oh well.
Comment of the year
Thanks to the three people that suggested cmd+: and F5, but I already knew about those and they are not what I wanted.
The F5 is autocomplete and that what that does is it tries to finish words that you have started typing. (Which for some reason does not work on my iBook and I wish somebody had a suggestion for why not, but that is what it does on the eMac at least.)
The cmd+: brings up the Spelling dialog box. That is not exactly what I want. If you have ever tried to use that dialog box for spell checking you will know what I mean. First of all it does not reflect changes in the underlying window reliably. Secondly, when using only the keyboard it takes way too many key presses to move around and do what you want. Here it is in its gory details:
First I need to press cmd+: and then I need to press ctl+F6 to get to the dialog, and at that point I have to use the down arrow key to find the right word. At that point press return. Now press esc to make the dialog disappear lather rinse repeat... Guess what that is so much moving about that it is simply easier to cursor back and make the correction myself.
So what are the problems. Say I have some C code in an email, Oh man there are a ton of funky words (funtions names, #defines, variables, etc...) that I need to ignore. How do I ignore them, tab tab tab.... God forbid I had forgotten to press ctl+F6, now part of my email is blown away. Plus I have to skip through these 'misspelled words' each and every time, I bring-up the dialog when a word gets a red underline. I certainly do not want to add all these functions and what not to a dictionary, I have ctags and cscope for that...
What I want is a simple way to 'simulate' the behavior of a control click on a misspelled word. For example, do some key press and that simulates a control click on the previous word if the cursor is after white space. Then I would like to be able to move around the list of suggested spelling corrections (cursor keys make sense here though alphanumeric keys quickly finding words where that character first appears after removing all common prefixes would be very handy) with the keyboard and select one (return makes sense here) or dismiss the pop-up menu (esc make sense here).
There is almost something like this in Universal Access. You can turn on the Mouse Keys under the Mouse tab there. This lets me simulate a control click with ctl+5 on the numeric keypad (or fn+ctl+i on my iBook even better since those keys are near to my fingers at rest on the keyboard). The only problem with this is that the control click happens wherever the mouse cursor happens to be at the moment completely independently of where the text cursor is. Of course the current behavior is correct, but not what I would like...
I remember showing my grandmother the Macintosh back around 1988 or so. She couldn't deal with the one button mouse. Why? A one-button mouse requires you to double-click. With her arthritis, she couldn't click fast enough.
you obviously never had one with a mechanical eject button then.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
Even though I (and most geeks) would not use it, the one-button mouse shipping standard on every Mac is a VERY good thing. Reason: It *forces* application developers to design a decent UI that isn't reliant on endless right-click menu commands. I think this is very important. I hope Apple keeps the one-button mouse forever. Anything that forces good UI decisions is a win to me.
I am loosely reminded of someone's sig regarding a 101-button mouse and a 1-key keyboard.
Dragging a floppy to the trash can has the institive meaning of "delete this floppy", not "eject this floppy".
Which is why I've never ejected a disk that way. I've always selected the disk (floppy, network drive, or whatever) and then press cmd-E (which intuitively stands for the "Eject Command" in my mind)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You have to click, hold, and move the drive/share icon to trigger the eject symbol appearing. (Just clicking and holding might be someone trying to bring up a Finder view of the drive/share.)
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
Read the next sentence carefully:
You can move a latop without powering off.
(stay calm, read again if needed)
The original poster said that his laptop ejected the CD when he moved it. Obviously, he was talking about moving it while powered on. This have escaped you. Twice.
If you still don't understand, read the original post again, then your reply, then my reply, then your reply to my reply, and then this post.
If you still don't 'get' it, take some sleep, and start again.
Are there other areas where Aqua rearranges the desktop depending on context?
Yeah, after 11PM when you click on Safari the CD drive turns into a tissue dispenser.
Oh wait, did you mean the desktop onscreen?
