I have seen hundreds of computers in homes. None of them have set up seperate accounts for seperate users. That may work for businesses with policies about logging off when you walk away from your computer, but not in the home.
OS X really encourages users to set up personal accounts. People who are too unsophisticated to do so are probably the same ones who are best off with the mouse running in its default single-button mode.
How does the mouse know when it is a beginner or advanced user that is using it. This isn't a wallet that you stick in your pocket when you walk away. It is a computer. This means that others in your (well, maybe not yours, but in many) households, and occasionally guests are going to want to use the computer. This mouse is definitly 'not ready for the desktop'.
In OS X, each user has an account with his or her own personal preferences for everything--how the dock and mouse behave, where the doc is on the screen, which programs open at startup, etc., etc. So the mouse doesn't need to "know" anything. It simply observes the preferences that a particular user has set for it, with the default being beginner preferences. If a computer is frequently used by guests, a "Guest" account can be set up with beginner preferences.
So after a year you realize you can turn on these features and you do so. Then you still have the problem of not being able to tell where the buttons are or where the scroll is.
Funny. I don't have to look at my (regular, three button) mouse to tell where the buttons are. In fact, I never look at my mouse at all unless it isn't working. Like most mouses, the buttons are flat, so I can't feel them, but I don't need to; I know where my hand is. The left button is under my forefinger and the right button is under my second finger. I can feel where the scroll wheel is because it sticks up (perhaps that is why the Apple mouse has that little button on top where other mouses have the scroll wheel).
So if I sit in front of a user's machine with this mouse for the first time I have to figure out if its programmed or not?
Oh, horrors! I can think of three possible solutions.
1) Don't use somebody else's account. In OS X, each user is intended to have a separate account. Program the mouse in your account to work the way you please.
2) Bring up the control panel and look to see if it's programmed.
3) Experiment! Press the right side of the mouse and see what happens. I doubt if the rightful user programmed it to erase the hard disk on right click.
Note that this is potentially a problem any time you sit down at a computer with a multi-button mouse. Most multibutton mouses come with software that give the user considerable freedom to modify what each button does.
People who don't "get" computers are always asking me, "Left or right click?" They haven't noticed the pattern in the chaos of clicks.
This has also been my experience. Some people, especially older adults, just never seem to get their mind around the extra buttons. You'll explain it to them, they finally seem to figure it out (although for some of them, "figuring out" means simply learning never to touch the right button), but then they don't use the computer for a few weeks and they're upset because they hit the "wrong" button and some weird menu that they don't understand popped up.
Nonsense, most Mac applications I have used ALREADY make an extensive use of context menus, just like their Windows counterparts
Not quite the same. When I use Windows software, I frequently discover that some important feature is hidden in a context menu. This never seems to happen on the Mac. I can only credit Apple's success in forcing developers to worry about the user with only one mouse button.
See, you miss the point. First off, this is not the Apple standard mouse that ships with all Macs.
I'll bet that it will be before long. The system will wake up in one-button mode, providing the beginner-friendly user interface that made Apple famous. And as users become more sophisticated, they can turn on the additional "buttons."
If I want multi-button mice on my PowerBook, I have to lug a mouse around with me.
Yes, is you want a mouse of any kind on a laptop, you do have to lug a mouse around with you (although some of the miniature mouses are eminently "luggable"). Probably the single most harmful thing about multibutton mice is that they have led to the manufacture of multibutton trackpads. Multibutton control is a really stupid idea for trackpads. Awkwardly reaching for a right-click button with your thumb is a recipe for repetitive motion disorder. Apple's traditional keyboard modifiers are far more rational and easier on the wrists. Who needs to stretch your thumb for an extra button when there are dozens of buttons under your fingertips? The only thing I miss with a trackpad is a scroll wheel (there is software that turns one side of the pad into a mini scroll pad, but I find that awkward and kludgy). I haven't had the opportunity to try Apple's new mousepads with the "one finger tracks, two fingers scroll" feature, however.
This is not a mouse for beginners. Squeezing on the left or right of the mouse causes applications to suddenly open?
These are not hardcoded behaviors, they are software configurable. So for beginners, it will function as a single-button mouse, just like Apple mouses of the past. As users become more sophisticated, they will have the option of turning on the advanced features.
I actually think this is a really bad idea from a usability standpoint. While it seems like a good idea for people to be able to change the number of mouse buttons, it's a terrible idea when you're using someone else's apple and they have it configured differently.
