Aug
02
2005
Mighty Mouse

Wow, Apple made a two-button mouse… Kind of. Sort of. I’m confused. This new mouse offers the functionality of a two-button mouse, along with some kind of special “squeeze the sides” feature that effectively works like a third button. All in a mouse that looks like it has zero buttons.

The whole reason Apple didn’t come out with a two-button mouse was that they felt the second button would confuse users. So, they’ve “solved” this by providing the same functionality, but with no affordance as to where the two buttons actually are?

I know Apple loves clean design, but Logitech solved the “two buttons but no buttons” problem much more elegantly than by making the buttons completely invisible.

I’ll bet that for a frequent, experienced user, this mouse will be greatly productivity-enhancing — once you get used to it. But Apple technology used to be incredibly easy to use for beginners because of clean design, not in spite of it. There is absolutely no justifiable reason for not delineating the separate button regions, aside from Apple’s design aesthetic, which is diverging more and more from the “form follows function” ideal as time goes on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 at 11:16 am and is filed under Gear and Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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