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Why Apple Makes a One-Button Mouse
Posted by
michael
on Sun Jan 30, 2005 02:02 PM
from the behind-the-times dept.
from the behind-the-times dept.
IdiotOnMyLeft writes "There is a short article at Gear Live that tries to explain why Apple still sticks with a one-button mouse. It points out the fact that although it is perfectly possible to use a two-button mouse on a Mac for 7 years now, developers are forced to rethink their design approach and can't flood the right-click menu. No article of this kind would be complete without mentioning that users get confused with two buttons. There's a rumor that John Carmack once asked Steve Jobs what would happen if they'd put one more key on the keyboard."
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Because... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Because... (Score:5, Funny)
Customize your Apple Pro Mouse! Add a second button for just $399 US.
It would be right on par with their memory upgrades...
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Re:Because... (Score:5, Funny)
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Single button rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Mouse button 1 = regular click
Mouse button 2 = contextual click
Mouse button 3 = not used because it's too easy to scroll with the wheel when clicking, but it used to be mapped such that when I clicked it and scrolled, the Mac screen would either zoom in or zoom out (really nice Quartz Extreme [apple.com] feature)
Mouse button 4 = Expose [apple.com] show all windows
Mouse button 5 = Expose show desktop
My wife is the opposite. She prefers a single button mouse for her iMac and PowerBook. I bought her a multi-button mouse with scroll wheel for playing Jedi Academy [apple.com]. When she's done playing, she unplugs the multi-button mouse and plugs in her white Apple mouse.
Apple's got the right idea. Ship a single button mouse to make sure that developers don't start hiding things in the contextual menu, but support multiple button mice out of the box with no need for drivers. The scenario Gear Live describes is pretty common: "left click or right click?" On a Mac, that statement doesn't come up.
However, I'm sure some people will still complain about the single button mouse. Some people are just looking for nits to pick, and they're looking for excuses to deride Macs, though not necessarily reasons.
Re:Single button rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it pretty common to have buttons that do one thing when clicked and do a different thing whe clicked and held down for a short duration? I seem to remember Photoshop on Macs working like that for most of the tools. Honestly I went years using Photoshop before I realized there were more options hidden there. The same menus could be found by right-clicking in the Windows version.
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Re:It has the opposite effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the WHOLE POINT! The user can't see the options until they start right clicking everything!
Not burying functionality into invisible menus is good UI design. Context menus should replicate functionality that can be accessed through visible controls.
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Re:It has the opposite effect. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has been shipping a one-button mouse longer than anybody else currently in the computer industry has been shiping any kind of mouse.
In this matter, it's not Apple that's being different. They were here first.
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Button confusion? (Score:3, Funny)
Just put one of these six button mice [compusa.com] on their desk and watch their head explode.
Slashdot users only need one button... (Score:4, Funny)
Look, I'll tell you why they use a one-button mous (Score:5, Insightful)
You, you are smart enough to understand the left and right buttons do different things. You aren't apparently smart enough to understand control-clicking, but that's ok. However, since you are smart enough to understand the right mouse button, you are also smart enough to understand that you can buy a two-button mouse. So if your computer comes with a one button mouse, this is not a problem for you. Your grandmother however does not even understand the right mouse button is a button, so if her computer came with a three button mouse she does not have the option of going and getting a one button mouse.
Apple wants to sell computers that are usable by both you and your grandmother.
Re:Look, I'll tell you why they use a one-button m (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Look, I'll tell you why they use a one-button m (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm looking at my Logitech mouse, and it seems to me that this isn't Grandma's fault. The mouse buttons seem designed to look like one button. They're the same color. There's no outline to delineate where one starts and the other begins. They look like one damn button with a crack in it.
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Forced to rethink? (Score:5, Informative)
What? In a lot of applications, if you hold down the button, you get the equivalent of a right-click menu. How in the world does this restrict developers?
Re:Forced to rethink? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a Mac user myself, but its the little things like this that make me like Macs more and more.
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So, let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
With the introduction of the Mac mini, Apple is implicitly getting AWAY from shipping a one-button mouse, since the computer comes with no mouse at all!
So, is there a problem because Apple doesn't make its own branded two button mouse? Maybe we should bash Dell for Logitech making its mice, then! Or is this simply just another opportunity to bash Apple? Frankly, the assertion that it forces developers to actually THINK about shit they're butting into contextual menus instead of just flooding them with crap is a perfectly reasonable one.