I am sure that the configuration can be set up differently for different user.
It's about as innovative as a keyboard that has no letters, so that you can switch between standard and dvorak layouts.
Such a keyboard has recently been announced, that has a small display on each key, so that it is fully configurable.
but the fact of the matter is that the 2+-button mouse and scroll wheel are the standard now, and apple should have conceded sooner.
Actually, they did. The Mac OS has supported multi-button mice for years. Considering how cheap 3rd party mice have become, criticizing Apple for not providing one is a bit like complaining about the lack of Apple-branded 100baseT cables.
What has changed is that Apple has come up with a mouse design that they can ship with Macs, providing single-button functionality for new users without confusing them with extra buttons, while offering multi-button functionality for power users.
I've lost track of the number of casual computer users I've known who were confused by multi-button mice. Some people never seem to get their minds around more than one button. Apple's insistence that all programs be not merely usable with one button but easy to use is a major factor in Apple's beginner-friendly reputation. It also is one thing that makes Apple's laptops more usable. As wonderful as multi-button function is for a mouse, it is a disaster for laptops, where Apple's use of keyboard modifiers is far more natural. Although I do hope they add that scroll button to their laptops.
Yes, at one time I had a tool for punching a notch so that you could flip it over and write on the back. Single-sided floppies were not certified for double-sided use, but most worked OK, although not suitable for critical data. The Lisa's floppies were designed to be written on both sides without having to flip them over. Because of the way the heads press against the soft disk surface, the heads could not both be at the same end of the drive. So a "normal" double-sided 5.25" floppy had a read slot in the floppy disk cover on both sides at the same end of the floppy, the read slots for a Lisa disk were at opposite ends.
Con: Nobody else in history ever used such a design, and the disks were expensive as hell if you could find them at all.
Also, because the heads were reversed, there was no "safe" end of the floppy where you could hold it without worrying about accidentally putting your thumb on the exposed disk surface.
No, you are very much mistaken. He did indeed get funding. But he declined to accept the onerous terms which came with the funding.
"A couple of years later, Lai got money from Wireless Technology Research (WTR), a group organized by CTIA to administer $25 million in industry research funding, to do some follow-up studies. But the conditions that came with the funding were restrictive. So much so that Lai and Singh wrote an open letter to Microwave News recounting their experience. The letter, published in 1999, cited irregularities in processes and procedures that the two called "highly suspicious."
I didn't say that he didn't get funding, I said that he failed to get his NIH grant renewed.
You can spin things any way you like, but the fact of the matter is Xerox didn't grant any rights to Apple.
At the time they didn't really have any rights to grant. They owned the look and feel of their interface, but Apple's was quite different. And patent policy at the time held that software and user interface concepts could not be patented (otherwise, there would never have been Lotus or Excel, and we'd probably all be running some version of Visicalc).
But the bitmapped GUI was unlike anything you'd ever imagined. It wasn't even obvious how to start working with the thing. No one else was talking about anything similar at that time, at least not for practical, widespread usage. I think you're wrong about the hundred companies scrambling to implement it. It was one of those ideas whose brilliance took quite a while to become apparent to most people.
I also saw it when it came out. It was instantly obvious to me that it was the wave of the future, and that eventually all computers would work that way. I really wanted one, but I couldn't afford $10K. Things might have been quite different for Apple if Scully had had enough confidence in the Lisa's future to market it for $3K.
And the Intel processors of 1983-86 vintage were too underpowered to handle the overhead of a GUI at an acceptable performance level. Try booting one up in Win 2.0 some time...
I bet Apple could have done it. After all, they implemented a full color GUI on the Apple IIgs, which had a 2.8 MHz 65816.
More accurately, they licensed the idea of a GUI from Xerox. But they didn't use Xerox's GUI, they created their own, which was considerably different from the Xerox GUI. Indeed, many of the features that most impress people about the Apple GUI (and the Microsoft one,l for that matter) were originated at Apple.
They were weird, nonstandard higher-capacity 5.25" drives. I believe that they were able to write to both sides of the floppy at the same time, doubling the capacity.
I take it then that you didn't read the article. One key point was how industry attempts to sway the results from the research.
