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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.
...one button at the top end and one at the bottom end. Gotta think different.
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?
what will become CmdrTaco's new reason to not use a macintosh?
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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
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."
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
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.
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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
PC or no apple has long supported two button mice which is fine for me (as that's all one would ever want to use...) in fact my mac also has 5 buttons, two of which are hooked into the expose features and one I use in a more traditional (X) oriented fashion...
The issue is really with powerbooks which only support one button on the case trackpad- a major pain - will apple release a two button config with the new PB's as well? I hope so.
As as side note, I use (as do many others) a program called sidetrack, ( http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/ ) which allows you to place regions on the track pad to support up to an additional 4 buttons, and v/h scrolling on the edges of the pad. It works well- but takes a lot of getting used to (to avoid accidentally hitting the buttons) IMHO but it's better than nothing- however howabout a mod for the PB itself to have it on the HW, along with the two button mouse.
I wonder how Job's will keynote this. Not a guy who likes to say 'I was wrong'
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a shower:)
Is it Saturday night already?!
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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
Not to sound like an ardent Jobs supporter, but why would he have to say that he was wrong? The idea of a one button mouse still appeals to many less skilled computer users. I know that getting my grandma an Apple all those years ago was a great decision and I still think that she would do better with a one button mouse.
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.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
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.
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.
jeez! you can't throw it all at a user a once! the only way is to scale out those big features incrimentally.
Hmmmm, can't use my middle finger. I need to direct it to the M$ users when they come to ask me to help them fix their buggy, virus loaded P.[iece of] C.[rap]
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
I would say that it can be more productive - if you know how to use a second button. I've been using multi-button mice on Macs for years now. My main machine has a 6 button Logitech mouse.
But the iMac in my kitchen (which I'm using now) has a single button Apple mouse, and it's quite useable.
I think the rumored tactic of shipping a two-button mouse as an option is fine, but I don't ever want to see Apple ship a mouse with more than one button with the computers, for one simple reason. I've spent too much time trying to get computer novices to understand what a second button does, and many never get it. (these are the same people who never quite get the difference between a click and a double-click - when you throw another unlabeled button on the mouse, they lose it.)
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.
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.
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
I have to disagree here. I really can't stand the one-button mice on Macs (well, aesthetically they're nice, but from a usability standpoint they feel like they are forcing me to wear a mitten). On the other hand, I have never found a multi-button trackpad/ball/point on a laptop that I found even remotely usable. The nice thing about multi-button mice is that you are able to use one button with each finger. With a trackpad, you generally use both buttons with a thumb (I pondered the idea of placing the second button above the pad, but I have never seen an implementation of this concept), and so right-clicking is less ergonomic than control-clicking.
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Please. Comparing the BSoD to an OS X grey screen of death is just wrong. When a Mac crashes, the screen fades to grey, and a translucent box appears telling you (in four languages, no less) that you need to restart your computer. The BSoD has far less class and style...
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Anyone who has used either a touchscreen or laptop trackpad would probably agree that UIs should be designed to work with a single mouse button.
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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!"
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.
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.
I feel better about myself when I read comments like this..
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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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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.
OS X really needs middle-mouse-button copy/paste support. Some apps already have ctrl-k support, but when I switch between work box and home box I always find myself having to remember to apple-c/apple-v when I want to copy stuff like search terms, etc..
(and when Finder goes Cocoa, please please PLEASE put the Services menu in the right-click contextual menu, with selections apropos the item highlited...)
So true. I particularly loved, back in the 9x days, how--after the computer crashes and forces you to restart--you are slapped on the wrist for shutting down the computer wrong. This was especially frustrating while working on a program or paper for class...
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
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.
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.
I actually asked a girl at a club how she would rate me on a scale of 3 to 18. She said 17 so I pulled out a 20 sider and rolled. Then I said I passed my charisma check so you have to dance with me. It actually worked! That's what happens when you start the night with drinking and D&D before going to the club.
...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.
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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When I throw things into the trash can in my kitchen, it doesn't magically jump out the side of my house.
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."
someone has to say it.....
That is just sad, truly sad.
1.) that you would make the comment
2.) that you would make it to a girl
3.) that you would have a D20 with you in a club
4.) that you would think this would work
5.) that this actually did
Did her moustache tickle?
Send whiskey and fresh horses!
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.
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!
Dear Penthouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Slashdot Forum....
That's what happens when you start the night with drinking and D&D before going to the club.
Yep. You played all the D&D, and she did all the drinking.
(Just funnin' ya. But if you packed a d20 specifically for this, it means you had put way too much thought behind this idea.:)
Here is the story of how they got that cloverleaf symbol.
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
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...
"I actually asked a girl at a club how she would rate me on a scale of 3 to 18. She said 17 so I pulled out a 20 sider and rolled. Then I said I passed my charisma check so you have to dance with me. It actually worked! That's what happens when you start the night with drinking and D&D before going to the club."
Heh. Apple considers a 2-button mouse but the real discussion going on here is about Dungeons and Dating. *Sigh* Nerds are going the way of the dodo.
"Derp de derp."
Eliminate the keyboard.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
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!
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.
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.
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
I wonder how Job's will keynote this. Not a guy who likes to say 'I was wrong'
NeXT's mouse had two buttons.
I'm sure the introduction of the new mouse will be somewhat humorous (ie: "Hell finally froze over" (iTunes for Windows), Fast User Switching (Windows had something first), etc).
My suspicion is that the one-button mouse will remain default, and iBooks will keep the single button (although the PowerBooks may go two, at least as an option). Multi-button trackpads are really awful from a usability point of view.
Since Mac OS is designed to utilize, but not require, a two-button mouse, making it default would be a mistake (IMO).
God that desk must be uncomfortable. Do your knees keep banging into the sides?