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?"

Temporary

[Aram Fingal]

My understanding of Apple's position on multi-button mice is that they unnecessarily complicate the user interface. They give the user one more place to have to look to figure out how to do something. OS X supports multi button mice if you want an alternate way of doing things but Apple ships one button mice to keep programmers from writing stuff that depends on the additional buttons.

Shake is something which Apple acquired from another company. I suspect it will only require a three button mouse until Apple has a chance to rewrite it.

Having said that, one other Apple product which used a three button mouse was, the now long gone, A/UX (Apple UNIX).

Re:Who cares, really?

[snafu]

(preface: I'm a Windows *, Linux, Solaris, and OS X user.)

I have come to realize that on a laptop (like my iBook) with a touch-pad or a pointy-stick, one button is much easier to use than two buttons. Using the pointer devices on laptops requires you to contort your hand to use the other button (to right drag or get a menu, usually what I'm doing with it).

However, with OS X and one button, I simply use 'ctrl' with my left. Both hands stay in a natural position and (IMO) this is much faster than right clicking in windows (on one of my pc laptops).

When using a mouse, however, I like the convenience of having two buttons and a scroll wheel, so that's what I plug in (right clicking yields a context-menu, even in "classic" which I don't use).

Apple has shipped multi-button machines

[Anonymous Coward]

The original Apple PowerBook Duo line (210,230,270) shipped with two track ball buttons. The two buttons could be mapped to perform different tasks.

I remember a small extension that allowed one button to be mapped to control-click so that you could use the contextual menus in System 8.x.

As far as I know all of the other PowerBooks with two buttons were actually wired in parallel so that you could not make them perform different tasks.

-Jason

Re:Temporary

[Orblivion]

Where I work, we recently purchased a new Mac so we'd have something we could separately test OS X with reasonable performance. I tried plugged a usb wheel mouse in and it worked. Now having that extra button was great because it actually pulled a menu like I've grown accustomed to on other OS's and desktop environments. Having rarely used a Mac, it wasn't common sense to hold down the Control key and click (2 steps). Seems easier to right click (1 step).

Mousebuttons are overrated

[Corporate Troll]

The second and third mouse button are largly overrated. Look, up until last december I was a fervent x86 user and never had any mouse with less than 2 buttons. I laughed at Mac because I found it very limited.
Last december however I bought an iBook (impulse buy...mainly due to OS X), and after about one week you are completely used to it. Your second hand just rests near the "Option" key. I've become that used to it that now when I'm on a PC, I tend to push "Control"-click accidentally. Needless to say that doesn't work ;-) Honestly, don't diss the iBook just because it only has one button. Oh, and the touchpad is the best I ever used. On PC laptops I never found any touchpad that was as accurate and responsive... never... *sigh* Actually with PC's I give up the touchpad after 2 hours and connect a mouse because I'm sick of it.

One thing that is great about the Mac is the pr0n surfing with Internet Explorer. Press Alt-Mousclick on a thumbnail and the link will be saved using the download manager. This is the only reason I still use IE for Mac, because mozilla does not have this function.

I probably sound like a "Apple convert", but really the second mouse button is not needed. And on intel machines I never use the third mousebutton unless running Linux where it's copy paste.