It Feels So Primitive

I have been blogging all week on a MacBook. When I get home, I am going to right-click for hours and hours.

: Zubon

14 thoughts on “It Feels So Primitive”

  2. Seriously, what’s with the still-insistence for one button mice? Is it just because it’s an identifying trait or does Apple still (I cannot fathom this) think it’s better?

  3. If they thought it was better, they wouldn’t put so many necessary functions in right-click context menus. For the record, though, touchpads are terrible control devices as a whole. My Macbook goes nowhere without a small mouse.

  4. Just leave two fingers on the pad while clicking, then you’ll have all the context menus you need :)

  5. Heh, I just switched colleges this semester and am taking a digital arts class and they just installed a new Mac lab. So there I am, using photoshop, having to relearn ctrl+z and how to right click, getting a little aggrivated.

    And what’s worse is I come home and use photoshop on my PC and I start trying to use the similar Mac command (i.e. alt+z), which screws me up even more!

  6. A one-button mouse is better for total novices. Try explaining right-click to someone who hasn’t used a computer heavily before, and they’ll just get confused. Microsoft doesn’t care if everyone is confused. Apple prefers to have things Just Work, and let you enable complex stuff later.

    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.

  7. xwn’s got it right. I had the same frustration when I first bought my Macbook Pro, and it was such a relief to find the solution. Just put your index and middle finger down on the trackpad with one hand and click with the other, and you get your right-click functionality.

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

  8. “A one-button mouse is better for total novices. Try explaining right-click to someone who hasn’t used a computer heavily before, and they’ll just get confused.”

    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.”

  9. Unfortunately, I often use Boot Camp and run Windows XP on my mac. When I play certain games that require a right-click, it gets very, very frustrating.

    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!

  10. Yeah because telling someone this

    “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.

  11. It should be noted you don’t have to use Apple’s mice either. Any USB mouse will work. For playing WoW, I used to plug in my trust wireless two-button mouse. It should also be noted that even the Mighty Mouse that comes with Apple’s computers now has right-click functionality. Yes, it’s off by default. No, it’s not actually that difficult for a novice to enable it. Yes, you can right-click without enabling it (command+click). I play EVE Online now with nothing but my Mighty Mouse and never have any trouble.

  12. “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.

  13. I used to think Apple cared about interface and useability until I saw OSX. For all it’s “lickability” I looked at the three colored buttons and thought “how do I know which one is which?” It just seemed about appearance more than useability. Especially when people made fun of windows for putting the X button right next to the min/max buttons.

  14. This is more commentary than I ever get. I am switching to a permanent “lol macs” subject matter. Our hit count is going to go through the roof.

Comments are closed.