Saturday, May 29, 2004

The Single Button Mouse

Yes indeed, Apple's Pro Mouse is truly a joy to use ... for about five minutes. After that, most folks over the age of five unplug the thing, put it in a drawer and hook up a two-, three-, four-, or five-button mouse so that they can get some real work done. -- Inside Contextual Menu Items, Part 1 by Steven Disbrow

Steven Disbrow has once again ignited the long Mac argument over the single button mouse, with his two part article on contextual menus, titled “Inside Contextual Menu Items, Part 1. I won’t argue against the benefits of a two-button mouse, primarily for intermediate and pro level users. But every time the issue comes up, it seems that most people underplay the value of the one button mouse.

The value of the single button mouse is its simplicity. It’s never going to do what you don’t want it to do. It’s a pointer. The single button mouse is a tool that can be used for selecting, moving, dragging, dropping, or clicking items. You’ll appreciate this if you’ve ever had to provide support to a newbie PC user. I’ve spent years providing careful instructions on this problem or that, only to often have to back track and find out if the user left-handed or right-handed; do they have a two-button mouse or three-buttons or more; do they know what right-clicking is or does; or did they have some friend set-up their nice little three-button mouse, but don’t really know what the two-extra buttons are suppose to do.

This isn’t saying that your average computer user is stupid, they aren’t. This says that simplicity benefits us all, until it doesn’t. Steve Jobs introduce the Mac with a single button mouse. The single button mouse, especially, as now rendered by Apple, is a thing of beauty. But it’s also a very powerful tool for a user trying to harness the power of some insanely great machines.

As is the case for most things in life, people move on, the graduate to other things. A bicycle with training wheels, eventually replaced your tricycle, and then the training wheels came off. Then maybe years later, you started using a 10-speed or a mountain bike. For some, you can’t even imagine going back to a single speed bike with a back-pedal brake. You’re off, and nothing will ever be as good, as the next best thing.

This is not the story for all computer users or bicyclist for that matter. Continuing with the bike metaphor, some of us grow up and we’ve used 5-speed, 10-speed, ultra-lights, mountain bikes, and have even taken a hand at doing tricks on dirt bikes and the like. But then comes a longing for simplicity. So we might go out and buy a Schwin Cruiser, a beautiful single speed bike, built just for coasting around neighborhoods, parks and or beaches. It’s perfect for us. We can do everything we want with it, or with a little more effort we can make it do things it wasn’t suppose to do, and or it can share space with something built to do other things, like a mountain bike.

Life moves fast, 5, 10, years gone by with barely time to pause and consider. But if you have considered, then you know to take pleasure in the little things. This is where a single button mouse fits in, as training wheels for those grasping with the complexity of computers, to a work of art for those of us who understand the complexity but have built our lives on simplicity.

Do I own a two-button mouse? Sure, a nice $29 Logitech USB mouse. It mostly sits in my desk drawer, but every so often for client projects, or when my work life has seem to escape the bounds of my control, I pull it own to get that feeling that I am master of my domain. It’s illusionary, but enough to help me feel like I’m accomplishing something, until my brain finally sees past the trees and notices a forest. Sometimes the forest is frightening, but it’s inexplicably out of my ability to control. But often, its just the reminder I need that there are greater things in life, and enjoying them is more important than ransacking them. I take a deep breath, look out a window, clean my desk, and bring back my single button mouse.

A clean desk, a clear head, and bright sunlight are often the key ingredients to a sublimely happy moment when clarity of purpose makes things easy to accomplish, and the single button mouse (and lately the trackpad) have been there through each revelation.

Your average user doesn’t need a two-button mouse, so I often get frustrated when these discussion turn to the doom of Apple, “Damn them, damn them to hell...” for not creating a two-button mouse. I have to take a step back and think simplicity is often hard to comprehend, especially in a multipurpose, multi-functioning, multifaceted world. So I can and have argued that if you want a two-button mouse spend $20 and get one, if Apple made one, surely it would cost more than the Apple Pro Mouse, which costs over $60. But I won’t.

This post is just a simple appreciation. The single button mouse is often a revelation. I seek it out in times of clarity when my work brings me great joy. So salute, “Long live the single-button mouse.” Thank you Apple for sticking to your guns.

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