I'd pay the extra $5... (Score:4, Insightful)
And please don't tell me that I can just plug in a USB mouse. My Apple-owning friends have suggested that, but it's really not a solution. I want a laptop for portability, not for lugging around external devices to compensate for poor design decisions on the part of the manufacturer.
I'd pay the extra $5 for some more buttons. A wheel would be cool, but I'd settle for 3 plain buttons, like the Thinkpads have. I'd also like to have the option of using a nipple for pointing instead of a touchpad because it just feels better to me, but that's another discussion...
Tech Suport True Story (Score:5, Funny)
While on the face of it, this statement sounds ridiculous, I have experienced cases where it has proved true. I relate the following Tech Support True Story.
me: Okay ma'am, I want you to move your mouse pointer over the My Computer icon and click your right mouse button.
caller: The right mouse button?
me: Yes ma'am.
caller: Which one is the right button?
me: (starting to get annoyed) You have two buttons on your mouse, One on the left and one on the right, I want you to click the right button over the My Computer icon.
caller: Um, your right or my right?
me: (putting my phone on mute and desperately trying to avoid laughing hysterically)
I love this topic (Score:5, Informative)
Then Microsoft eventually adopted the mouse, and made the design decision they often do, that if one is good, more is better, and two-button mice became common. As GUI applications adopted contextual menus off the right mouse button, Apple adopted CMs via control-click. Now the complaint from Microsoft users was that Apple required you to keep one hand on the keyboard. (Assuming they didn't need two hands to use the mouse, I wonder what they needed the other hand for.)
One advantage to using the keyboard modifiers for the mouse clicks is that a meticulously designed application can provide visual clues about what will happen if a modified click is performed ahead of time. For example, when the Control key is down, Apple's Finder decorates the cursor with a small menu graphic to indicate the availability of the contextual menu.
Look, a user is not brain-damaged or deficient for not caring to remember the function of alternate mouse keys. A large number of users (probably 0% of the /. crowd) view the computer as an auxiliary device that's supposed to assist them at their Real Job while distracting them as little as possible with the need for special training and knowledge.
Even some of us who are power users and unafraid to learn non-intuitive gestures (I used to "fat-finger" bootstrap code into PDP-11 consoles using binary switches) are just as comfortable with a single-button mouse and alternative techniques to accelerate our work. It's neither better nor lamer; it's just another way of getting things done.
Finally, Apple is perfectly accommodating to those of you who prefer something other than what they offer as standard. If you prefer another mouse with 2, 4, or 7 buttons, the online store will sell you one, and the OS will support it. No, you won't get a credit for deleting the standard mouse (where offered), but last time I checked (three minutes ago), neither does Dell.
Doesn't anyone here do usability studies? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm flabbergasted at all the posts here that claim that any idiot knows how to work a mouse with multiple buttons.
Doesn't anyone do any usability studies on their applications with "joe six-pack" user types?
I've done a few myself (mostly websites) and nearly every time, there is at least one person who has trouble working the mouse to one degree or another:
- clicking the wrong button
- hesitation of picking up the mouse for repositioning
- disorientation between the cursor onscreen and their hand
And let's not even get started on how many people still have a problem with scrolling down a pageSeems to me a few of you just take your own experience levels for granted
Re:Mice (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the reasons my brother and I decided to recommend my mother an iMac is because of the fact that you are able to do most things with one mouse button. She just cannot see the difference between left and right mouse buttons. She is not retarded at all, but she is not used to computers. Since MacOS can work with only one mouse button, that's something else to worry about whenever she uses the machine or we are teaching her to do so.
Anyways, if you have an interface that needs two mouse buttons to do most tasks, there is something wrong with your interface.
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. That's when it's time to whip that black Sharpie out of your pocket protector and (just like you do with 4-year-old's shoes) put a big 'R' on the Right-Click button, and a big 'L' on the Left-Click button. I've never seen anyone using such a mouse, but I found one marked R and L in the garbage at work once.
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Re:Mice (Score:3, Insightful)
Look (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple dropped the option of the one-button mouse like you people seem to be demanding, my job of tech supporting relatives would get just that much harder. "It isn't letting me check my email! I click the button and nothing happens!" "You're pressing the wrong side of the mouse... again..."
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Re:Look (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, I think some of them take this ignorance as a mark of pride. Being able to say "computers and I don't get along" gives them something to relate to other people with, similar to "did you see 'Survivor' last night?", but more universal. Strangely, when they find that their ignorance is something that helps them relate to people, they tend to foster and exaggerate it.
