The Mighty Mouse Roars

After 21 years of denial, Apple has finally ditched the one-button mouse in favor of – a no-button mouse.

Apple's Mighty Mouse, on sale Tuesday for $50, has a near-seamless, touch-sensitive surface that can be configured as a one- or two-button mouse. It also has a scroll-ball mounted on top, which can scroll vertically and horizontally, and a couple of buttons at the side.

"Click, roll, squeeze and scroll. This mouse just aced the maze," says Apple's website.

The Mighty Mouse also contains a little speaker that makes button-pushing sounds and ball-rolling effects.

The move to more buttons is a long, long time coming.

The one-button mouse was originally a genius piece of dead-simple human/computer engineering that dovetailed nicely with the stripped-down GUI of the early Mac. But as the machine and its interface became more complex, the one-button mouse became an anachronism.

For many years now, Mac users have purchased multi-button mice from third-party manufacturers (Microsoft makes a great and popular optical scroll-wheel mouse).

Even Apple admitted the shortcoming several years ago when it added "contextual menus" to the operating system; followed by built-in software support for multi-button mice in OS X.

As Wired News reported when Apple finally supported multi-button mice:

"In the world of the Mac zealot, this is huge. Apple's famous one-button mouse is as symbolic of the easy-to-use Macintosh interface as the icons and windows. But these days, it is often derided as a hopelessly outdated anachronism and the debate – one button or two? – has been raging in Mac circles for a while now.

Those who would do away with the one-button mouse say it prevents easy access to commands that in other operating systems are available with a simple "right click." Instead, Mac users risk their carpal tunnels by constantly scrawling across the screen to menu bars at the top.

Bruce Tognazzini, founder of Apple's famous Human Interface Group and a frequent interface critic, said the move to a two-button mouse is about time.

"The two-button mouse is seven or eight years overdue," he said. "There's no point of harming the efficiency and behavior of the system any more by having a one-button mouse." The one-button mouse, introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, was central to the Mac's ease-of-use philosophy.

The "father of the Macintosh," Jef Raskin, recalls fighting with other members of the Mac design team for a single-button mouse. Apple based its mouse on a three-button model developed at Xerox's famous PARC research center.

"It was faster and more efficient, and much easier to learn and remember how to use," Raskin wrote in a memoir. "I had observed that people (including myself) at PARC often made wrong-button errors in using the mouse, which was part of my impetus for doing better."

David Morgenstern, a Mac veteran and former editor of MacWeek, said Raskin didn't even want the mouse to "double-click" – he wanted a one-button, one-click device.

"Mac users have always said Windows is so complicated you need another button to get to all the features," he said. "But 95 percent of the world uses a two-button mouse. It certainly is the natural evolution of the Mac's interface. People like the two-button mouse, so why should they be denied?"

Third-party developers have added "right click" functions to Mac software for some time. Users of most Web browsers can bring up "right click" menus by simply holding down the mouse button.

And mouse manufacturers like Kensington, which makes a line of popular multi-button mice for the Mac, have developed software that adds "right-click" functions.

Even Apple seems aware of the shortcomings of the one-button mouse.

In recent years, the company has added "contextual menus" to the Macintosh operating system. But to activate them, users must hold down the control key while pressing down the mouse button, which more or less defeats the purpose."