Review Of The New Apple Mouse 410
Noctrnl writes: "Just caught this review of the new Apple optical mouse over at CNN. Looks like Microsoft may finally have some competition for the optical IntelliMouse."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Review of the new Apple Mouse
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
Re:left handed. (Score:1)
I was teaching a friend to play guitar, she being a lefty thought she should play like lefties do, with the fretboard in the right hand. I told her it was an entirely new skill, and you are going to be equally akward either way, so instead of burdening yourself with having to buy specially made and strung guitars the rest of your life, why not just learn to play the customary way? She did, and now she rocks.
So... sorry you've become accustomed to a mouse in your left hand. That's your own fault.
Oh yea, and they do make teardrop mice, totally symmetrical. Logitech firstmouse+ and Micros~1 wheelmouse. But.... you don't seem to be after a solution, just a reason to bitch. nevermind.
Re:Apple, what hast become of thee? (Score:2)
Riiight; Never worked tech support have we? I've had problems with people understanding what a click is never mind left/right/middle/side etc. From what I've seen of Mac users the OS seems well designed for a single mouse button. Though I admit I can't understand how they live with out a wheel.:)
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
Anyway, stopping and starting are two very different and concrete things to a novice driver. Screwing up, even once, could render you dead as well, so they have incentive to learn as well.
Clicking is always clicking to the novice computer user. There is no concrete action aside from 'push the button', and the only incentive to learn is so they don't have to call tech support/their kids/their instructor.
Apple has embraced niche status (Score:2)
Apple made a great mouse for Apple users. But if they think a mouse will help them gain desktop market share, they're nuts. They've deliberately ceated an Apple-only mouse that cant be used on linux or windows systems:
-> no second button
-> no scroll wheel
Seems like apple would rather preach to their choir than bother to try and make money. Hardware sold by Micro$oft ends up on Apple systems, and on boxes running *nix. If Apple adopted the same approach, they'd actually be more relevant.
--
______________________________________________
Bicker Bicker and Keyboard Connectors (Score:2)
two buttons
optical
moving parts
meta-clicking
wheels
gaming
USB
logitech
Microsoft
HP...
Who cares? Everyone has their preference, Apple isn't dictating the way life should be in 2020 any more than Microsoft and other companies are. I think the real problem here is that a lot of people who arn't mac-users (and hence were not even considered in the design of this mouse) are a bit cross because they love the mouse secretly, but can't use it with its single button. That may be your loss and Apple's, but its no need to berate people who could conceive of coping in preference to the other features they like.
Personally however, I want a multi-buttoned mouse, lets say 3 for now... maybe 4... and so this mouse is not for me; its a shame really because it looks like tasty candy.
I really like my sun 3 butotn mouse thats all slim with a ball (came with the ultra 10) too bad I'm not going to get it to work on any other machine.
Which reminds me... I have a terminal keyboard from wise (I think) that has a really nice feel... it has a 4 cable phone connector (RJ45?); does anyone know how I could map this to a DIN for an old IBM compatable machine (486DX-33)?
Re:Where's the wheel? (Score:3)
I'm using one right now, and I can feel the knuckle of my index finger and the muscles on that side of the hand moving every time I use the wheel.
In fact, once you start paying attention to the feeling, it becomes rather uncomfortable.
Try, people, to understand that computer companies, for the most part, do things as simply as they can. If you understand the more complex stuff and want a more complex mouse, get one by all means. Don't expect that everybody in the world needs a 3-button optical wheel mouse, or trackball, or whatever it is you own, and certainly don't expect the company to force your mindset on other people.
And as for being one button being misguided, sheesh, the OS is designed to work just great with one mouse button and can accept as many as you want.
Windows is designed with two buttons in mind, and that makes it nearly impossible to do tasks like getting properties without a two button mouse.
X-Windows is designed with 3.... do you see where I'm going? Different OSes have different minimal mousing requirements. Apple's OS needs only 1. If _you_ need more to function on the Mac OS, by all means, buy one.
Hrm, this scroll wheel hurts now
Optical Mice (Score:2)
I also find the little red light extremely annoying...Apple should come out with a mouse that has a similar light...but a different colour...a blue or green would be swell.
Having played with one... (Score:3)
Split it horizontally! (Score:2)
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
Henry Ford would have loved you. Originally, cars came only in black. Why would you need another colour? Now close your eyes and imagine a world of black cars.
Unless I'm some sort of egomaniac, why would I care what it looks like?
I'm envisioning your apartment. The walls are white. There are no paintings or pictures. Your furniture doesn't match. You have a closet full of white tee shirts and jeans. You hang sheets for curtains. Your glasses and dishes don't match.
Esthetics may not be the most important thing, but it is important nonetheless. If it wasn't we'd all dress like maoists. The fact is, I stare at my computer for 11 hours a day. Is there some reason why I want it to be ugly?
You're computer typically goes under your desk,
Nothing personal, but if you put your computer under your desk you're a fool. Computers have fans (imac and cube excepted). Floors have dust and crud. I've put this to the test at my local 200+ client lan and found that floor-bound towers have a little less than twice the crud in them than their desk-dwelling counterparts. If you have cats.... I don't even want to think about that. But cats have nothing to do with mice, I digress.
Not your girlfriend.
