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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.
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
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
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.
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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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
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."
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.
Here is the story of how they got that cloverleaf symbol.
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
What's the frequency, Kenneth?