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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.
Um, I believe he's had a Powerbook for a while now.
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
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.
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You'll want to unmap that button in Expose' first. That's trivially easy in the Expose' control panel in System Preferences, just select the "do nothing" option. Then you can run USB Overdrive, which I think can do that sort of button mapping, another nifty bonus is that you gain more flexibility in your mouse speeds and accelerations.
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
Wasn't NeXT the 1st computer to ship with a scroll wheel mouse?
No.
NeXT never shipped a scroll wheel mouse at all. Next used a 2 button mouse. By default the second button was identical to the first. The mouse preferences allowed the user to use the second button to display a copy of the application menu at the current cursor position. Which button (left or right) did this was user definable to allow lefties and righties to use the system comfortably.
I was a NeXT user for about 9 years before switching to Macos X. I don't really miss the second mouse button. The only aspect of the old NeXT/OpenStep experience that I prefer to Macos X is tear-off menus.
Actually, they already have this. It is a nice grey bezel box that overlays the contents of the (now frozen) screen with messages in a number of languages telling you that you now need to restart your computer. If things really go pear shaped you also get kernel error messages marching down the left side of the screen in white letters with black block background.
But people don't see these messages often, they usually mean something is wrong with hardware (most often memory).
You have an MX700, right? That is the only mouse Logitech has released in a pig's age that actually came with OS X drivers. None of Logitech's current offerings have been blessed in a like manner. I am still waiting--actually, I have long given up waiting--for drivers to their diNovo products. I guess they just don't want the business. Apple probably figures they might as well scoop up that market share since Logitech clearly sees no value in it.
On the other hand, Kensington has supported the Mac since the beginning and they produce great products. I will never buy another Logitech product again, but I have become a big Kensington supporter.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
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?
Two Simple points
1) Most USB Mice work.
2) MSFT Intelli mice are nearly identical in price. You pay for quality. And yes MSFT mice are good quality, and work great with Mac's.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
C'mon, you should know by now - stupid people have greater chances of breeding. This can be witnessed first hand by those who live in the midwest, watch the evening news and get to see which piece of methtrash got busted today for running a lab out of their house.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
You use your ms mouse. No thanks on my end! My scroll wheel needs to have some tactile feedback or I go insane. Most of the MS mice don't click when the wheel is used, or at least don't click hard enough. It's got to be a Logitech (MX510) for me. Though that costs money for quality too! :)
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.
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Well, you can have the iPod whell on a trackpad:
http://www-users.kawo2.rwth-aachen.de/~razzfazz/
I am a happy iScroll2 user...
Roberto
What is even funnier, OSX offers better support for Microsoft's Trackball Explorer than WinXP. I bought the mouse for gaming purposes several years ago, and Win2k had a nice feature of binding keys like pgup/dn to the mouse buttons and this worked great in Quake3. Now WinXP binds vague "Forward" and "Home page" to the buttons, so IE understands, and Quake3 does not. In OSX the buttons are just Mouse1-Mouse5 and you can bind whatever functions you like, Expose, Quake, UT04 work just great...
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
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.
If you know how to set up the button controls on the Logitech MX-500 mouse pointer (seven if you include the standard left and right mouse click or eight if you can use the scroll wheel as a mouse click button also), you can set up very powerful and customized window control functions that could be very useful for image editing and multimedia editing. You'd think that with the MX-500 be available from the Apple Store, Apple would get a hint that serious power users of the Mac would like a mouse with more than one button for customized navigation features.
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.
:)
Not to justify $69, but the Apple one is Bluetooth, and works with a (built-in, if you prefer) Bluetooth dongle, rather than the Logitech's PS2/USB remote receiver dongle.
Minor point, but Apple users tend to prefer the aesthetics of not having extra bits plugged in everywhere
Mark
PS Cue dozens of people finding cheaper Bluetooth meeces now!
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This has nothing to do with the number of mouse buttons.
Fn: this is to activate options that would be separate keys on a full-size desktop keyboard. Every laptop I've ever owned, PC or Mac, has used something similar.
Ctrl: Same as the Ctrl key on PC keyboards, laptop or desktop.
Option: Macs have always had these; at some point they started including the "Alt" label to indicate the equivalent PC key.
