Wow - leave the one button mouse alone

[Eric D.]

on 17/4/02 14:37, Robert Brandtjen at rob@prometheusmedia.com wrote:

> short term, let alone the long term - while we're at it, HEY JOBS DROP THE
> DAMN ONE BUTTON MOUSE. I can no longer imagine life without a 3-button mouse
> - truly enabled system. And I much prefer the unix copy/paste method over the
> Mac way, love that "highlight/click middle button" routine, fast as hell.

Hey, leave the one button mouse alone!!! I couldn't live life without my 4
button TurboMouse & would love one of the 5 or 6 button Kensington
trackballs, but I know my dad, girlfriend & aunt love their one button
systems: no problems with differentiating between left- right-clicking (let
alone figuring out three, four and five button setups), you _always_ click
with the correct button, etc.

For people who are computer geeks and have invested a lot of braincells into
learning computers (as most of us must have done to be using/experimenting
with Linux) a multi-button mouse is a way of life (especially since Linux
started (popular) life in the multi-button world of Intel).

For people who care only about using a computer I've seen multi-button mice
& Windows cause no end of grief (& yes, Windows will cause grief but this
grief is caused by the multiple buttons).

I have seen sooooo many moderately computer literate people ignore their
second mouse button on an Intel machine and using menus instead of
right-clicking that I really don't see an advantage to a 2nd mouse button
for your typical computer USER (as opposed to geek). Personally, I live and
die by the 2nd mouse button on Windows machines but that's because I'm also
the type of person who likes to be able to program my F-keys to do things
(it's really annoying that OS X doesn't have the OS 9 Keyboard F-key
functionality anymore)

My aversion to multi-button mice is that _no_ operating system (including
Linux) has ever managed to standardise the function of the second mouse
button within its OS.

But, yes, Apple should provide better second/third/fourth mouse button
support than it does in OS X (I'm happy enough they at least have the scroll
wheel supported).