Why do you want your girlfriend to be good looking? Are you some kind of egomainiac? :)
Right mouse button (Score:3)
magic chef
Re:Don't feed the trolls... (Score:2)
tongue in cheek
Sure, MacOS is optimized for a one-button mouse. Think of how much smaller and simpler programs are. You know, apps that handle left-button, right-button, wheel push, wheel roll, chording, middle button, side buttons, and so on.
These extra lines of code are just bloat and feature-creep, right? Everyone's a first-time user who feels comfortable with fewer options, for the first several years, right?
Fewer features, optimized. Think different.
:)
Re:The Big Pitcure (Score:2)
um.. no. (Score:3)
No more mouse pads? Not so fast... (Score:3)
I bought an Intellimouse w/Intellieye earlier this month, and proudly set it on my desk without a mousepad. The response was decent, but I switched back to a mouse pad for one reason: comfort. The pad is soft, which minimizes the physical feedback I get from pushing it around. It also provides some traction: I don't want the mouse slipping around all over the place. Lastly, a lot of people have custom mouse pads that have everything from calculators to picture frames built in. It'll really be a vanity thing, IMO.
Mouse pads aren't going away. Not only do they provide ergonomic advantages as detailed above, but there are probably many people out there whose desks [yahoo.com] just aren't suited for optical mouse technology.
Competition? (Score:2)
-W.W.
Logitech's Mouse (Score:2)
I've adapted to it in Q3A; it was just a matter of jacking up the sensitivity high enough to where fast twitches across large pad areas weren't necessary. In the end, the positives (not having to clean a mouse ball, precision) outweigh the negatives of not being able to track rapid movements with much success.
Be sure you're using a mousepad or surface with irregularities (wood grain, patterns, etc.) so the CCD can differentiate between different portions of whatever you're using it on.
left handed. (Score:4)
This is slightly off topic but I rant whenever I get the chance. WHY ARE LEFT HANDED PEOPLE BEING NEGLECTED !!!!!
I tried once to get an ergonomically correct left haded mouse. aparantly it doesnt' exist and for teh few comapnies that make one I have to pay more money. I have also used those sun mice with the grid pad and it is impossibel to use. I have to cross my eyes and turn the pad upside down for it to work I cant' take it. one of my greatest deleits in life is watching a right handed person try to use my computer.
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:3)
fast twitch movements throw it off (Score:2)
I've done this with several of these mice/surfaces, so it's not that I had a bad mouse. Needless to say, that just won't cut it for a lot of gamers like myself.
Actually, just using the mouse for normal applications I sometimes move it faster than it can handle. I find this very annoying.
Does anyone know if the newer mice still have these problems?
Re:Ummm, yeah (Score:5)
Okay, I use a Sparc10 a lot, and calling that disaster of a mouse a breakthrough is an insult to, uh, lots and lots of stuff. viz.
1. It requires a special pad. If you lose the pad you have a serious problem. If you damage the pad you have a serious problem. If the pad is not big enough you have no other option. If you want a picture of whatever on your pad you're out of luck.
2. If you rotate the pad 45 degrees or more, the mouse fails to work. I find it absolutely amazing that a company like Sun that makes such hot-ass stuff would ship a mouse that fails to work if the pad is rotated. Of course, Sun, in their infinite wisdom, failed to put any grip stuff on the bottom of said pad just to ensure that I get a nice break every 15 min. to re-align my mouse pad.
3. Who here hasn't had to walk over to a rack-mount with a keyboard and bring a binder for a mid-air mousepad? Does Sun make binders for their optical mice?
4. The mouse itself is shaped like a paperback. Very ergonomic... if you're a robot.
5. The buttons are a half centimeter wide. Is Sun getting kickbacks from the Very Narrow Button Company?
If the Sun optical mouse is a "technological breakthrough" then I'm hooking up with the unabomber...
Re:Where's the wheel? (Score:2)
As I was reading your comment and stroking my mouse, though, I thought of something: Why not put the wheel in a thumb-accessible position, at about a 45 degree angle to horizontal? You could turn the wheel by opening and closing your thumb grip, which is about the most natural hand movement I can think of (for humans, anyway.)
The funny thing is, the MacOS interface has been ripping off Windows features more and more in recent versions... Almost any feature that is activated by a right-click in Windows, is activated by a ctrl-click or cmd-click in MacOS... er... 9, is it? Context menus are a notorious example. It's a real pain.
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
Which is presumably why Option + Mouse Button does the same thing as a right-mouse button does everywhere else in the world, right?
Face it - they goofed.
Simon
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
Ummm, yeah (Score:3)
Ummm...how? I used my first optical mouse in...1993. Apple will be the first company to bundle an optical mouse with all its desktop systems.
Nope. Sun was selling optical mice with the SparcStations LONG ago.
--
Hello. Have you used one? (Score:2)
Please take some time to investigate the product(s) before you spew BS. (That'd take all the fun out of
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Apple Mouse (Score:2)
-colin
Re:Competition? (Score:2)
He's right; I can't even get Counter-Strike to launch on my Mac with one of these new mice...
Jay (=
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:3)
1. context menus were invented because an unnamed operating system (well, windows if you must know) designed a UI that would give you a theoretically unlimited number of menu bars. Gee, which Edit menu do I want? This one? This one? hm. The contextual menu is a hack to make up for lack of planning at msft.
2. Uh, if you hold down the control key while clicking you get the contextual menu in the macOS. It's there as a total sop to winders users, but it's there.