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
I don't see what's so funny about the skinflute. I mastered the skinflute at Julliard as my father did before me. I'm a fourth generation skinflute player and I hope to pass the skinflute along to my children. Please consider you words more carefully before referring to the skinflute in a negative light.
Amish don't use 8" floppies, I think they use cassettes.
OMG I guess I'll have to call them a tech company now, seemed like they were the new SCO lawsuits and all
-- Note to liberals, yes please flee to Canada.
I haven't used a mouse in years.
Look around you. Laptops are everywhere.
A mouse on a laptop is like a fish with a yo-yo.
(except the bible)
Their current mouse has no buttons. You must push the mouse down in order to "click".
;-)
Yes, I know, it was a joke
Uh... F9 is mapped by default to Expose. Change your expose prefs and then it won't do it.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Heellooo?! Paperclip. You straighten it and stick it in the hole next to your drive. It's a device OEM feature, usually, even when Apple didn't design it into the machine. On every Mac I've owned. Superior to the clumsy buttons on PCs that can be hit accidentally more easily.
Hey buddy, you can't mod your own post with the use of the subject line. Try and get one thing done at a time, OK?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Sure, now it's just the 'innovation' of an extra button, but soon, like my IBM compatibles mouse it will evolve more buttons and more features and become so complex that the human race will become extinct from furrowed brows....
i named my mouse 'the brain' by the way....
You know, like tapping the touchpad for selection and double clicking...
The single button on macs is so stupid, I can't stand it. Such beautiful machines too...
man rtfm
For one thing, "optical audio" most commonly refers to a digital audio signal carried through fiber optics. But you're trying to describe audio visualizations; those have been around since at least July 1999, when I first saw the Geiss plug-in for Winamp.
heh.. i've always thought the ipods looked like an old apple mouse. especially my 1st gen 5gig ipod.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Unless it's the CD drive on an iMac. Then you are just plain screwed.
The explanation for this behavior: when the Macintosh was developed, it had no hard drive, so if you wanted to copy a file from one floppy to another, there had to be some notion of "half-mounted" disks to drag-and-drop files to/from.
And given that the boot disk contained the operating system, truly "ejecting" it was impossible.
Thus, "Eject" meant "remove this disk so I can put another disk in" and "Put Away" meant "I'm done with this disk now, so I want to be able to put it away."
It took them over twenty years to develop it
But which disk will it eject? My dvdrom? My cdburner? One of my mounted Appleshares?
The same disk that would be opened if you selected "Open" from the menu: the disk that is selected. (Although it might have worked differently in the older systems, I dunno).
Mice and keyboards need drivers when they implement non-standard features. Since the "standards" for these devices are so low it doesn't take much to require drivers.
Mice now come with more than two buttons and a scroll wheel. My mouse has four buttons and sometimes I wish I had more. My keyboard also has a few convenience buttons that are quite handy. These features are not essential, but a few seconds saved here and there every day adds up.
That reminds me of my Wife's first experience with a mac laptop. She inserted a floppy disc and we could NOT figure out how to get it out.
In the PC world you simply pushed a button right next to the drive. No such luck there.
You didn't see the Special|Eject menu item?
You see, Apple has made computers other than Macintoshes: there was the Lisa (both with a 3.5" floppy drive and with the doomed 5.25" "Widget" drives), the Apple /// and the Apple ][ line. Some of those Apple ]['s were in production concurrently with some Macintoshes, and were designed to use the same peripherals as the Macs (my family's first computer was an Apple //gs, which used ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) keyboards and mice, and external 800k 3.5" floppy-drives. The same drives that could be used as external floppies with a Macintosh. And the Apple //gs needs an eject button on the floppy-drive (no hard-drive to load the OS off of, so "eject from software" isn't always there), so the drive has an eject button.
But it's not for the Macintosh.
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
Just hold down the mouse-button and turn it on: the Mac will eject the disk from the drive before it even attempts to boot.
