“This is the mouse. See how it’s got two buttons next to each other, one on the left and one on the right? Cool. When I say ‘right-click’, you push the one on the right. When I say ‘left-click’, you push the one on the left.”

The problem is that the sorta concept there goes against Apple Design Philosophy; they’re really addicted to the ‘less is more’ concept.

A mouse with a ‘right’ and ‘left’ button is highly modal — instructing people how to use it means you have to describe both direction (right, left, ‘chord’, mbutton, scroll), placement (where you can acceptably click), and type (single click, drag, double-click). A single-button mouse had only placement and type, and Mac software is supposed to go out of their way to really reduce the reliance on ‘type’ modes. Since Mac software is supposed to have every option that you’d use in the Menu bars, it’s supposed to be a lot simpler to figure out, and not require the ‘discovery’ of actions (things having no visible markers until an unrelated action is initiated).

I assume some part of this was done to encourage folk to go straight from Menu-based selection (which are slow) to keyboard shortcut based actions (which are very fast) more quickly than the Microsoft Windows model. That model encourages people to go from menu to right click menu to keyboard shortcuts, with slower transitions to the ‘best’ one.

As a downside, though, the Mac version is less visibly obvious. It’s rather easy to see that a 2-button mouse does two things, at least, while the (originally Mac) double-click convention isn’t a visible action, nor is CelticKnot-click an obvious combination anymore than Win-Click is. [aside : This kinda falls apart when you get to 'chords' (rbutton+lbutton) and mbutton (usually pressing down on the scroll), which are non-obvious and coincidentally avoided for critical features.]

That shouldn’t hurt if you’re used to an entirely Mac system, and thus don’t expect right-clicks, and the software is designed and intended for a Mac system, and thus doesn’t rely on right-clicks and has lots of keyboard shortcuts. Thankfully, there are people other than Apple in this world, though, so you run into a lot of situations where software isn’t built for such a system.

Of course, the problem is that people don’t go Mac for the Software Design Philosophy. Some folk really like the cases or the look of the UI, of course, but you still see a lot of sales of highly modal software, and a lot of the most popular tools in OS X are also the ones with the options of being used in a fairly complex manner.

:shrug: I find the whole damned OS irritating enough that I tend to use the terminal more often than anything else when I need to get something done with those computers, although that’s probably more because I have a load of experience with *nix/BSD and nowhere near as much as OS X.

“If you think you know what you’re doing, menu  (Apple logo) | System Preferences | Keyboard & Mouse; in Trackpad turn on Two Fingers | Secondary Click; in Mouse, reassign right-click to Secondary. You now have right-click.”

is so much easier than

“This is the mouse. See how it’s got two buttons next to each other, one on the left and one on the right? Cool. When I say ‘right-click’, you push the one on the right. When I say ‘left-click’, you push the one on the left.”

Just because Apple does it doesn’t make it simple or easier it’s sheer bloody stubborness because they have to be “different” that they use a single button mouse.

Imagine playing command and conquer, and building an ocean dock (or whatever they’re called), realize there is no water on the map, and then not be able to cancel your invalid building command.

It really can’t do any harm to just add a right click button. It’s IMPORTANT!

Well, let’s see. “This is the mouse. See how it’s got two buttons next to each other, one on the left and one on the right? Cool. When I say ‘right-click’, you push the one on the right. When I say ‘left-click’, you push the one on the left.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in games, but it’ll save your brain when you’re blogging.