3. Hot keys are fun. Use 'em I say. On the mac, your hot keys are consistent across all apps so they're actually usable. In the winders world, quit can be ctrl-x, ctrl-q or even (get this) alt-F4. Add this to the fact that close-the-only-window and quit-the-app are the same thing and that close has probably a half dozen different keys and... well you'd be using contexutal menus too if your UI was so badly crippled that keyboard was only good for text input.
spending five minutes aligning the cursor
I hope this is hyperbole.
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
I think a slow move to a gesture interface would be great: squeeze to drag, finger tap to select, heel to active (visualise driving a cartridge into a slot).
Or was that only a rumor or some prototype idea that I've dreamt is related to this mouse?
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
You don't need to (and shouldn't) teach novices double-clicking at all. Teach them selecting objects with the mouse, then teach them selecting actions from the menu and they are immediately able to be productive. The double-click shortcut can be taught later as a quick side topic to people who seem to be getting the hang of things.
Windows95 unfortunately introduced some UI elements that can only be activated by double-clicking, so that ruined my old response to the "should I single-click or double-click" question. I used to just answer "you don't need to double-click anything. select it with the mouse and then select what you want to do from the menu." (anybody who needs to ask has missed some concepts and should be sent back to novice mode.) The multibuttons on unix seem to run from one extreme to another. Either they are very consistant within themselves but unintuitive (I'm thinking about things like Open Look) or very inconsistant.
Re:Ummm, yeah (Score:2)
worse comes to worse, take your pilot, hook *it* up and run a vt100 emulator.
hooking a keyboard and mouse up to a server. you'd need to have a monitor in your server room. no, don't tell me...
Re:Ummm, yeah (Score:2)
Whereas on Xerox D-Machines the (excellent, three button) optical mouse was standard from 1984 onwards. That's eighty-four, not ninety-four. And it was far better than any other mouse I've used since (and yes, that does include Sun opticals).
Re:Apple, what hast become of thee? (Score:2)
- 3 PCI slot towers
- puck mice and tiny keyboards
- braindead install utilities for Rhapsody
If you'd bothered to read Apple reviews before making your generalization about the reviewers, you might not have misspoken.Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
There's even a convention for it: Opening a context menu and selecting the item in bold should always have the same affect as double-clicking the object. I'm not aware of any programs that violate that rule, certainly not MS programs.
Re:Apple mouse (Score:2)
That aside, I can't stand using a single button mouse on the Macs. I have a Dell PIII-850 and a G4 under my desk right now, and I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer on the PC and a Microsoft Intellimouse w/Intellieye on the Mac. Not only does the lack of the second button drive me nuts, but I simply can't function with a scroll wheel anymore.
Using a freshly set up Linux box that doesn't recognize the wheel is like some kind of torture, I have to get those packages installed right away, second only to network access to get the packages.
---
At the college help desk... (Score:5)
me: this mouse you gave me doesn't work.
"help" desk: did you try cleaning it?
me: I wiped it off, yeah, and I wiped off the mouse pad. still nothing.
hd: did you clean the ball?
me: there is no mouse ball.
hd: well, that's the problem then. it needs a ball.
me: no it doesn't. it's optical.
hd: where did you get that?
me: from you. less than a minute ago.
hd: oh, it must be broke.
me: okay then. Can I have a new one?
hd: no.
me: why not?!?!
hd: you broke it.
me: I didn't have a CHANCE to break it. I just got it.
hd: then why didn't the person before you say it was broken?
me: Because they broke it
hd: I don't believe you.
me: Fine. You don't have to. Just give me my id back.
hd: I can't do that.
me:(growling) and why not?
hd: Because you broke it.
repeat this for another 15 minutes or so. sigh.
Those look comfortable... (Score:3)
I'll say the near-opposite. The fact that there's no wheel follow's Apple's classic strategy -- simplicity.
Does no one hate Microsoft for making the mouse as complex as it is now? I know that when I go to my friend's house and he has a Logitech 4-button mouse I just can't immediately figure out how to use it.
One button is simple. It's cool.
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
nav services offers two: the old and the new. The new has the favourites menu on it and optional previews of everything (ha!) the old is the pared down one with the path menu and the finder-viewer. It is possible to write non-nav-services-compliant boxes... and people do.
recently added (I think like 8.blah or so) 'alt-tab' functionality?
It's command-tab actually and, no, I turned it off as several of the graphics programs I use offer scrolling through the toolbar on that keyset. I may not like it but it always works (unless you turn it off). Why not just run your app floaty menu thingy?
Bare Bones may make a good application (BBEdit) but they are lousy when it comes to a truly effective interface
no kidding. Their fonts and tabs menu option alone is such a wild violation of the human interface guidelines that there might be jail time served. I use codewarrior for what folks normally use bbedit for. No grep, but the syntax is coloured!
I guess Apple never though anyone would need to run more than one (or two) apps at once.
Again, I'll sing the praises of the app tab. Pictures or words place it wherever you want. A great thing I say.
It suprises me that a company that parades its 'UI' so much that they appear to not offer a sufficient API for their developers to build applications that are consistent.
Well, there's the appearance manager. If you want a gob of info on it here [mactech.com] is a good place to start. After that you're into inside mac and TIL's.
I have two workstations on my desk. A Mac and a Linux workstation.
I have a mac and a solaris box on my desk and, as much as I think Solaris is a good thing, really KDE and CDE and (worst of all) openwin do nothing more for me than make me want to use my mac for anything that vaguely represents file management.