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No more than five minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I'll bite.
I know (from experience) that it takes at least six years to explain left- and right-clicking to my father, who was 57 in 1999 when he got his first Windows PC. Ever since he found the right button, he has insisted on using it for literally everything, all the time, for no reason at all. Everything that you or I would just click on, he right-clicks, moves the mouse the requisite six inches up to the top menu choice, "Open," and clicks. No amount of explaining will do. He just will not use the left button. Every time I give him instructions and use the verb "click," he asks me, "Right or left click?"
So don't pretend that just because you told your three-year-old, "Only use this button," that everyone else has the luxury of such obedience from users. Many users (yes, PC users) have asked me repeatedly, "Right or left click?" because to them, it's simply not self-explanatory. They don't really understand what a context menu is, let alone the rule that "the right button always makes a context menu appear." My father would waste a lot less of his time if I plugged in an Apple USB mouse to his PC (it works, I tried it.) Of course, it'd be impossible to do certain things, but it's poor software design that requires two mouse buttons. There's nothing wrong with having the option, though. When I'm at my desk, I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer with five buttons. But the right-button is probably my least-used one. When I'm not at my desk (which is usually), I rarely reach for the control key to bring up a context menu. It just doesn't come up.
It's really a pretty unfair comparison to be making. Most cheap PC vendors (Dell, Gateway, etc) were still distributing mice with balls up until a year or two ago. No actual geek uses the mouse that came with his computer. (Heck, no real geek even buys a pre-built PC for that matter.) So why bitch about the Apple mouse? Even if the Apple mouse had two buttons, you'd replace it for the cool MS or Logitech one anyway, for gaming or whatever. The OS supports the context menu. But it also, as a rule, gives you another way to do anything you can do in a context menu. And that has to be a Good Thing.
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Re:No more than five minutes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then one day he tells me "I can't log in to the iMac". "What's it doing?". "I click login and nothing happens." So I go and have a look at it. "Here, let me try". So I type in his user/pass and click login. Having just watched me do the exact same thing he did, he's amazed it works. So I log back out and watch him try it. User. Pass. Click login. Just like he said he did. And just like he said happened before: Nothing.
Then I noticed something. I'd left one of my Logitech MX500 mice plugged in. I'd been using the machine to write up some code at one point and wanted the scroll wheel. He'd been right-clicking on the login button.
He asked "So what button do I click?". I unplugged my MX500, plugged in the Apple (its-all-one-button) mouse and said "This One".
So. There you have it. A perfect example of someone who's been using macs for years that never had to think about a second mouse button and where adding one only caused problems. He wasn't missing any capabilities of the machine or its software (He wasn't using Maya, though
In that video of Jobs demoing NeXT he says one of their usability tests is wether executives can learn the software without reading the manual. The one-button mouse is an extremely obvious-to-use device. Slide it around on the pad and you'll quickly catch on to the correlation between it and the mouse pointer. Then just push on it to interact with whatever you're pointing at.
Oh ya... and I can't stand it when user interfaces consist entirely of 'right click on it!'. It's a really, really, really, horrible way to interact with things and I've had to deal with many applications that worked this way in Windows. They're rare on a Mac, and usually evidence of a poorly ported application.
~Lake
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Is sure is a good thing, then... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is sure is a good thing, then... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that doesn't help Powerbook or iBook users who are stuck with a trackpad with a single button for clicks. Sure, I can attack an external mouse to my laptop but then suddenly I have yet another thing to haul around and they're not exactly easy to use when you're sitting on a bus with the laptop balanced on your legs.
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On this topic, you may be interested in... (Score:5, Interesting)
SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Apple PowerBook and iBook trackpads. With SideTrack installed your standard trackpad becomes a powerful multi-button scrolling mouse.
Leave your external mouse at home and take full control over your trackpad:
- Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
- Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
- Map hardware button to left or right click.
- Map trackpad taps to no action, left click, left click drag (with or without drag lock), or right click.
- Map trackpad corner taps to mouse buttons 1-6 or simulated keystrokes.
- Extensive control over accidental input filtering.
SideTrack is multiuser aware and fully compatible with MacOS X 10.3 fast user switching (FUS). Every user on your PowerBook can have different settings depending on their needs.
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to know what is wrong with OS X's font handling. I assume you're comparing it to Windows. They both use a fonts directory, and they both work the same way: put a font file in the directory and it will be available to all programs instantly.