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
Basically, it comes down to potentially chewing up your disk for some lack of security versus having to dunk your disk into the trash to exec or, in the worst case, use a paperclip. Personally the disk-trash metaphor sucks (glad OS X has an alternative) but I dread floppies under Windows. I've done crazy things at 3am and I'd rather have the computer protect me from inconsistent states.
And yes, these are consumer OSs we're talking about here. Forget about giving the user ultimate responsibility/power. It doesn't always work when people are uneducated (or errorful).
When I throw things into the trash can in my kitchen, it doesn't magically jump out the side of my house. Yeah.... I had to use an aircompressor and extra pvp piping to pull that off.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I am so sick of comments comparing one buttoned mice with less experienced users. I was using my one button mouse back when all the power dweebs did was laugh at a mouse. Get a life.
Its about freakin' time.
I appreciate the desire to keep things simple and therefor...one-buttonish...but it really is time. There's way too much 2 button fuctionality out there to hold mac users hostage to a principle no one else keeps.
The hardest but'in ta but'in - Jack Black
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I use Windows all day but a Mac at home, and using the control key as the "action" key is about the worst ergonomic choice possible for power users.
If you one-hand your shortcuts like most power users do (instead of pressing control/cmd with finger of one hand and the second key with finger from the other hand), you hit the command key with your thumb. Might need to tuck it under your hand, say for cmd-v, but not a problem since the thumb is the strongest digit on your hand and hey, it's opposable.
Windows? You use your damn pinky finger! The weakest digit possible! Try hitting control-v or ctl-b with your left hand, and you'll find your hand stretching very unnaturally, even on an ergonomic keyboard.
ROTFL M$ Loozers!!!onetwo Buggy Viriusis PeeCee1111!!five!12
Don't you mean "Sharks with lasers"?
I wonder how long it will take Apple to realize a three button mouse is the only way to go.
I see you've used a Quadra 610.
I take it I'm not the only one who thinks the ipod's scroll wheel interface was designed by watching women masturbate?
This is why I think the iPod shuffle is ultimately doomed.
Unless they give it a "vibrate" mode.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Also coming up, Senator Al Gore plans to unveil his new initiative, tentatively titled, "The Internet."
...inputting accented characters. It's very easy; much more so than on Windows. Example: For ñ, hit option+~, then hit n. You can view all possible combinations like this in Key Caps (or Keyboard Viewer or whatever it's called in 10.3).
If that doesn't work, boot into Open Firmware (Command-Option-O-F) and type "eject cd"
With recent software aquisitions and large players such as Alias coming/arrived to the platform, an apple two button mouse (or 3 even) is required to satisfy the software demands of the more recent releases. It's far easier to introduce a multiple button mouse now, than convert all existing software and entice all other companies software(such as Alias Maya which needs 3 buttons at least) to change their software for single button ease of use.
You could probably narrow down the list of people who know about these sorts of things. Oh, and fire their asses.
Yes, I'm a fanboy. (Why buy Tiger separately, when you can get it and a computer for $500.)
This is like space age technology!
Did you get that thing I sent ya?
I have both Mac and Windows at home and I did have them both at work. I have been using a USB mouse for 2 or 3 years. I actually use a Microsoft Laser mouse on my Mac at home! It works 100% no problems. Hardcore Mac users never believe me when I tell them it will work. I bought one in Japan for 20.00 US. The Apple Mouse will probably be like 80.00 but it will have a little animate mouse running around inside it. ZTG
I basically do nothing.
Just control click for bleep! sakes
...a scroll wheel.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Doesn't seem that anyone thinks my first comment is funny. Hmm, I must be getting too old for this.
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Har har, who actually uses the default mouse that came with their machine, pc or mac?
And control click is nice and handy, I've been using that since it was introduced in system 8.
Yes, hence the reference to the blinky light.