Competition? (Score:2)
Fair enough, it's a tasty-looking bit of kit - Apple have definitely got an edge over everyone else as far as style goes, I have to concede - but how much is this going to penetrate outside of the Mac market? I don't see too many of those institutions who've shelled out for all those iMacs foaming at the mouth at the thought of paying $60 a unit for these things...
Likewise, I don't believe too many people are going to chuck in an Intellimouse for one of these. A whole-surface button sounds kind-of cool, but if the sensitivity is shot like a trackpad, it's only going to be a pain in the arse.
It'll look nice with the Cube, though, I guess.
Hmph. Maybe I'm just disappointed 'cause I'd been hoping that the surface of the mouse would be mappable. So you could be working in P*shop and lean back on the ball of your palm rather than hit a Ctrl modifier key to add to a selection... that would have tasted very nice...
Speaking of which, has anyone found any better photos of this thing?
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
Actually, "their" aren't extra buttons on my Linux desktop. I've got one button to close a window, which is a big "X", and one to minimize a window.
You want one button to select something, a separte button to open something. Why not add another one that closes something, and another that deletes something, and another to move things and another to copy things... why not just have two keyboards, while we're at it?
Because that would be, to use the vernacular, fucking retarded.
On the other hand, since using the mouse *at all* is inconvenient (taking your hands off the home row, moving one at least a foot or two to the mouse, moving it, then repositioning), you might as well be able to do quite a bit with it to maximize the utility of the damned thing, since you lose so much efficiency just getting to it.
What's wrong with a button for copy and a button for paste? Sure beats the piss out of one button for copy, then move the mouse, then *KEY IN* ctrl-v or open-apple-v.
It's all about efficiency.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Hmm (Score:2)
-J
Re:Where's the wheel? (Score:2)
I think what would be better (and useful to those with one button) is a small control area on the screen that you could click on, and drag to scroll up/down - by moving the mouse right/left you could control how fast the screen scrolled by. I don't think it would be annoying to have the mouse cursor stay still while you scrolled because unlike things that move the mouse for you, you would be the one "pinning" the mouse in place and could release it any time.
You could even embed such a control somewhere in the scroll bar, in order to maintan the current space occupied by scrolling technologies.
The Big Pitcure (Score:2)
Re:It's licensed from HP. (Score:2)
Sun Elbow Pain Generator; The One True Mouse (Score:2)
The contrast was especially annoying because I was also using the AT&T Bell Labs Blit workstation, which comes with the One True Mouse. It's red, it's almost-half-spherical, and the buttons are on the front (Not the front of the top, but the vertical front side.) It was made by some company in Switzerland. It felt perfect, let my hands be in a natural relaxed position, and didn't cause wrist strain while pushing the buttons. The original had a metal ball; it was followed by a cheaper version with a plastic ball that didn't work as well and needed cleaning more often, but it still was the right shape and felt right.
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
I have two workstations on my desk. A Mac and a Linux workstation. I use them both about equally. What I find incredibly frusterating about the Mac is that the interface is inconsistent.
Can you describe the 'Mac File Open dialog box' for me? If you can, it will be littered with the words: sometimes, often, most, occasionally. Every app has their own 'standard' dialog boxes. Bare Bones software has probably the worst ones, followed closely (IMHO) by Adobe. Bare Bones may make a good application (BBEdit) but they are lousy when it comes to a truly effective interface (best example is the 'open several' hidden option/dialog). Adobe actually came up with their own 'explorer' that crashes on some systems--luckily they let you disable it on many apps.
It suprises me that a company that parades its 'UI' so much that they appear to not offer a sufficient API for their developers to build applications that are consistent. But they did get the hot-keys right! Oh wait. Ever try to use the recently added (I think like 8.blah or so) 'alt-tab' functionality? *Exact* copy of windows, execpt that instead of toggling to the last used application it goes through in *alphabetic order*. Which makes it 100% absolutely useless in my opinion--an implementation that utterly baffles me. I guess Apple never though anyone would need to run more than one (or two) apps at once.
Enough of my rambling. I am a Mac fan, I just don't like the UI very much. I don't like the Windows UI much either, but at least it is consistent. I don't really like the UI on my linux machine much either, but at least its my own damned fault.
-k
Re:Sesitivity of the "button" (Score:2)
Yup! It's got a dial underneath where the ball latch usually goes. It can be adjusted from light to quite heavy pressure. BTW, the pressure needs to be applied to the front of the mouse in a downwards direction. Feels weird for the first 5 minutes (I'm using one right now!)
But I need to see my mousepad! (Score:5)
Erm, anyone got a nice flat mousepad sized black hole?
slow day?? (Score:2)
Hope Apple doesn't have same probs as Msft (Score:3)
Contextual menus & the Mac (Score:2)
As the Apple mouse has only one button is not suitable for a PC or Linux on PPC for that matter. However it is a very comfortable mouse, I played with it at MacWorld.
Contextual menus
IIRC, the first use of extensive contextual menus in an application was Netscape 2 where it actually made sense. Their workaround for the mac was to make you hold down the signle button for a second, to reveal the "right click" menu. This is an inconvenient alternative. The Mac way of doing things at the time would have been to make all objects, every little graphic, selectable and you'ld choose an action from a menu in the main menubar. A Palette indexing every object on the page would have been another Mac-ish way of providing right menu functionality. (Think CAD apps)
To date, the browser is the only application that I wish I had two mouse buttons on my Mac and it is the only application I really appreciate having more than one button on my PC running Linux. (I like mac keyboard shortcuts for copy & paste) Windows feels like it forces it on you.