As a matter of fact, I read the article the last time this issue came up on slashdot. I found it extremely biased. It basically repeats the complaints of a particular researcher who had NIH funding for EM studies, but failed to get his funding renewed, probably (based upon the results described) because after receiving several years of funding he still has not made significant progress toward identifying a physically plausible mechanism to account for the effects that he claims to observe. I thought that the DNA damage assay described was fairly unconvincing. And the guilt-by-association tactic of discarding results from anybody who has received any industry funding was misleading, bordering on dishonesty.
Especially given that "When you look at the non-industry sponsored research, it's... three out of every four papers shows [a biological] effect" from Cell Phone radiation."
I'd be willing to bet that almost everybody with real competence in the field has received some funding from industry. After all, the industry is going to be the most highly motivated to spend money on the question. They are the ones who are potentially looking at huge liability if they produce a product with a hazard that could have been avoided if they'd done adequate research.
I don't think previous experience with electronics is relevant here. If there is an effect, I don't think it's related to microwaves heating the body - it'll be something much more subtle.
Given that similar effects are produced by just heating the lens, thermal damage seems the most likely explanation, and needs to be definitively excluded before seeking "more subtle" mechanisms. In particular, they need to establish that microwave absorption by the lens and heat dissipation in their configuration is comparable to what occurs in the body with cell phone use.
From reading TFA (I know, I guess I'm not typical), they went to some lengths to make sure there was minimal temperature rise, as that wasn't what they were trying to look at. Their thermometer measured to 0.1degC. They held the temperature at 35degC and didn't see a temerature rise.
As it happens, I did read TFA, although I was unable to get access to the complete original reference. All it said in TFA was that "The entire system is placed in an incubator maintaining constant temperature for the duration of exposure." This is not necessarily adequate to maintain constant temperature within the chamber, which depends on how well the microwave energy is absorbed in the chamber, as well as how rapidly heat is conducted out of the chambers. They appear to be surrounded by air, so they are obviously better insulated than a lens in a body, which is effectively a big constant temperature water bath. A thermometer in the incubator would not necessarily measure the temperature in the chamber next to the lens. The illustration provided shows no temperature measuring device in the chamber itself.
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I have seen hundreds of computers in homes. None of them have set up seperate accounts for seperate users. That may work for businesses with policies about logging off when you walk away from your computer, but not in the home.
OS X really encourages users to set up personal accounts. People who are too unsophisticated to do so are probably the same ones who are best off with the mouse running in its default single-button mode.
How does the mouse know when it is a beginner or advanced user that is using it. This isn't a wallet that you stick in your pocket when you walk away. It is a computer. This means that others in your (well, maybe not yours, but in many) households, and occasionally guests are going to want to use the computer. This mouse is definitly 'not ready for the desktop'.
In OS X, each user has an account with his or her own personal preferences for everything--how the dock and mouse behave, where the doc is on the screen, which programs open at startup, etc., etc. So the mouse doesn't need to "know" anything. It simply observes the preferences that a particular user has set for it, with the default being beginner preferences. If a computer is frequently used by guests, a "Guest" account can be set up with beginner preferences.
So after a year you realize you can turn on these features and you do so. Then you still have the problem of not being able to tell where the buttons are or where the scroll is.
Funny. I don't have to look at my (regular, three button) mouse to tell where the buttons are. In fact, I never look at my mouse at all unless it isn't working. Like most mouses, the buttons are flat, so I can't feel them, but I don't need to; I know where my hand is. The left button is under my forefinger and the right button is under my second finger. I can feel where the scroll wheel is because it sticks up (perhaps that is why the Apple mouse has that little button on top where other mouses have the scroll wheel).
I predict it like many other touch sensitive devices its going to be annoying to use.
Yes, what does Apple know about touch sensitive devices like...er...the iPod?
So if I sit in front of a user's machine with this mouse for the first time I have to figure out if its programmed or not?
Oh, horrors! I can think of three possible solutions.
1) Don't use somebody else's account. In OS X, each user is intended to have a separate account. Program the mouse in your account to work the way you please.
2) Bring up the control panel and look to see if it's programmed.
3) Experiment! Press the right side of the mouse and see what happens. I doubt if the rightful user programmed it to erase the hard disk on right click.
Note that this is potentially a problem any time you sit down at a computer with a multi-button mouse. Most multibutton mouses come with software that give the user considerable freedom to modify what each button does.
People who don't "get" computers are always asking me, "Left or right click?" They haven't noticed the pattern in the chaos of clicks.