The key differences being that in OS X you can organize your fonts into sub folders, you can use both Mac and PC fonts (even windows TTFs) and - the really big plus for multi-user machines - each user can install fonts that only they have access to.
So what was it you preferred about Windows's font management?
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User vs. System Font Directory (Score:5, Insightful)
Every user has their own font directory, ~/Library/Fonts. These are fonts that only they have access to. The system font directory, /Library/Fonts is shared by all users.
HBH
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Macs (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you should just stop trying to copy that 17 meg file...
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Re:Macs (Score:4, Informative)
For over 6 years, there has been a popular mac troll about a designer trying to copy a 17 meg file which is taking over 20 minutes on his PowerMac 9600 at work, and that the same thing would be done in 2 minutes on his 'old' 486 pc at home.
I seem to remember the troll containing the phrase 'an exercise in frustration' - so you see when the original poster used that phrase about use of the mac at work being an exercise in frustration, the reply of 'stop trying to copy that 17 meg file' is inherently funny - get it... it's *funny*, "stop trying to copy..."
oh, screw it, I give up...
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the whole problem. To a neophyte computer user, a one-button mouse may well be easier to manage than a two (or more) button mouse. Problem is, how many neophyte computer users are left? Most people have some computer experience, and for better or worse, it's usually on a Windows machine with a two-button mouse. Like it or not, Windows is the lingua franca of personal computers. Telling users that a one-button mouse is simpler is like telling me Esperanto is easier than English. That may well be true, in a technical sense, but since I already speak English, and all my friends speak English, and everyone who posts on Slashdot speaks English, having to learn to speak Esperanto wouldn't make my life any simpler.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love my (several) Mac notebooks, but the fact is that through my experience with Windows and X-based Unix user interfaces I'm accustomed to interacting with the user interface in a certain way out of habit, and when I go for the non-existent right-mouse button and it isn't there, it's a bit of a jarring experience. I understand that Apple doesn't want developers to become reliant on the second mouse button, and I'm fine with that. I also recognize that you can get a mouse with as many buttons as you like, which is also fine.
My problem is with their notebooks, which, while you can get an external mouse for them, that doesn't really solve the problem. Unfortunately, a number of situations you're going to use a notebook in (such as on a train, waiting in an airport, or lying on your couch with your feet in the air) make using an external mouse a royal pain in the ass. Why don't they just make the trackpad/mouse assembly user replacable so third parties can accomodate the needs of people who want a multi-button mouse on a notebook?
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Insightful)
I work tech support, and I had the same question for the first couple of weeks of this job.
In this, as in most things :), Slashdot users have a skewed perspective. They know computers, inside and out, and it is a fair assumption that many if not all of the people they know know computers inside and out. But there are a lot of people out there -- even (and this shocked me) young people -- who don't have the first clue about how to use the machine.
Do I think the one-button mouse is necessarily more appropriate for them? Well, I'm not really in a position to say. The company I work for only makes one-button mice. So I won't comment.
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mice (Score:5, Funny)
That will never happen. The ego is strong with that one.
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YEAH, TAKE THAT YOU MAC USERS! (Score:4, Funny)
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Main Reason: Simplicity (Score:3, Insightful)
Although you and I actually would prefer 3 buttons on the contraption, we are not the typical tech-ignorant consumer. T
Re:Gaming Mouse != Mac Mouse (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Gaming Mouse != Mac Mouse (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ease of use (Score:5, Informative)
The reason they keep the one-button mice on the desktops is so that developers don't expect users to have multi-button mice.
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Re:Confused!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Confused!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be a lot easier to use a touchscreen Mac than a touchscreen Windows or GNOME/KDE box, because they don't make touchscreens where you can right-click.
I imagine an interface optimized for one-button use also has applications in accessibility to disabled users.
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Re:Yes! (Score:4, Funny)
This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where a salesman is trying to sell him the most user-friendly computer ever:
Vendor: It only has one button, and we press it before it leaves the factory
Dilbert: What does that button do?
Vendor: Whoa! I'm in way over my head! Let me give you our tech support number.
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Re:Single button? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I switched to Windows (in the 3.1 days), I had a two buttom mouse, and it wasn't bad. I seem to remember that the second button didn't really DO anything untill Windows 95 came out, but that could be wrong.
