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Comment by karmakaze | Hacker News Reader

I wondered if Apple would ever say that you want more than one mouse button. They started having an option to use each side of the mouse as a separate button (even if it looked like a single one and defaulted that way), but I've never heard that two buttons are better than one from Apple. With Steve gone, who even cares now?

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When Apple was designing Mac as personal computer for everyone, a single button mouse is truly godzillion times better than two button. There used to be an Apple guideline on how to move a mouse and not to lift the mouse up into the air, but mapping the horizontal plane of the mouse to the vertical plane on the screen. Even that was difficult for some people.

People just dont realise how normal people have problem with mouse. Of course as we progress I think Two Button mouse could make sense as default. The role of PC also changed. The PC for everyone is now an Smartphone.

One button is better than two, for people who don’t know how to use two. I imagine the number of such users is higher than most of us here assume.

> One button is better than two, for people who don’t know how to use two.

It's like the three seashells. They don't know how to use them.

In the early days of Macintosh they tried hard to make this true. The excessive and inconsistent use of click vs double-click in apps even then was confusing.

These days it's hard to find an app that can get by without Cmd+click which is harder than click on the right button, which would be even easier if the right button was physically distinguishable. Long-press is super annoying as well as force click--I never want the action that comes up when I accidentally force-click. With the prevalence of touch phones, the two-finger-tap might be the easiest of them to remember (if not as precise).

The primary input device to Apple hardware is the trackpad, so it’s kind of irrelevant. But two button mice have been well-supported since classic Mac OS circa 1997-1998.

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