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The Mighty Mouse Has Lost Its Tail

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the evolution-removing-another-tail dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's all over the place - Apple has just released a Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse for $69. It features a new laser based tracking system and gets it power from either one or two (you decide) replaceable AA batteries, but does not work with Windows yet (no words on Linux)."

1 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great Cycloptian Mouse Batman! by THotze · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Mighty Mouse HAS a second button - and many more, in fact. They're just not divided up into obvious, externally visible buttons. But click on the right part of the mouse, and it'll function like a control-click, if you have the mouse configured that way. There are also 'buttons' on the sides of the mouse, etc.

    I've always wondered if the Mighty Mouse doesn't violate a lot of Apple's user design principles. I don't mean with the one-button vs. multi-button design, per se... one of Apple's reasons for having a default of one-button (Macs have supported multi-button mice, and programs for graphic designers, etc.) is to ensure that software designers didn't hide functionality behind right-clicks, etc. Everything should be visible, and accessible through menus at the top of the screen or icons on the screen.

    So Apple has this principle of visibility... then they HIDE the buttons on the mouse? This may be excusable when you only have one button - people just get used to pressing the top of the mouse, and it clicks - but when there are multiple buttons that you can't see on the top of the mouse? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, even experienced computer users (Mac users) who weren't familiar with the mighty mouse could end up right-clicking without realizing that they COULD right click.

    Now, it IS just a mouse, and so you do get used to it very quickly... it would have been cool, though, if Apple could, say, have had small LEDs for each button. They could be activated (or de-activated if activated by default) to emit a small light for each button. You could even make them multi-coloured and it'd be an easy way to explain operation of a computer - or for that matter, you could code icons/menus so that to use function X in photoshop, highlighted in red, you press the red button.

    But alas, Apple doesn't seem to think so.

    Tim