I've had it stop blinking, apparently finished, and then start again right when I go to put my hand on the thing. I'd honestly rather not have to think about it. I can also count a few times where it's an automatic eject-the-disk-without thinking thing. I've always managed to catch myself, but I've seen quite a few people who knew better lose data that way.
I mean, the computer KNOWS when it's done, I'm just guessing from a stupid light.
I think it might just be the way the computer is under my desk, half the time if I hit a manual eject the cd-tray bumps my fingers and closes again.
I've seen smarter eject systems on more "modern" floppy equivalents, but that's never been the standard floppy that people are making comparisons to.
I found a nifty little utility online that allows me to add keyboard mapping with the win key, ctrl, shift, and other keys. very useful, i must have at least 20-40 shortcuts mapped to batch files that allow me to execute a fair amount of things at the touch of a key ;-)
You can find it easily by googling 'winkey'
I build all my systems from parts like a real geek. So my systems always come with just the right mouse.
Apple has kept the one-button-mouse as default for so long is because they want people to follow their standards for implementing menus for a program. Everyone can add various functions to whatever mousebutton they want, but by shipping macs with one button they ensure that devs will also have to make the menus avaiable the old way for a one button mouse. And thus ensure a certain similarity between programs.
imo, one button isnt that bad. One gets used to everything. Tho a wheel would be nice.
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
And for $49.95 extra, they'll give you wheel, too. This is gonna be a PR disaster.
On ClarisWorks 4 at least (didn't work on AppleWorks6, just checked ) option-clicking the font menu shows the font names in their respective typeface...or it might be the reverse (typeface view is the norm, option displays in plain text.)
I don't know about OSX, but under older older OS versions option-clicking also displays extra options in some control panels or produces easter eggs.
And don't forget to option-click "About the Finder" (pre OSX only.)
Don't forget you need 104+the original mouse button...or 106 depending on your rodent religion
For some reason, some moron at Apple decided that "Put Away" or Command-Y was too hard to hit and so made it so that floppy icons dragged to the trash would put themselves away. This is a bad idea because:
1) There was already a way of putting a disk away that made a heck of a lot more sense.
Not entirely dumb, compare:
Method 1:
step 1. click on floppy
step 2. move mouse pointer over to menu bar and select put-away.
step 2 (alternate). hit command-y
Method 2:
step 1. Click on floppy and drag it to the trash.
One method allows you to do the entire action in one continuous motion.
Actually, Apple already did that over 3 years ago: Mouse having a rotary dial patent application. Date: February 7, 2002.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
It's inconceivable and insulting maybe to suggest that a lot of people have trouble enough mastering one mouse-button, but that's the truth of it. I don't care about all the arguments in favour of other choices, I'm all for them, as long as they remain choices. I use a two button scroll wheel MS mouse myself, and actually liked the four button scroll thing mouse a lot more, but for my father in law - a verrrrrry intelligent individual btw - I had to go back to his standard one button Apple mouse or else his brain would explode. I know other examples.
/.
There seem to be two schools on
1) good that "average" people (whatever, my father and father in law can hardly be called average and have IQ's way above...) use computers, let's accommodate them.
2) people not able to master command line should be eliminated from the gene pool.
For all you people in category 2 I hope you can live without all those people your life revolves around that sadly don't think their computer is important at all... like some extremely devoted doctors I know, or even some people elemental in the making of high caffeine beverages or pizza's!!!!!!!!!!
I think, therefore I am...I think.
When I first used a Mac, in 1996-ish, they would spit out disks on shut down, so yeah, I guess the problem was solved.
It seems that everyone is thinking that apple is going to produce a standard two button mouse. I for one will be disappointed if that were the case, apple say they pride themselves on hiring people who think outside the box. I have read that there are some problems with the new trackpad on the current line of powerbooks but I would still like to try it, scrolling by using two fingers instead of one sounds like it could work better than using the sides of the tackpad like I'm currently doing. I would be intrested in trying a mouse where the second button acted as a toggle that converted mouse motion into scrolling. While the second button was down, the main button could also be used as a second mouse button or whatever someone thought would be a better function. Maybe I have used linux too much but I find it usefull to have a middle mouse button so I can highlight something and click a button so it is copied to somewhere else. I can get by without it, using cmd c and cmd v, or ctrl c and ctrl v depending on the computer, but I feel having it on the mouse is faster.