But let's talk about normal people. Let's talk about my parrents. With me in the house, we have had computers the whole time. And they use them. They like them. They surf the 'net, look at Ebay, and use e-mail and such. But what do they think of the right mouse button? I use it all the time, I find it a great time saver. They avoid it. They have no idea what it does (despite occasional attempts to teach them). In fact, they avoid the scroll wheel (an even BETTER time saver) too. They don't scroll with it. They don't click it. It's confusing. When they first had to use a two button mouse, weird things happened when they used the right mouse button, it didn't do what they expected (click, open program, etc). So they learned an easy lesson: NEVER CLICK IT. Ever. They don't touch that scroll wheel either for much the same reason (they never tried, they had already learned not to touch the other buttons). They have next to no idea what it's for. It's just there.
My parrents are quite smart (my mom has a PhD and my father has many degrees and has been a CIO). But what about other people I know? As a computer-literate kid (and nerd), I'm the person everyone comes to for help with their computers (installing things, fixing things, teaching them things). They range from people terrified by computers who have to think for 5 minutes before they do anything incase they do something wrong, to people who have a very good idea what they are doing and only need me when things go REALLY wrong. And in all the years I've been doing this in all the places I've lived, almost NO ONE uses the right mouse button. Just one or two. 99% of them have learned to just avoid it.
As much as we nerds like to complain, Apple knows what it's doing. If you feel limited by having only one button, you can buy a multibutton mouse and it works INSTANTLY. If not, you can use the one button. They have the right idea, trust me.
Now my only complaint is with Apple laptops, where you would have to carry a mouse to use the right button (I know about the command-click, that's not the point; and there is software that will let you tap a corner to work like a right click). What I would really like would be for there to be two contact switches under the button on Apple's laptop. It would work just like it does now. It's one solid button, and it works like one button. BUT if you know what you are doing, there is a "secret" option in the OS that interprets things differently. Click the left half of the button, you get a left click. Click the right half of the button, you get a right click. And if you accidently click both at once, that's a left click (just to make things easier). That would give the laptop's a second button, but you'd have to enable it and know what you were doing, so Aunt Tillie wouldn't have to deal with two buttons. I would LOVE this.
But that's a minor complaint. It'll never stop me from buying an Apple laptop.
Apple has it right!
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Re:Single button? (Score:5, Insightful)
> don't touch that scroll wheel either for much the same reason
> (they never tried, they had already learned not to touch the
> other buttons). They have next to no idea what it's for. It's just
> there.
> My parrents are quite smart (my mom has a PhD and my
> father has many degrees and has been a CIO).
Agreed. It's not that they're not smart; oftentimes, it's that they don't care to learn it. My boss is like this. He's smart -- West Point grad, engineering degree, MBA, etc. And he doesn't quite grasp all the details about his computer. The reason is that he doesn't care enough about the computer to learn everything about it. He's a "mainstream user" when it comes to computers, so he's very pragmatic. "What will the computer allow me to do?" That question does not involve him learning much more than the basics. He thought it was cute that I could control my PowerBook using my cell phone using Bluetooth and Salling Clicker, but for him, the benefits weren't important enough for him to care. However, when he got his Blackberry, the benefits of a Bluetooth headset were obvious -- no fumbling for a corded head set. He was willing to put the effort into learning the buttons for the beneift.
My wife's like that too. She's easily smarter than me, but she doesn't care to learn about all the cool stuff she can do with her Mac.
So it's not that the user isn't intelligent enough to learn about the computer (and that second mouse button). It's that the user is pragmatic. If they can do everything they care to do with their computer and never touch the extra mouse buttons or whatever, then they're happy.
Apple has been very good lately about understanding this pragmatism. Many computer enthusiasts see a feature Apple introduces (like Dashboard [apple.com], for example), and says, well conceptually that's similar to a virtual desktop. The difference is that Apple is structuring the feature so that pragmatic mainstream users can use it simply enough that the benefits significantly outweigh the efforts of learning how to use the feature (and remembering about it when you need it).
It's a hard concept for technology enthusiasts to understand, but it's an important one.
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Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Windows has 90% of the market share and Windows crashes a lot, then at the very least crashing a lot is not an impediment to computer usability.
If Windows has 90% of the market share and Windows is prone to viruses and spyware, then at the very least being prone to viruses and spyware is not an impediment to computer usability.
If Windows has 90% of the market share and Windows applications' user interface standards vary wildly, then at the very least user interface is not an impediment to computer usability.
If Windows has 90% of the market share and Windows only works when you stuff carrots up your nose, then at the very least the carrot-stuffing requirement is not an impediment to computer usability.
-Waldo Jaquith
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Re:Laptops (Score:5, Insightful)
But if it's really killing you, there's also sidetrack.
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