Stop the presses:
Usually not much should be read into announcements of new peripherals from computer companies. But a new mouse from
One of the key ideas behind the design of the Macintosh computer in the 1980s was the mouse, which controls the cursor’s position in the two-dimensional space of the screen, and which also, by clicking, allows the user to specify some action for the computer to take, like “open this document” or “go to this Web address.”
It didn’t take long for computer designers to realize that if one mouse button was good, two were better. The left button could be used to highlight something; the right, to allow the user to choose from a pop-up menu of possible actions that changed according to what was selected. And so most of the world quickly moved to two-button mice.
But not Apple. Someone there early on read about some research in which computer users were said to be confused by a two-button mouse. That research, real or imagined, reinforced Steve Jobs’ predilection for a less-is-more aesthetic of computer design, which in other circumstances is an admirable trait. In this case, it robbed a generation of Apple users of a genuinely useful bit of hardware.
Of course, there were always two-button work-arounds for Mac users. You could plug in a Windows-style mouse, and the Mac would make use of both buttons. You could also turn a standard Mac mouse into a virtual two-button unit by pressing a key when clicking on the mouse, or program some high-end mouse products–like the Mighty Mouse–to do the same.
Nonetheless, Apple remained at its core a one-button company; you could do worse than call it a religious thing.
Earlier this week, though, Apple introduced a mouse that uses new technology to solve old mouse problems. Instead of sliding the mouse around the desktop, you can slide your fingers along the top the mouse itself; the entire unit functions much like a touch pad on a notebook computer.
Relevant to our discussion here is the fact that the new mouse simulates having two buttons; tapping in the upper left corner sends a different signal to the computer than tapping in the upper right corner, as if they were separate physical buttons. And so comes the promise of Mac users being freed from the shackles of their uni-buttoned hell. Welcome to 1985!
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Editor’s note: For clarification purposes, we added the phrase “like the Mighty Mouse” in the sixth paragraph after the story was first published.