Scroll Wheels are great, but...
I'ld like to see a keybord integerating a scroll wheel so I don't have to shift my hand to far to get to it. I could it see it replacing my PageUp, PageDown, Home and End keys.
Re:Mixed metaphors and pointless car analogies (Score:3)
Whoa there, Tex. Let's take a moment for a reality check. A user interface is a mode of communication, and in the case of GUI's, it's a largely gestural mode of communication.
Germans (and I presume other Europeans) seem to like counting beginning with the thumb; Americans begin with the index finger. Some tribes in Papua-New Guinea indicate tens by placing their fingers on the opposite forearm. Schoolchildren trained in finger math reckon ones on the right hand and tens on the left. Some Chinese speak Mandarin, but many people in Borneo speak Malay, while the bulk of Peru's rural population speaks Quechua in utter disregard to the peculiar dialect of Spanish spoken in the urban centers.
It may be that endless flamewars are fought over which of these modes is "better", but those people are just as silly as those who debate about the correct number of buttons on a friggin' mouse and how many times you have to click to select a paragraph.
The simple fact is that it's all arbitrarily learned behavior and, within reasonable limits, any initial learning curve is irrelevant in the face of the bizarrely crotchety resistance to any deviation that develops in people once they've learned one convention. It's the same instinct that has spawned wars over languages and custom since the dawn of time, but reduced to the level of infinitesimal trivia.
Frankly, I don't give a rat's patootie for the [1|2|3] button mouse debate; I want an affordable version of one of those twenty-button pucks that comes on high-end digitizer tablets so I can do some real work with my mouse, but I'm not suggesting anyone else do likewise 'less you feel like it. If, for some reason, you feel compelled to let other people dictate the details of your life for you, forget mice and 1) take public transportation, 2) recycle more, and 3) refrain from buying products with excess packaging, or 4) anything else that actually matters.
Re:new Apple mouse is good design? (Score:2)
> And could some one please explain to me how
> otherwise rational people can have such feelings
> for a corporation?
I'm going to take your question as sincere, because I used to wonder that same thing before I got a Mac.
The short answer is "Because their products are really, really good." They really are. There is nothing like the iBook, especially when paired with AirPort. The battery lasts forever, it runs cool, it's as rugged as a tank, and the display is beautiful. It's great stuff. There's nothing at all like iMovie except iMovie. A friend of mine who can barely run a browser and email without help made 20 minutes of rambling camcorder footage into a 5 minute QuickTime movie and put it on the Web for free with iTools. I didn't help and he didn't read the manual. Quiet machines with no fans
The long answer is that I get at least twice as much work done on my Mac than I did on the Windows machine it replaced, and I enjoy the work much, much more. My work is better as well
I messed around with computers in the old days, but I don't have time for that now. When I need more hard drive space I just plug on a drive. It's not interesting to me to play Jerry Pournelle anymore. I don't want to worry about which drive letter Windows thinks is the CD-ROM today, or wonder if I can really drag an image from one app to another. I just want it to work, so I feel gratitude towards Apple for selling me a system that does work for about 10% more than a generic PC. You can't do the kind of work I do under Linux or BSD, so it's Mac or Windows. I LOVE not having to use Windows anymore, just like lots of Linux users love not having to use Windows anymore. How can you put a price on that?
The only really bad thing you can say about the Mac is that one app can crash and take down another and/or the whole system. But they're going to go public beta with the version that fixes that in September or so, and they'll put it out for real early in 2001, so the time for complaining about that is long past.
> willing to admit that Apple is capable of and
> has actually shipped bad product in the past?
Oh, sure
Re:new Apple mouse is good design? (Score:2)
It is sincere. I am just always surprised by the emotional reaction of people to corporations.
> The short answer is "Because their products are really, really good."
I don't think it's giving away anything to people who know my login that I've worked at and for Apple several times. We all laugh when we hear blanket statements like that, and then reminisce about the GeoPod, PowerTalk, and the Performas. Happy days, happy days.
And honestly, Microsoft actually has some very good things about their products too.
My point is, we should not embrace corporations as an emotional choice. This is irrational thinking fostered by the beneficiaries of the corporate entities in advertising campaigns. We should consider corporations for what they actually are, a legal contrivance used to facilitate undertakings with some degree of risk.
As for your anecdotal arguments, I believe that every task undertaken by some free human must have something cool about it, or the person would not have spent the effort. It's our job to find out what's cool about it so we understand what the other guy is talking about. I like AppleScript too. I just wish that there were as rich a vein of scriptable apps and shells on the Mac as there is for VBScript on Windows. Or that I didn't have to resort to MPW every time I want to emulate a linux shell script. But those things don't dissuade me from enjoying BBEdit. They just remind me that I'm lucky some indiviual out there is the driving force behind my favorite text editor, and if he ever sells BareBones to some big entity and leaves, I will have to readjust my expectations until I know how I like the work of the new owners. Not the company, but the people who run the company.
More competition from Logitech (Score:3)
Kevin Fox
Re:Bicker Bicker and Keyboard Connectors (Score:2)
Mice for Lefties (Score:2)
Apple's new mouse overcomes this problem, so hopefully M$ will redesign their optical mouse to make it useable for lefties!
