“Stop the presses: Apple has discovered the right-click!” Lee Gomes “reports” for Forbes.
MacDailyNews Take: Ooh, so exciting! An article about August 2, 2005, the day on which Apple introduced their first multi-button mouse, Mighty Mouse, which allowed for “right-clicking” offering another option for Control-clicking (the same as “right-clicking”) that was introduced in Mac OS 8, released on July 26, 1997. Not sure about the need to “Stop the presses,” though, as Forbes themselves reported the launch of Apple’s multi-button Mighty Mouse on August 2, 2005.
Gomes continues, “Usually not much should be read into announcements of new peripherals from computer companies. But a new mouse from Apple is an exception, because it seems to mean the end of a lengthy period at the company in which a good idea became a bad policy.”
“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,” Gomes reports. 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.”
Gomes “reports,” “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.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s new Multi-Touch™ “Magic Mouse” that was unveiled yesterday is not Apple’s first multi-button mouse. Again: Apple’s first multi-button mouse, “Mighty Mouse,” debuted on August 2, 2005 and Macs have had “right-click” for over 12 years.
Gomes continues, “Earlier this week, though, Apple introduced a mouse… [that] 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.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: UFB. Five seconds of simple research of the very publication for which he’s writing could have saved Lee from being enshrined in the Moron Hall of Fame (located in Redmond, WA). Five seconds. Quick, somebody over at Forbes show Lee your new MacBook Pro with its buttonless trackpad and please have Photo Booth ready to snap a photo of his flummoxed expression for his Hall of Fame plaque. His can go right next to CNET’s Molly Wood’s.
Contact Lee Gomes:
Knowledge of the Mac before writing about it would also saved you from being enshrined in the Moron Hall of Fame (located in Redmond, WA), Lee. Five seconds.
Not wanting to read the article … Did he somehow manage to overlook all the multi-touch functionality?
No matter how stupid you think people can be, you’ll always be surprised.
Found this want ad that got this guy hired:
“Wanted: YOU TOO CAN PULL STUFF OUT OF YOUR ASS! Someone who can write stuff, not fact check or research what he or she writes. Will be paid top dollar. Experience not necessary or preferred.”
Didn’t Kensington used to sell multi-button devices long before Apple’s Mighty Mouse?
I remember using a two-button mouse with my iMac G3 (OS8.6). Must have been 1999. That right-clicked quite happily…
Molly Wood is a huge moron
AND THIS GUY GETS PAID TO WRITE?!?!?!?!?!?
there is NO excuse, what a lazy luddite
attention MDN, you missed an even bigger cock up after the jump. he thinks the multi-touch functions ‘like a trackpad’, so you don’t have to move the mouse to reposition the pointer.
Right-click never worked on my mighty mouse. I just tried it again. Again, it doesn’t work.
God I’m an idiot. I should be fired for embarrassing my company, family, and friends. I’m sorry to all of you readers, I swear I’m not this biased or incompetent. Love, lee.
er, try turning it on in system prefs
@ George – Did you adjust the settings in System Preferences? It may not be enabled by default.
George,
Have you tried going into SYSTEM PREFERENCE and under the MOUSE section, enabling the SECONDARY button?
I personally liked how one of the comments on the Forbes site said that there has been two button clicking for quite some time and then proceeded to put a link to a Forbes article from 2005 saying just as much. Thumbs up their a$$es.
” it robbed a generation of Apple users of a genuinely useful bit of hardware.”
Hardly. It simply provided an opportunity for the likes of Logitech, Kensington, and even Microsoft to sell two button mice to Mac users. Jeez, it’s not like we COULDN’T use a 2 button mouse.
Lee, you ignorant slut.
Twelve comments on the article, all negative to Gomes.
http://rate.forbes.com/comments/CommentServlet?op=cpage&sourcename=story&StoryURI=2009/10/21/peripherals-design-hardware-technology-breakthroughs-mouse.html
Reported by a high white horse souse.
It is funny that although Apple has had right click for years and have even had, now two, of their mice able to easily and naturally perform it, they never actually had a ‘right button’. It was only when they went to ‘no buttons’ that they implemented it. It’s like they have a phobia of right buttons. Maybe Steve could only sit on his left cheek when he was being potty trained.
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mighty mouse right click is turned off by default. It is interesting to note however that if you plug in a standard two button or scroll mouse to any Mac with USB (going back 10 years) right click is there and works great!
If you guys check out the article, make sure to read the comments. They are hilarious and the author of the article is getting completely blasted!
So… now I suppose the world is now wondering when Apple will “discover” the middle-click button.
