They should start rating keyboards by the maximum touch-type speeds that they can handle. I'm sure typing that fast cannot be any good for the standard keyboard, which are probably designed for the average punter single-finger typing at 20-30wpm.

BTW, your touch-typing speed is very impressive. I've been put in my place; I was always pretty chuffed at my 50-60wpm!

Macbook = best keyboard I've used, even compared to the old Apple scissor keyboard. It's nice and loud too.

WEll you get people who are n00bs to computers and might press the right mouse button to try and get into the start menu or to try and type a letter....

Older people are probably better off with Macs instead of Wintel PCS... Imagine how many of them would delete the start menu and not bring it back!

I love my mac but I also love my microsoft mouse. Ok so shoot me! But really the main reason to swap was one of the programs I was using almost all the time at work was designed for PC and you had to do everything with right-click and yeah yeah yeah, could use control-click but much faster with one hand!
So while one button is great for mac apps, us mac users living in a PC world like the 2 button mouse. But there's that mac genius again. Compatibility compatibility compatibility. Just plug in your windoze mouse and you're set!

IMHO, one button mice are only useful for peoole who have lost one arm in the war.

THAT WOULD BE WORLD WAR 2!!

Dave

... you mean, TWO buttoned mice? 'Coz, if you've lost an arm, it'd be very difficult to CTRL-click.

I'm not convinced. Developers put stuff in context menus for the sake of productivity - accessing it with a right-click from the CONTEXT-sensitive object, instead of spending extra time finding a menu or a shortcut. This is true mostly of high-end apps that are require mouse movement for creative input. Their second decision is whether to replicate all commands in menus or not. This decision is based on a variety of factors:
- whether commands are individually scriptable or whether they need to be in a menu to be scriptable through calling a menu option
- whether cluttering up the main menu bar with repetition is desirable or undesirable
- whether the app is designed so it can be used without a mouse, i.e. entirely by keyboard and/or shortcuts.

Not included (these days at least) is the one-button-mouse factor. Even mac-based dev ignores it, knowing that users have the knowledge that the control key is there for those who don't replace their mouse.

Ever used KDX?

rtc: I kinda disagree... I haven't seen a mac app (except some cross platfom 3D stuff) that doesn't work properly with just one button. Good OS X app design shouldn't require the second button for the app to function.

Or do you? Let me rephrase myself.

The reason software developers put in context menus (under the right mouse button, usually) is for productivity's sake, to get the commands closer to where the action is. Sometimes this is duplicating menus from the menu bar, other times moving them altogether so they can only be accessed by a right-click. This decision is based on other factors (in my post above), not how many mouse buttons the user has.

I'm not saying the number of buttons on your mouse is irrelevant to the users of these apps, just that it wasn't the main driver for the developers decisions of whether to effectively REQUIRE access to contextual menus to enable all the functionality (whether by second button or control key, they don't often care).

This is most prevalent in high-end or pro apps, e.g. sound, video and 3d production (traditionally in the realm of Macs) and engineering/CAD apps (traditionally in the realm of PCs).

Apple apps (e.g. OSX, iLife apps, etc as well as, yeah, garageband, shake etc.) aren't really covered by the above comments as they are made by apple and yes, perhaps they deliberately keep it 'simple' by using one button. I too have noticed that many 3rd party apps with traditional homes on Macs (e.g. Adobe/Macromedia etc) cater for one-buttoners who don't wanna control click.

You may or may not still disagree with me, but I hope I have clarified what I was trying to say earlier.

Is it actually true that the Mighty Mouse default to being a one button mouse when plugged into a newly opened Mac? I seem to remember it was a two button mouse by default but I could be wrong.

In my opinion, the WORST thing about the Mighty Mouse is it's Exposé launcher when pressing the two side buttons. I've watched countless Windows and Mac users get frustrated with this.

And why sacrifice smoking with your left hand while doing it ? The very concept of a one-button mouse is archaic and should have been done away with many years ago. They're crap for gaming as well. =)

It's true. One button by default (last time I checked).

I don't like the side buttons, so I disabled them.

spectre: You might love your context menu like that, but I think it'd be a huge mistake to ship an OS like that. What a mess!!! Services menu anyone?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying contextual menus are bad in general. I think they are great for productivity. Where I hate, hate, hate them though is where they are used in software without any indication they exist and where they present commands that are only available through the contextual menu. 12D for example uses them to delete, clear, copy, paste, etc in input panels (like a spreadsheet) but the only way you can find they exist is to right click on everything and see what happens. My theory is that by forcing developers to consider the single mouse button users, you are forcing them not to create horrible designs like that.

There's really no excuse for that style of interface design, other than laziness.

I agree, it's not good design practice. But I don't see how the number of buttons on a mouse influences these bad designers... they just ignore it because they know about the control key, and continue to to punch out poorly designed software... wheras the good ones who don't do that, probably weren't put off because of the one-button-mouse, but just wouldn't dream of doing something so shoddily in the first place.

Is there anything in the guidelines issued by Apple for API software development that "recommends" making everything accessible to the one-button mouse without necessitating the need for a control key?

Yes.

"Always ensure that contextual menu items are also available as menu commands. A contextual menu is hidden by default and a user might not know it exists, so it should never be the only way to access a command. In particular, you should not use a contextual menu as the only way to access an advanced or power-user feature."
From: http://developer.apple.com/documenta...section_5.html