Good job, Apple!
Re:Yeah (Score:2)
Personally, I use a logitech 3-button mouse because I do things that require the use of a 3-button mouse and find it to be a bit faster for certain tasks. However, if they didn't exist, I'd get along fine.
Andrew
Re: Scroll Wheels are great, but... (Score:2)
Re:Sesitivity of the "button" (Score:2)
Re:Mixed metaphors and pointless car analogies (Score:2)
Single click: select.
Double click: open.
right click: menu.
The big problem they have is that they're moving their OS towards integration with the web paradigm that uses a single click for 'open', which I suppose is the same way you work with buttons (and therefore most dialog boxes).
Obviously, with the whole 'number of mouse buttons' debate, you've got a trade off between immediate usability for the novice and power. However, as using computers becomes more and more vital for living in the (admittedly first world) twenty-first century, I think people are more prepared to spend a little more time learning how to use something. We no longer need to convince people that learning to use a computer is something they have to do.
Therefore I'd suggest that more than one button is probably the way to go. It gives your more things you can do without touching the keyboard. As for how you use those buttons, well, that's a whole 'nother argument...
cheers,
Tim
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
I know you're joking, but... (Score:2)
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
I would argue strongly that constraining it to look, feel, and act like a mini-desktop hampers its functionality and even impedes learnability. What others offer as a prime selling point for Mac -- the enforced standard interface -- I see as a straitjacket. Perhaps it's just a difference in design philosophy.
On the other hand, my students say I'm not all that easy on new learners anyway :) so maybe it's just a fundamental part of me.
Apple commercial (Score:2)
--
Scott Miga
suprax@linux.com
Why? (Score:2)
Ok, technically it has one big button that covers the whole area of the mouse, but real power-users should just go and get two of 'em and plug 'em in side by side or with one for each hand. It's not like you're exactly maxing out your USB bus at the moment. Again,
X on PPC BSD and/or Linux (Score:2)
when I get my G4 and start running X on it.
Say What? (Score:2)
Double click: Activate
Right click: Menu/Options
Methinks you've been doing something horribly wrong (flame deleted on second thought) with your mouse if you're not sure when to click what or how many times. I'm really confused as to how you think the right click was a replacement for the double click.
My MacOS experience: where I should be right clicking, I click and hold and then the menu appears.
So simple it's stupid. Macs are for people that want their computer to be as simple to use as their toaster, too bad it ends up being just as flexible.
Re:Ummm, yeah (Score:3)
Nope. Sun was selling optical mice with the SparcStations LONG ago.
I think the keyword here is that Apple is bundling the new mouse with all its desktop machines. On Sun workstations, it was an expensive option.
Re:Ummm, yeah (love the choices) (Score:2)
Limitations to the mouse... (Score:2)
Only if Apple's new mouse works well with one of the M$ operating systems, which of course, it doesn't.
Don't feed the trolls... (Score:3)
As for serial mice, where exactly are Mac users going to plug those in?
For those who really HAVE to have more buttons, Apple have conveniently put 101(ish) of them on a big flat thing nearby. With the aid of some rubber bands and a rollerskate, you can easily have a 102 button mouse that's about as well thought out as your argument.
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
You're stuck in the one-mouse-button world. Make left-click work like it does today - click to select, hold to move. Make right-click launch, hold to get a drop-down menu. That's all it would take.
Unfortunately, by the time Windows was designed, Macs had gotten everyone used to the idea of double-clicking, so Microsoft stupidly went down that road.
Double-clicking should be an extremely rare event, in a well-designed UI.
--
One (Score:2)
"Recta non toleranda futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
Re:Having played with one... (Score:4)
I always read this Apple propoganda that one button is easier. Um, no. I just helped my technophobic mom set up her system. Double clicking was a much harder concept (esp. as to when you double and when you single click) than left-click. It's time for Apple to face facts: Their choice of single-button mice was a design mistake which sacrificed functionality for alleged gains in usability, but which in truth forced people into contorted responses to restore the functionality.
Single Buttons: it's just a bad idea.
Re:Competition? (Score:2)
Was it ever meant to? I think the nominal $60 price is there to do the following:
a) fleece hockey-puck mouse owners
b) make purchasers of the new machines think they are getting a better package deal, and
c) keep in line with Apple's high spare parts prices.
Apple will only have 'arguably the nicest looking mouse there is' if it's priced so high PC users won't go for it - which is another reason why it's only got 1 'button', to keep it mac-exclusive.
Re:Apple, what hast become of thee? (Score:2)
Define 'normal' -- people have spent thousands of years trying to do so, and somehow the definitions tend to describe either a) people just like the describer or b) people far inferior to the describer. I have yet to hear a valid description of a 'normal' person because, of course, there is no such thing.
Apple knows their market. If they create boxes and devices that perform the functions that you like that already exist, then they've lost any edge they've got. That's a lesson they learned when Jobs came back and they started making multi-colored boxes that the rest of the computer industry thought was silly fluff.
Then they turned a profit -- again and again and again...
You're not their target market. Pretty much the entire
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
I haven't thought that direction through well enough to say what will become of double-clicks and the like (I still think they can be safe and useful if their use is carefully constrained), but it does seem that there's only really room for one "button" action there, though there might be tap-modifiers on a stylus (which would actually bear more resemblance to "control-click" than "right-click", albeit with a one-handed take).