In all fairness here, I have to say that MDN pointing out that Apple really made their first two-button mouse in 2005 pretty laughable. Aside from how lousy that the Mighty Mouse really is, 2005 is very late in the game to be catching up to the rest of the world. I’ve been using a two-or-more button mouse since… 1994. Probably longer. The slowness of the tech pundits in realizing Apple has had a 2-button mouse for 4 years now is eclipsed by the slowness of Apple in actually providing one.
@ myself
Make that: “I’ve been using a two-or-more button mouse since… 1989. Probably longer.” The first PC I bought then came with a 2-button mouse. And the ones I was using in college before that certainly had two.
The author also has early mouse history confused. Mouse manufacturers added second and third buttons early on, true, but it’s incorrect to say that it “didn’t take long” for interface designers to figure out what to actually do with them.
For many years the extra buttons were a solution looking for a problem — probably because it’s easy to add a button, hard to use it well. It wasn’t until Windows 95 that the “pop-up menu” notion became entrenched.
And I’m supposed to pay these clowns for their investment advice? Seriously?
@ Zeke
Exactly my thinking. If this is the type of idiot they hire, their investment qualifications are extremely suspect.
There’s a handful of magazines out there that really should stay far, far away for all things technical… and Forbes is one of them!
He probably just came out of a coma and thinks it’s 1986.
I don’t believe the Mighty Mouse, OR the Magic Mouse, fulfill the precise definition of “two-button mouse”. Neither actually has “buttons”. Yes, I understand that the Mighty Mouse offers the functionality of the “three-button mouse” – “left”, “right” and “scroll-WHEEL” – but … all I can see is the “scroll wheel”.
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Not saying this is in any way a Bad Thing … you should see all the crud around the buttons on this “real” “three-button mouse”. Once you get used to the way they work – I never have – they offer many benefits. And the Magic Mouse is even better – I’m told. A sort of combination between the Mighty Mouse and an advanced track pad. Something else (I believe) Apple invented. But, I don’t expect to own one any time soon. My loss.
This sort of thing has been going on since modern journalism.
Mark Twain wrote “How I edited an Agricultural Paper” in 1870.
Good stuff.
this is hardly surprising… most of the general population does not understand the first thing about the Mac and Apple and so on. My logitech mouse has so many buttons I don’t know what to do with all of them most of the time. I am very curious to try the new magic mouse though…. looks awesome!
Gormless Gomes!
He must be right. He is a trained, approved journalist. Probably even went to college for it.
They are always right. They are pros.
Yeah, right.
I agree with one of the comments at Forbes (ALL of which are negative on the article). Forbes should cut its losses and end its embarrassment by removing the article. An apology wouldn’t hurt either.
Why contact Gomes? Send an email to the Forbes editor stating how lazy “reporting” hurts their reputation.
Anyone see that Microsoft store opening – It look like Microsoft paid the people to stay in line as they all showed up 1 to 2 hours before..Let’s see how long the crowd lasts
There is no excuse for a tech writer to not know what’s going on in a field they are writing about. All he had to do is read a few press releases. Trouble is people read this crap and believe it. You wouldn’t believe how many people still believe that Macs are “too expansive”, “there’s no software for a Mac”, or my favorite “Apple still makes computers??, I thought all they made were iPods”. It never ends.
I bet Lee Gomes’s Mom had a favorite saying when he was growing up. “Stupid is – as Stupid does”
Just FYI, in response to what DLMeyer said. The Mighty Mouse was actually a 4 button mouse. Left and right clicks, clicking while the scroll ball was pressed down for a middle click, and clicking the sides.
“Hello Steve?, Hi, this is Steve. Calling you to apologize for the article. Sometimes our staff swallows a dumbass pill and get lazy on research. So, again, sorry. On another note, Steve, congrats o making Bob Mansfield Senior VP of Mac hardware. Chris Farley’s and Meatloaf’s love child can only make things better.
See you Sunday at the Billionaire’s luncheon.” *click*
it appears Mr. Gomes is not even as smart as we give him credit for. he’s now added a comment to his article in defense of what he wrote – now claiming what you always had to pay extra to buy a “high end” mouse with more than one button. meanwhile he fails to understand the Mighty Mouse has shipped standard for many years and is NOT a one button mouse.
don’t they teach anything in 5th grade anymore?
LOL…. I’ve read stupid before, but this guy is way past that word with this article. Ahahaha…. what an embarrassing piece of work.
Forbes Magazine, the place to go for investment information, apparently cannot check simple hardware facts. Just the people I want to trust when I invest my retirement money.
Where’d my song go?
Lee Gomes is a moron.
Eric Willard is a moron.
Billy Gates is an OS thief.
Steve Ballmer needs the hair club.
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