This has also been my experience. Some people, especially older adults, just never seem to get their mind around the extra buttons. You'll explain it to them, they finally seem to figure it out (although for some of them, "figuring out" means simply learning never to touch the right button), but then they don't use the computer for a few weeks and they're upset because they hit the "wrong" button and some weird menu that they don't understand popped up.
Nonsense, most Mac applications I have used ALREADY make an extensive use of context menus, just like their Windows counterparts
Not quite the same. When I use Windows software, I frequently discover that some important feature is hidden in a context menu. This never seems to happen on the Mac. I can only credit Apple's success in forcing developers to worry about the user with only one mouse button.
See, you miss the point. First off, this is not the Apple standard mouse that ships with all Macs.
I'll bet that it will be before long. The system will wake up in one-button mode, providing the beginner-friendly user interface that made Apple famous. And as users become more sophisticated, they can turn on the additional "buttons."
If I want multi-button mice on my PowerBook, I have to lug a mouse around with me.
Yes, is you want a mouse of any kind on a laptop, you do have to lug a mouse around with you (although some of the miniature mouses are eminently "luggable"). Probably the single most harmful thing about multibutton mice is that they have led to the manufacture of multibutton trackpads. Multibutton control is a really stupid idea for trackpads. Awkwardly reaching for a right-click button with your thumb is a recipe for repetitive motion disorder. Apple's traditional keyboard modifiers are far more rational and easier on the wrists. Who needs to stretch your thumb for an extra button when there are dozens of buttons under your fingertips? The only thing I miss with a trackpad is a scroll wheel (there is software that turns one side of the pad into a mini scroll pad, but I find that awkward and kludgy). I haven't had the opportunity to try Apple's new mousepads with the "one finger tracks, two fingers scroll" feature, however.
This is not a mouse for beginners. Squeezing on the left or right of the mouse causes applications to suddenly open?
These are not hardcoded behaviors, they are software configurable. So for beginners, it will function as a single-button mouse, just like Apple mouses of the past. As users become more sophisticated, they will have the option of turning on the advanced features.
I actually think this is a really bad idea from a usability standpoint. While it seems like a good idea for people to be able to change the number of mouse buttons, it's a terrible idea when you're using someone else's apple and they have it configured differently.
I am sure that the configuration can be set up differently for different user.
It's about as innovative as a keyboard that has no letters, so that you can switch between standard and dvorak layouts.
Such a keyboard has recently been announced, that has a small display on each key, so that it is fully configurable.
but the fact of the matter is that the 2+-button mouse and scroll wheel are the standard now, and apple should have conceded sooner.
Actually, they did. The Mac OS has supported multi-button mice for years. Considering how cheap 3rd party mice have become, criticizing Apple for not providing one is a bit like complaining about the lack of Apple-branded 100baseT cables.
What has changed is that Apple has come up with a mouse design that they can ship with Macs, providing single-button functionality for new users without confusing them with extra buttons, while offering multi-button functionality for power users.
I've lost track of the number of casual computer users I've known who were confused by multi-button mice. Some people never seem to get their minds around more than one button. Apple's insistence that all programs be not merely usable with one button but easy to use is a major factor in Apple's beginner-friendly reputation. It also is one thing that makes Apple's laptops more usable. As wonderful as multi-button function is for a mouse, it is a disaster for laptops, where Apple's use of keyboard modifiers is far more natural. Although I do hope they add that scroll button to their laptops.
Yes, at one time I had a tool for punching a notch so that you could flip it over and write on the back. Single-sided floppies were not certified for double-sided use, but most worked OK, although not suitable for critical data. The Lisa's floppies were designed to be written on both sides without having to flip them over. Because of the way the heads press against the soft disk surface, the heads could not both be at the same end of the drive. So a "normal" double-sided 5.25" floppy had a read slot in the floppy disk cover on both sides at the same end of the floppy, the read slots for a Lisa disk were at opposite ends.
Con: Nobody else in history ever used such a design, and the disks were expensive as hell if you could find them at all.
Also, because the heads were reversed, there was no "safe" end of the floppy where you could hold it without worrying about accidentally putting your thumb on the exposed disk surface.
No, you are very much mistaken. He did indeed get funding. But he declined to accept the onerous terms which came with the funding.
