Apple Requires Three-Button Mouse for Shake 2.5

SpillerC writes "The requirements for the newest version of Shake (cross-platform: Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Irix) will require a three-button mouse on the Mac. Are there any other Apple-produced applications (Apple owns Shake) that require a three-button mouse? Will Apple release its own three-button mouse now?"

It is too early for this crap

[blueroo]

One specialized application that Apple sells requires a 3 button mouse, and you think this is going to cause them to ship 3 button mice standard?

Does Dell ship cad/cam tablets standard because AutoCad suggests using them?

What kind of nonsense news is this anyway? Can't the Slashdot editors tell a troll when they see one?

Who cares, really?

[webToy]

I use Apple's ONE button mouse and works just fine. Control-click is not that hard, and if I wanted a two or three button mouse I would probably just buy one from Kensington...
Is it really that big of a deal that Apple doesn't produce one of their own?

Not a Chance

[dman123]

Apple went from a one-button mouse to a zero-button mouse. If anything, the next interface device will be some sort of device that depends on telepathy or eye movement.

But seriously, Apple will design new hardware for a single piece of software that very few use? If anyone can afford a third-party mouse, it's a Shake user.

Count on Apple simply rewriting the necessary code for version 2.6.

Why don't they

[Evro]

just bundle a $20 3-button mouse with this $5000 app? Problem solved.

Re:Who cares, really?

[great om]

I've just got a Tibook. Held off from getting one for a while beacuse of fears about the uni-button mouse. Its not that hard to adapt to it, especially since (most of) the places I'd want to press a 2nd mouse button --if there was one-- allow me to emulate control+click by simply holding the mouse button down for 2 or 3 sec. With Games, I'll admit that I use a logictech USB 3 button mouse. But I'd probably use a mouse anyway --ever try to aim with a trackpad?

I would, however,like Apple to allow the trackpad tap to emulate a second mouse button

-

It's official

[alernon]

Rumormongoring about a mouse? Man MWNY must of really dissappointed alot of people if they need to speculate about a new mouse just to make them feel better.

(Posted with a five button Microsoft Intellimouse on a g3 pismo.

Re:Who cares, really?

[blukens]

But with macs. You

have to CTRL + click.

I think you, and others, are making a inaccurate assumption here. Unlike Unix or Windows, in a properly designed Mac application there should never be a time where an operation is accessable only through a context-menu. This is, you should never have to ctrl-click (or right-click) on anything.

One of the core interface elements to the Mac environment is the unified menu bar. In many ways, it behaves like an omnipresent contextual menu. Switch from one app to another, it changes to reflect the new context. Within an application, items will enable/disable as they pertain to the currently selected object.

For instance, in Windows it is very common to have a window without menu bar - like in an installer perhaps. If that window contains a text input element, and you want to access Copy and Paste commands (ignoring ctrl-key shortcuts) you have to get them from the context-menu. On a Mac, there will always be an Edit menu in the top menu bar, with those commands ready and waiting.

The fact that Shake requires a 3 button mouse says to me that it is not a properly designed Mac app. That can be okay in some instances. Here, time to market was obviously an issue. And these types of professional apps tend to be an environment unto itself. You'll start the app at the beginning of the day and quit it when you go home, rarely switching between other programs. In such a case, having its own set of rules isn't quite as unforgivable. But I expect Apple to clean it up in time.

Re:Temporary

[Aram Fingal]

... and it was also not common sense to do it the more traditional Mac way and use the top menu which changes as you move around select things to include the stuff which you might otherwise get by right-clicking, etc.

Nothing that I can think of on the Mac actually requires control-clicking except for situations where you are emulating some other machine. A basic part of the HIG, which others have referred to, is that you can find every function of a program in the top pulldown menu. That way, everything is in one place and you don't have to search.

I take your point that it may be easier for occasional users coming from another OS who regularly use a mouse with more than one button. You want to be able to do things without having to think.

2-button mice not the answer; need a new design

[mikeloader]

"you sir, are wrong. as are the rest of the apple community. more buttons really does mean more options."

I hate to defend this person's post, especially since I strongly prefer my 2-button Microsoft mouse to Apple's 1-button mouse, but there is one thread of truth here.

For expert users, 2-button mice allow faster access to commands in context menus than either 1-button mice with the Ctrl key or the use of the main menus. Duh. The speed of 2 buttons on laptops is debatable. For novice users, it's not that using 2 buttons is slower, it's that the 2nd button confuses them. Since Apple sells a lot of computers to schools with young children, they should probably keep 1-button mice as standard on iMacs and eMacs but sell 2-button mice for expert PowerMac users.

The real issue isn't that Apple doesn't offer a 2-button mouse, but that a 2-button mouse isn't ideal anyway. There are other gestures that could be supported by a new mouse such as squeezing, rubbing, etc. There's lots of room for innovation. A limited set of unique gestures is faster than context menus because there is no time to acquire the target. Context menus are modal and they require you to move the mouse and then choose a command.

The only reason we need context menus is that programs have so many menu options that it's hard to find the relevant commands. Over the years, toolbars and palettes were invented to let us avoid the menus but then they got so cluttered that we needed context menus. Now context menus are so cluttered in programs like MS Word that MS has to drop some commands in some situations, ruining the predicitability of what's going to be in the menu. A better interface would be to design programs and computers so that you didn't really need context menus.