The reason the original Macintosh mouse had only one button: so users would not need to remember which one to click. That was a Jobs mandate.
To this day I see most people do not understand right-clicking, and why should they? Context menus are not in-your-face obvious, let alone right-click dragging and other esoteric maneuvers.
I see something similar with touchscreens too: Most people don't know much beyond pinch to zoom. Any gestures or input involving 3 fingers or more is literal pig latin.
Simplifying the mouse down to one button is an engineering decision that aligns with human psychology, even if it's one that rustles the jimmies of many nerds and beards.
uh, except for their physical placement and accessibility with a given digit, sure.
This was the reason why Microsoft introduced Minesweeper to Windows 3.1:
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190925214943/https://mentalflo...
"Decades later, in 1992, the Microsoft version Minesweeper was introduced to Windows 3.1—not to demonstrate that Windows was an adept gaming operating system, but to make the idea of left and right clicking second nature for Windows users, and to foster speed and precision in mouse movement."
On the other hand: if you do consider these coincidences to be spurious, I won't urge you to change your opinion. Instead I give a famous quote from the movie Matrix:
"This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes… Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more…"
(quoted from https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix/transcript/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)
https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Commands
Even today, I posit that twitch video games train future developers and users on UX/UI features. In a mobile or web GUI, there are moving targets; there is progressive rendering; there are ephemeral dialogs. If you've played DOOM and Fortnite, then you're better equipped for all that.
> Microsoft originally put Solitaire into Windows to soothe people intimidated by the operating system, according to Duzan. It gave them something familiar and fun to do with their computer while it also taught them how to use a mouse. Not surprisingly, for years Solitaire was the most-used application for Windows, Microsoft officials say.
> Minesweeper got in because, at the time Windows 3.1 was released in 1992, it was the favorite game of everybody involved in creating that software, including overlord Gates.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/03/09/...
I switched to OS X in 2006 or so and have never enabled right-clicking on any of my mice (with the exception of the occasional game that requires a right-click action).
For casual pointing, clicking, dragging, the one-button mouse does exactly what I want and nothing more. For more advanced mouse gymnastics, my left hand is usually hovering over Control/Command/Alt/Shift. I feel like I've got the best of both worlds.
Except the top of this mouse was one piece of metal that rocked left and right for left or right click. It was impossible to do both at the same time.
-> Bin
I’ve been on Macs for 16 years now and every single Apple mouse I’ve ever used was utter crap.
Computers are tools. Do you see grinder manufacturers say "we only need one type of disk, because people should not have to remember whether they need a diamond blade for masonry or a metal cutting one?" You do not.
There is a frame in which Jobs is correct - the frame in which computers are not tools, but devices intended for the passive consumption of content produced by others. A frame in which tool using never requires skill acquisition (a total inversion of tool use among (at least) humans for (at least) 10's of thousands of years.
No, he was wrong, and if he was right, I refuse to live in that version of the world.
No, it is an imperative driven by capitalism. Employees don't want this. Tool users don't want this (because as you note, if the blade can cut everything it likely doesn't cut anything very well).
The motivation for the kind of tool development you're referring to is not the development of improved tools, but reduced labor costs (and sometimes, possibly, tighter tolerances). That's not a model for tools explicitly marketed (by Jobs!) as tools for everyone.
Haha. Sounds like Java/C#/Go. All corporate (Oracle/Microsoft/Google) languages. Coincidence? ;p
Likewise, Apple mice only ever click. It doesn't left and right click.
Speaking more broadly, Apple computers only ever do One Apple Way(tm). They don't do One Apple Way(tm) and also IBM-compatible/Windows/Linux.
Tools are supposed to be simple in design, because their value is in them delivering results quickly and easily for everyone. And most people using computers want results because computers are tools, they couldn't care less about the process other than keeping it as simple as possible.
I would be the last person on the planet to defend Jobs or Apple's philosophy, but I will give credit where credit is due because they by far understand human psychology the best out of everyone in the tech industry.
Precisely. It's like DeWalt or Milwaukee only making a diamond blade, because "you never need to cut metal, and you shouldn't have to think about that anyway".
> Tools are supposed to be simple in design, because their value is in them delivering results quickly and easily for everyone.
This is not the history of human tools.
According to your theory, most people should cut their extra fingers, because it is too difficult for them to remember that they can do and they should do different actions with each finger.
The user must input eventually the same information with a 1-button Apple mouse or a 2-button Microsoft mouse or a 3-button Mouse Systems mouse.
An Apple user must compensate the lack of mouse buttons by either making multiple mouse clicks or pressing simultaneously with the mouse various keyboard keys.
All these additional actions are slower, more complicated and harder to remember than the task of a user who must just choose with which finger to click.
So no, the idea that a one-button mouse is simpler for the user is just wrong. In fact it is both slower and more complicated.
I think you see a lot less power-users these days in the heyday of the mouse oriented GUI. Even in my own usage of computers I find right-clicking less significant now than 25 years ago.
I even despised the two-button Microsoft mouse.
Both were much worse than a three-button mouse, when the buttons were used cleverly by the user interface. The replacement of the third button with the scroll wheel has started for me the process of finding alternatives for a mouse and eventually abandoning its use.
Most people have never seen a user interface that uses properly all the three buttons of a mouse, so they have no idea how much better that can be than having an uncomfortable scroll wheel in the place of such a button.
Such a good user interface was used for instance around 2000, when you could still find Logitech three-button mice, in the Mentor programs for drawing circuit schematics and PCB layouts.
The third button was used for making mouse gestures, i.e. tracing some pattern on the pad. Each mouse gesture was pretty much equivalent with pressing a keyboard shortcut, but being able to use them with the mouse enabled the user to make most drawings without ever moving the hand from the mouse to the keyboard, which sped up the work a lot.
Scrolling was done in a much better way than with a scroll wheel, by just moving the mouse cursor close to the window side corresponding with the desired scroll direction.
Bring back IRIX. Those guys had everything figured out and it worked great.
If I had to guess, I've probably lost all progress on something around 30 times just from pull to refresh. I'm not even sure how some of these features are legal without any kind of toggle... I can't imagine they're great for anyone with movement disorders.