Apple's Mighty Mouse, am I missing something? (Updated, again)
The Button That Wasn’t
Alas the fate of the one-button mouse in today’s multibutton world. Who has time for intuitive, elegant design when there is so much clicking to do? Thanks to a smooth top shell with touch-sensitive technology beneath, Mighty Mouse allows you to right click without a right button. Capacitive sensors under Mighty Mouse’s seamless top shell detect where your fingers are and predict your clicking intentions, so you don’t need two buttons — just two fingers. Click on the left side to use Mighty Mouse in its simplest, single-button form. Click on the right to access contextual menus within applications and edit, copy, label or download from your mouse. It’s simple sleight of hand.
Am I missing something?
How is not being able to see that there are 2 buttons user-friendly? Looking at the mouse, you have no idea there are 2 buttons. They are also "touch-sensitive". When Grandma brings her Mac home, grabs the mouse, and right and left clicks start firing off, seemingly for no reason, how is she supposed to know what's going on?
Update, 10 minutes later: After I posted this I thought about what they should have done with a multi-button mouse. Apple should have either color-coded the button areas or put symbols on them, like videogame controllers. That way, the OS can detect that the Mighty Mouse is connected, and if the programmers desired, they could show the representative symbols or colors on the screen for the user. That way the user can relate what they can do with the software to what is available to them on the hardware. You could even have some special hot-key to bring up the symbols/colors for mouse.
Not to mention, support personal could say things like, "Touch the triangle on your mouse." The user would know exactly what they are talking about. No more (allegedly) confusing, "right click" requests.
Update, a few hours later: I was looking over the Might Mouse page again and saw this:
"On Mighty Mouse, the entire top shell is the actual button. As with previous versions of the Apple mouse, simply press on the upper surface to click — the body pivots up and down to actuate the clever click mechanism."
So, I guess you touch the side you want, then push the whole mouse down? I got to use this thing...
posted by Michael Sica at
7:59 AM
10 Comments:
It can still act as a 1-button mouse for the die-hard Mac people. It won't "fire off" left and right clicks if you use it in traditional Mac mouse style and push down on the top of the mouse.
This mouse is more for the people who want and know how to use mice, not for Grandma. I doubt they will be bundling this with new Apples anytime soon.
Hi Nathan!
Are the "invisible" buttons disabled by default? How do you push down on the mouse without coming into contact with the touch-sensitive areas?
I probably missed it, but I didn't see anywhere that said the whole thing still acts like the current no-button mouse. All I saw was, "Click on the left side to use Mighty Mouse in its simplest, single-button form." (But I didn't look very hard.)
If I had a Mac, I'd probably buy one. It looks frigg'n cool, and I'd know how to use it.
"Stick with single-button simplicity or click with multibutton efficiency."
that says to me one button style works.
could be wrong. let me know when you put your paws on one.
It's difficult to tell. I wonder when they'll show up in the Apple stores.
I'm probably the biggest non-Apple-owning-Apple-lover. :(
I love Apple to bits but sometimes they do seem to favour aesthetics over usability. I bought Microsoft's Philippe Starck mouse as a suitably stylish accessory for my PowerBook, but I have to admit that the trackpad is so good that I rarely bother to connect it.
Also, I find Ctrl + click to get context menus to be quite handy on the PowerBook.
"they do seem to favour aesthetics over usability."
I love how Apple then spins the simple aesthetics as easier to use. :)
I just updated this blog post with another.... update.
Aha!
:)
:)
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