Here it comes to save the day
Posted by marshall Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:28:00 GMT
August 2, 2005: a date that will be etched into that big silicon slab of computer history. It was the day many thought would never come. It was the day that thousands, perhaps millions of Mac users around the world shouted in unison: "FINALLY!" It was the day Apple broke with 21 years of stubbornness and joined the rest of the world in providing a multi-button scroll mouse. And of course, they had to get all cute on us and name it Mighty Mouse.
Like pretty much every decent mouse out there now, it's USB, it's optical, it has four programmable buttons, and and it provides a direct way of scrolling through a document using one's index finger instead of having to move the cursor to the scroll bars -- except instead of a scroll wheel, it's got a miniature embedded trackball that scrolls both vertically and horizontally. And the thing that's so beautifully devious to me is that if you didn't know any better, you'd still think it was merely a one-button mouse.
Suggestion is such a dangerous power. I have a perfectly good Logitech Bluetooth mouse, but it didn't take long before that little voice started. "It sure would be nice to be able to scroll this document horizontally," it said. "This Logitech scroll wheel sure feels erratic," it complained. "That sleek, shiny white surface would match my iMac much better than the Logitech gray," it mused. "I want a burrito," it salivated.
So yeah, I caved and bought one.
A Mighty Mouse, that is. Well, I also bought a burrito. But the mouse is what I'm talking about here.
Actually, once I convinced myself I needed one after all, it took me several days to get it. Apparently that sneaky power of suggestion had eaten its Wheaties for breakfast, and all of the Apple stores in the greater Los Angeles area sold out of them within two hours of opening on Tuesday. They told me to call back Monday, which I did, and I was able to get one of the two remaining mice at the Rancho Cucamonga store held for me until I picked it up at lunchtime (along with a Grilled Fiesta Burrito from El Pollo Loco).
I'm liking it a lot so far, though it takes a bit of getting used to. Like the Apple Pro Mouse before it, the Mighty Mouse's entire shell is a single button; press on it, and it rocks forward to activate the click. The difference is that they've added sensors that detect which fingers you're using to click with, so if you're pressing with your right finger, it registers a right-click. It doesn't seem like it should work, yet it does. Here's the lovely thing, though: by default, both "buttons" are programmed to do the same thing. So unless you customize it, you'd think it was the same simple one-button mouse Apple's had for years.
It's a glorious compromise, and NeXT did it nearly 15 years ago. I've been waiting for Apple to do it ever since OPENSTEP got tossed in the blender, seasoned with a tiny dash of Macintosh, and baked into Mac OS X. Of course, the NeXT mice still had two buttons, whereas Apple's solution elegantly removes the question altogether of which button to click. It's simple for beginners, customizable for power users, and developers still need to plan for single-button simplicity. It's so beautiful. Excuse me while I wipe away this tear.
The scroll ball works pretty much as advertised, except that Apple's site would have you believe you can scroll diagonally, and you really can't. I'm actually happy about this, since I was wondering if I'd be constantly scrolling horizontally by accident when I just wanted to scroll down. It works well. My only complaint about the mouse is that -- as others have said -- the side buttons are too far forward. So scrolling is easier, but Exposé is harder. I scroll more than I zoom out my windows, so it's an acceptable tradeoff for me, but I certainly wouldn't mind a redesign that moved the side buttons closer to the center of the mouse.
Interestingly, the Xerox workstations that inspired the original Mac interface had three buttons, which performed different text-selection functions; the guys at Apple introduced the concept of drag selections and brought that down to one, and Mac OS X is still entirely navigable using a single button mouse, though it's supported multi-button scrolling mice since its inception. It was, ironically enough, the popularization of context menus by Windows 95 that really gave the second button a reason to exist, and the (loathsome) classic Mac OS didn't adopt them until two years later...so I guess it's only 8 years overdue, not 21.
And for those of you in southern California, try the Grilled Fiesta Burrito. Mmmmmm.