As for the straitjacket thing, yes, it is a deeply philosophical point, getting into all kinds of questions of free will and necessary constraint, and that's why I don't go there. ;)
Hockeypuck & Buttons (Score:2)
That said I have to confess the Hockeypuck mouse isn't too bad IF ONE USES IT AS INTENDED. Instead of resting one's palm over the body of the mouse the Hockeypuck mouse is meant to just be manipulated by fingers, your hand arched down so your delicate tendons aren't stretched. I know folks who use the hockeypuck that way, one of them a Techwriter and they looove it.
As for the single button - the reality is that most users are completely unaware that there even is a second button on their mouse. Several years ago we ran a mouse-tracking app at a company I worked at and discoved that 90-some percent of our users (all Windows) never used the right button in the month we ran the tracking (though they racked up an amazing number of mouse-miles.) Sure gamers, unix folks, and geeks (slashdotters) will use it but frankly J. Random User doesn't care all that much.
In the case of Apple's OS there really isn't all that much need for a second button. They've engineered the OS so that one never *needs* to take their hands off the keyboard (REAL geeks don't need no steenkin mouse!) and for point-and-click the single button covers all of the basic needs. For advanced stuff yeah it's a pain to use the modifier key but at that point one can get a new mouse rather then throwing it at the vast majority who'll never use it.
Apple has always been big on usability testing & Steve Jobs is not one to be held back by tradition. I expect Apple will continue with single button mice 'till the day that their testing shows that they'd be better-served with a double-button mouse. That day they'll undoubtably ship it - either as a BTO or standard across their entire line.
Personally I'm waiting for a wireless padless-optical mouse with two buttons & a rollerwheel. Logitech is releasing one any day now and assuming they deliver usable drivers I'll be purchasing a few.
In the meantime let Apple ship single-button mice. It works well with their OS, seems incredibly low maintainence and it's one less thing to distract the not-power users with.
How do you avoid clicking? (Score:2)
---
Where's the wheel? (Score:3)
OK, I can understand Apple only having one button, as misguided as it is. But why not include a wheel? I can't imagine living without a scroll wheel, and that would not add more confusion.
Probably the usual Apple Not-Invented-Here syndrome.
--
Re:Yeah (Score:2)
and to some, SIZE does Matter.
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
You can't have it both ways: If the second button is a kludge, a CTRL hotkey is a kludge-squared.
And no, I don't have a particular problem with hotkeys. I don't categorize them as kludges ... but neither is the right-click -- and, IMHO, the right click is a much more natural way to access secondary functions.
Apple should have made TWO mice (Score:2)
Apple should bundle the one button mouse with Macs to meet the needs of new users, and sell a second model designed for power users. Apple's relentless obsession with simplicity sometimes blinds them to the needs of more experienced users.
Re:Mixed metaphors and pointless car analogies (Score:2)
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
I'll agree that the control-click for contextual menus is a kluge (even though it's one I use when I use a Mac), or at least that it's certainly no better than learning a second button. But I'd go farther and say that popup contextual menus are simply a bad idea, because you never actually know what you're going to find in one. If the computer were really, really smart about what it considers "context" it might know exactly what to put in that menu, but we know that it isn't, and the usual implementation is sufficiently haphazard that one has to take a couple of seconds to peruse the menu during each use. This differs from pulldown menus on the Mac or Windows, where unavailable verbs are always displayed in the same position, but dimmed. The problem is that there just isn't space for very much that's useful in one popup menu without making it hierarchical (and that's generally a disaster for new and old users alike - I'm damn good with a pointing device and I understand the "triangle of slack" in a Mac hierarchical menu, but I still basically hate them. And Windows ones are just about unusable, because they don't even have that going for them. Admittedly this is partly because I use a trackpad for everything, but this is pretty much a requirement for portable computing).
On the other hand I think the various modifier keys for such things as dragging (with instant visual feedback) are a good thing; they apply an optional modification to my action that I can change midstream, much the way people actually think about what they do ("don't just move that icon, copy it - no actually, make a symlink instead, ok, that's it"). A contextual menu might be an adjunct to that, but the problem is always requiring it. I can't drag to create a Windows shortcut without having to point and click through some damn menu when I get there, and worse still I have to enter a mode before beginning the drag - am I left-dragging or right-dragging? Oops wrong button, how do I get rid of this menu now? Maybe it's my heritage as a terminal-using Unix geek, but I find the meta key approach quicker and more agreeable to "power users" while simultaneously less confusing for newbies. And as with my reply to your previous comment, keep in mind that the GUI is designed so that a user will nearly always have her left hand on the keyboard with her thumbs over those modifier keys (including control). That doesn't work for left-handed users (and I deplore this), but it is something you need to keep in mind when questioning a UI decision. The learned context of the GUI is always important, because we're not talking about you or me, but about a hypothetical user who knows (or will know) the system as best they can.
But no, the second button isn't "just a kluge" - it's a design choice. Just not necessarily a well thought-out or defined one, particularly when you consider how it scales to other pointing devices, especially a tappable absolute one like a stylus - where's the right click on WinCE? (ok, where the hell is anything on WinCE
Re:Don't feed the trolls... (Score:2)
Re:Ummm, yeah *rant mode on* (Score:4)
The Sun optical mouse (which I've used since 1990) is NOTHING like the new "optical" (actually CCD camera) mice.