...(how long did it take for the 2 button mouse to catch on?)
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
I used to use a two button mouse on a quadra 605 running System 6
Whichever side of the mouse fence you sit on, after watching my 3 year old pick up his mousing skills in less than 20 minutes when we bought him his new Mac Mini a few weeks ago, I have to say that there is most certainly good reason to start with a one button mouse and progress from there. He clicks with his whole hand. And he's pressing anywhere on the mouse that he wants to in order to generate that click. I would venture a small wager that he wouldn't be having such luck with a multi-button mouse. When he's older, more dextrous, and more likely to use complex functions, he can have one of my multi-button mice. But I'm awfully glad I had an extra one button Apple Mouse laying around for him.
I'm sorry both your jr high wrestling coach and church youth leader recognized you for a cum sponge, but don't take it out on all of us. Go and find them, kill them, and get on with accepting you're gay.
In about 16 years of using floppy disks (until I bought a PC without a floppy drive, and never looked back), I never once, EVER, pulled a disk out while it was being written. Keep in mind this period started while I was in elementary school, with Apple IIs, it continued with DOS and Windows.
Oh, and regarding eject buttons on CD drives (the lack of which CANNOT be justified by this, or really ANY means but bad design), no, they didn't used to have them. Nice to see they wised up.
Now I haven't used OSX much, and it being a *nix I wouldn't expect this to be nearly as much of an issue even if it hasn't changed...but the other bad design decision that always used to piss me off: error codes. "An eror of type X has occurred." Boy that's helpful. Sure wish I had a damn list to tell me what went wrong. Before internet access was common this was even worse. It's not too tough to find now, but before Google, good luck! At least Windows (and DOS!) would OCCASIONALLY tell you something useful!
Macs were always prettier, and I'm sure one can find more bad design decisions in Windows 3.x than in the entire history of Apple. And of course it was always nice to have your computer inevitably crash after a couple hours of heavy use, but with plenty of warning from degrading performance (memory leaks in Mac OS before X), instead of frequently seemingly at random (Windows 9X and down to include ME). But for a company so often lauded for their their ability to design a pretty system, and for their UI design, it's fucking AMAZING that so many glaring flaws managed to survive for so long.
To the the uncritical Mac zealots who modded everyone in this thread down: YES, APPLE CAN AND DOES OFTEN MAKE MISTAKES. If they DIDN'T they'd have better market share.
Googling Winkey?!?!
You beast!
http://www.dvforge.com/themouse.shtml
So, it's not like I'm going to wait all year for Apple to come out with their own. Of course, if true, it is a major shift in how Apple does things, but who cares about that? ;)
The most confusing thing I see for new users in OS X, time and time again, is finding your documents using the non-spatially oriented abstraction misleadingly called the "Finder" in OS X. Clicking a mouse button is easy compared to the abstraction known as a "path," apparently.
Currently hooked on AMP
Too bad about the LS-120. I bought one way back - cost me $200 and haven't used it in a while after the machine it was installed in died.
I REALLY would like to see the standard floppy drive
get consigned to the dustbin of computing history. The media is unreliable, and the hardware is slower than any of the other common storage mechanisms by at factor of 10.
I really thought that the LS-120 would do away with the standard floppy disk and put the kibosh on the Iomega Zip, especially after all those click-of-death problems but it was like VHS and BetaMax all over again.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Or two. The era of "Apple One-button Mice" and The era of the "Apple Two-button Mice troll"
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
Very good,
ROFLOL.
Nice to meet someone who understands.
M.