"A couple of years later, Lai got money from Wireless Technology Research (WTR), a group organized by CTIA to administer $25 million in industry research funding, to do some follow-up studies. But the conditions that came with the funding were restrictive. So much so that Lai and Singh wrote an open letter to Microwave News recounting their experience. The letter, published in 1999, cited irregularities in processes and procedures that the two called "highly suspicious."
I didn't say that he didn't get funding, I said that he failed to get his NIH grant renewed.
You can spin things any way you like, but the fact of the matter is Xerox didn't grant any rights to Apple.
At the time they didn't really have any rights to grant. They owned the look and feel of their interface, but Apple's was quite different. And patent policy at the time held that software and user interface concepts could not be patented (otherwise, there would never have been Lotus or Excel, and we'd probably all be running some version of Visicalc).
But the bitmapped GUI was unlike anything you'd ever imagined. It wasn't even obvious how to start working with the thing. No one else was talking about anything similar at that time, at least not for practical, widespread usage. I think you're wrong about the hundred companies scrambling to implement it. It was one of those ideas whose brilliance took quite a while to become apparent to most people.
I also saw it when it came out. It was instantly obvious to me that it was the wave of the future, and that eventually all computers would work that way. I really wanted one, but I couldn't afford $10K. Things might have been quite different for Apple if Scully had had enough confidence in the Lisa's future to market it for $3K.
And the Intel processors of 1983-86 vintage were too underpowered to handle the overhead of a GUI at an acceptable performance level. Try booting one up in Win 2.0 some time...
I bet Apple could have done it. After all, they implemented a full color GUI on the Apple IIgs, which had a 2.8 MHz 65816.
More accurately, they licensed the idea of a GUI from Xerox. But they didn't use Xerox's GUI, they created their own, which was considerably different from the Xerox GUI. Indeed, many of the features that most impress people about the Apple GUI (and the Microsoft one,l for that matter) were originated at Apple.
They were weird, nonstandard higher-capacity 5.25" drives. I believe that they were able to write to both sides of the floppy at the same time, doubling the capacity.
Is this the same HAL Labs that was responsible for the awesome Apple II game, Sheila?
I take it then that you didn't read the article. One key point was how industry attempts to sway the results from the research.
As a matter of fact, I read the article the last time this issue came up on slashdot. I found it extremely biased. It basically repeats the complaints of a particular researcher who had NIH funding for EM studies, but failed to get his funding renewed, probably (based upon the results described) because after receiving several years of funding he still has not made significant progress toward identifying a physically plausible mechanism to account for the effects that he claims to observe. I thought that the DNA damage assay described was fairly unconvincing. And the guilt-by-association tactic of discarding results from anybody who has received any industry funding was misleading, bordering on dishonesty.
Especially given that "When you look at the non-industry sponsored research, it's ... three out of every four papers shows [a biological] effect" from Cell Phone radiation."
I'd be willing to bet that almost everybody with real competence in the field has received some funding from industry. After all, the industry is going to be the most highly motivated to spend money on the question. They are the ones who are potentially looking at huge liability if they produce a product with a hazard that could have been avoided if they'd done adequate research.
I don't think previous experience with electronics is relevant here. If there is an effect, I don't think it's related to microwaves heating the body - it'll be something much more subtle.
Given that similar effects are produced by just heating the lens, thermal damage seems the most likely explanation, and needs to be definitively excluded before seeking "more subtle" mechanisms. In particular, they need to establish that microwave absorption by the lens and heat dissipation in their configuration is comparable to what occurs in the body with cell phone use.
From reading TFA (I know, I guess I'm not typical), they went to some lengths to make sure there was minimal temperature rise, as that wasn't what they were trying to look at. Their thermometer measured to 0.1degC. They held the temperature at 35degC and didn't see a temerature rise.
As it happens, I did read TFA, although I was unable to get access to the complete original reference. All it said in TFA was that "The entire system is placed in an incubator maintaining constant temperature for the duration of exposure." This is not necessarily adequate to maintain constant temperature within the chamber, which depends on how well the microwave energy is absorbed in the chamber, as well as how rapidly heat is conducted out of the chambers. They appear to be surrounded by air, so they are obviously better insulated than a lens in a body, which is effectively a big constant temperature water bath. A thermometer in the incubator would not necessarily measure the temperature in the chamber next to the lens. The illustration provided shows no temperature measuring device in the chamber itself.