The Sun optical mouse contains an LED which shines onto a reflective, gridded mouse pad, and is detected by a simple light detector. This means that you have to use the (slippery, glass-like) mouse pad, and you have to move the mouse in the same coordinates as the mouse pad (since the mouse pad itself is gridded). I tend to move my mouse in a slightly diagonal (top left to bottom right) motion, and it's annoying that I can't just slightly change the orientation of the mouse--I have to move the whole pad.
The new Microsoft (and presumably Apple) mice use CCD cameras, which means that they don't require some easily-cracked-or-dented, hard-to-replace mouse pad.
The bigger problem is probably that we use the term "optical mouse" for both mouse systems, when they really don't have that much in common.
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
This mouse is awesome for Macs (because Apple seems to understand the difference between a pointer and a keyboard, unlike the PC world who keeps slapping more buttons and gadgets on the mouse to make up for UI kludges), but I wouldn't bother plugging it into anything else.
New? (Score:2)
But byond two diffrences (old mice needed specal mouse pads but the mouse + pad = less than normal mouse, new mouse needs no pad = more than normal mouse + recomended pad) the new mice don't seem very diffrent to me.
Optic mice died in the early 1990s. If Microsoft didn't release the new optic mouse and left it to say Kraft or Apple it may not have gone over so well.
(People seem to accept anything Microsoft as new and unique)
BTW 10 years is a long time to rember something. I doupt very many people at Microsoft rembered the optic mice 10 years preveous..
For those who use this new technology and see how cool it is. This "new inovation" was obsolete 10 years ago.
So rember kids.. just becouse some random expert calls it obsolete dosn't mean he knows what he is talking about...
Now I'm gona go look for some old 1980s style optic mice... Naa screw that I want a touch pad...
[Bonus points for anyone who sees the irony in the last line]
Re:Having played with one... (Score:2)
I own a sports car and a 4X4. The choice of which one I drive is made on which one fits the situation, not which one I will be seen in. Unless I'm some sort of egomaniac, why would I care what it looks like? You're computer typically goes under your desk, so what difference does it make if it's coordinated with your monitor?
As for the mouse. Say it's functional, easy to use, smooth, etc. But don't tell me it's georgeous. It's a mouse, for crying out loud! Not your girlfriend.
Re:Hope Apple doesn't have same probs as Msft (Score:3)
Re:Limitations to the mouse... (Score:2)
I brought it in to work one day, plugged it into a Windows 2000 box and Win2K installed it and used it lickety-split.
Of course it doesn't have that _second mouse button_ but you can get around in Windows without it, you know.
Worked fine for me, albeit the cord was a little short.
And maybe you don't understand this, but Microsoft's mice also work with the _Mac_! (Golly gee, you mean MS makes software/hardware for Crapintosh? I always knew they were st00pid)...
People searching for a quality optical mouse who don't need/want a scroll wheel or extra buttons and who use a Mac will now have such a mouse _right when they buy the machine_. That in itself makes people less likely to buy the Intellimouse for the Mac.
Re:Apple Mouse (Score:2)
ack. don't even get me started on open win! As a caveat, I love sun stuff... really I do. But any gui that moves my mouse pointer to where *it* wants it and not where I put it (ie, scrolling or the exit-openwin dialog box) should be deported to some place with bad weather and a rock-bottom economy. And that file tree view? Or how about the thousand little desktop icons all called /usr/bin/tcsh... reinstate the Smith Act and put openwin on a boat for Liberia I say...
Re:to stop linux? (Score:2)
I wonder, is a an attempt to force mac users to stay with mac OS? How motivated are you to install an OS (linux) whos GUI reccomends 3 buttons when you only have 1 button avalible?
Patently absurd. If you're willing to stick a new OS on your Mac, you should be capable of picking up a third party mouse from another vendor.
I personally use a MacAlly 2-button mouse with my G4. It's sweet-- I can set default behaviour for button number two, and also program different behaviours on a per-application basis.
Re:Having played with one... (Score:3)
Really? Here's my teach-em-double-click-in-a-nanosecond spiel: Tap the wand on the hat and out pops the rabbit.
tap tap. click click. same thing.
Now, let's look at the single-click motif. I want to drag icon x from point a to point b. click and drag... oops I let go too early. Now wait for the document to open before closing it and trying again. Hey, I wan't to select 2 icons. Wait, that's not the shift key I'm holding, it's the caps-lock. Wait for the document to yatta yatta... Okay, I want to select one icon... now how the heck would I do that? Draw a box around it? sheesh
Mixed metaphors and pointless car analogies (Score:3)
Double-clicking in a properly-designed GUI is done when activating one or more elements from a list. Single-clicking selects, double-clicking "does more". A list can be a sequence of textual icons, a window full of icons, or any other grouping. The interesting thing is how quickly newbies (at least those who haven't been previously scared by Windows) pick up on that mechanism whether or not it's explained to them, because it's designed to mesh with the whole concept of icons and lists - and with the one button mouse. The only overloading of double clicking on the Mac is the behaviour in text strings, where one click selects a point, two clicks selects a word, and three selects an entire line, but this doesn't seem to cause confusion (perhaps because selecting text is fairly modal in the minds of users).
One assumes your criticism here is supposed to be directed at Apple's one-button mouse used with the system and OS it's bundled with, but making an argument that one button isn't enough (or double clicks are evil) based on the Windows implementation is pointless. Get a little broader exposure before you go on your next rant.
Apple's is the only competition? (Score:2)