Apple, usually called "Cmd", short for "command", by longtime users (that's what the four-leaf clover is, I don't know why): The most commonly used key on Macs, and again, it has nothing to do with the number of buttons on the mouse; it activates most keyboard shortcuts. Cmd-Q is quit, Cmd-C is copy, etc. The PC world has actually ripped this off twice -- first by mapping the standard Apple Cmd shortcuts to Ctrl, then by adding the Windows key, which apparently is kind of like the Apple key except it does something different in every program.
FWIW, I agree that mapping multi-button mouse options to $KEY + click is a pain in the ass, but the proliferation of keys really is a separate issue.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One clarification for you - Apple's wireless mouse isn't "QuickRF"-based (like all the $30ish wireless mice), it's actually a Bluetooth mouse. Granted, non-Apple Bluetooth mice generally include a Bluetooth USB dongle as well, but $69 is pretty much in line with what I've seen most third-party Bluetooth mice sell for.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
You gain a lot by adding a second button. You gain contextual menus. By adding a 3rd button, you only gain half-assed alternative click actions in maybe 2/3rds of the applications out there.
IMHO, this is....misguided. You don't "gain" context menus, they're just slightly easier to access than they used to be (control-click). And OS X supports several GLOBAL functions for up to 5 buttons (maybe more, I'm not sure), including a really damn useful Expose ability.
Though here's hoping Apple ultimately wows us with something truly neat, like pressing down on the entire mouse engaging a grab-'n-pull functionality or something.
Oooh, I like that...
I tried it out in pre-development and it WAS insanely uncomfortable. No surprise it was never introduced.
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.
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I will agree with most here-I swear by Logitech Mice. I don't mind their keyboards--but they don't make a cheap ergonomic board, so I get the MS one that's about $29.
So, for all of my personal computing needs, its a Logitech mouse!
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
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.
Here is the story of how they got that cloverleaf symbol.
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 Win Key isn't used for contextual actions. That'll be the context menu key, which is used by about 3 people in the universe.
... sorry .. and OT at that!)
The Win key is oddly under-used. There's a few notable uses (Win+D - show desktop, Win+E open Explorer, Win - show start menu). I've yet to see it do anything particularly useful.
On the Mac, Command (the Apple Key, or the 'Splat' key) is the 'do something' key. Cmd+H - Hide this app. Cmd+O (in Finder, and most apps) open, Cmd+S save, etc. Basically the Win equivalent of Control.
Option is a modifier, most often used to slightly alter the behaviour of a Command+[something] shortcut. For example, Cmd+I in Finder shows the Get Info (Properties for Win folk) panel. Cmd+Opt+I shows the Inspector. If Get Info is the Mac equivalent of Properties, the Inspector is a variant of the Properties window that dynamically updates based on the current selection.
For those who have access to a Mac, try dropping down a menu and tapping the Option key. The menu options will toggle between their standard and alternative uses.
The Control key's a bit of an oddity on the Mac. Its use is largely app-specific. It's not all that often it's used as menu or dialog shortcuts.
Having used Windows in all its variations since Win 3.11, and a Mac since 2001, I've got to say that I find the Mac's approach rather more elegant. Not to say that it's perfect -- some GUI navigation's a bit half-assed (i.e. no direct equivalent to Windows's Alt+F (file menu) S (save)). But that's largely mitigated by the consistency and utility of standard shortcuts.
(phew, quite a rant
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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.
I don't speak much Finnish either, but I do know some, so:
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Don't forget that the option key can also allow one to easily type non-English characters. Like.
opt-a = å
opt-e (accent) a = á
opt-n (tilde) a = ã
opt-' = æ
opt-u (umlat) a = ä
opt-c = ç
opt-o = ø
opt-s = ß
opt-/ = ÷
And the list goes on and on...
And just as a note, before someone states how stupid a Mac is that we have to use opt-e/opt-n for accent/tilde rather than the single-quote/tilde ('/~) key. We do have those keys on a Mac and they are fully functional, but the opt variants are modifier keys. This means it will "modify" the next letter, e.g. "opt-n" will set the tilde modifier then pressing n again will give the ñ character (n with a tilde). Of course this only works if such a character exists since it's only a mapping to a character code, e.g. opt-n o works (õ), but opt-n g doesn't (g).
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every Mac application I have, that will open file->save or save.
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