Judy Perry wrote:
I knowe you and others doubtless believe this. So, a uni-button mouse scores higher on 2 out of 3. Not bad. As for 3, productivity, that's something that comes later, as an advanced skill
The majority of people who buy computers today have used one before. There are no doubt many who haven't (likely the majority of the world's people), but from a manufacturer's point of view the main question is "Who's buying our boxes and what can we do for them?"
So among those likely to buy computers, in the 21st century apparently Apple believes the market has matured enough to warrant two-button functionality.
While learnability is important, learning happens exactly once. From then on it's all about productivity for the rest of one's computing life.
By providing a mouse that people's productivity can grow with, Apple may indeed be risking the learning curve for a subset of their market. But given Apple's dedication to learnability I have to trust their judgement on this.
Besides, even if I disagreed with them, would they listen to me? The multi-button functionality is about to become the universal standard, whether we disagree with Apple or not.
It would seem that the minority who may have trouble learning computing with multi-button mouse functionality are the ones Apple is now suggesting purchase a specialized mouse.
Another issue I have with the right-clicking is that it sometimes seriously violates Schneiderman's articulation of the direct manipulation paradigm in that the user can sometimes right-click on nothing in the middle of nowhere.
Where in a modern GUI is "nowhere"? Even the Desktop is a place, and has properties.
So, I'm happy to hear of another uni-button Apple mouse.
Apple's new mouse a multi-button mouse in terms of functionality. Whether Apple succeeds in a cleaner design to provide that functionality, or instead confuses people by making the delineation between left and right unclear, remains to be seen. Sometimes they get it right (the iPod wheel) and sometimes not (the hockey puck iMac mouse).
-- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal _______________________________________________________ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
