So, this Christmas my in-laws got themselves a nice new computer, complete with Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The Mighty Mouse has a ‘pea’ for scrolling, and the pea is also clickable. The mouse itself is also clickable (and even supports left and right clicks, although these are turned off by default). The surface of the mouse is smooth and featureless, except for the pea. The left and right clickability is handled via either capacitance or a proximity sensor, I’m unsure which.
So, on Boxing Day, my mother-in-law complains that whenever she clicks the mouse on her e-mail, all she sees are the Calculator, dictionary and weather, and when she clicks again they go away.
Of course, by Apple’s factory default, clicking the pea brings up the Dashboard. Which is silly really, as people who don’t know they can click the rest of the mouse will be naturally drawn to the pea (well, it’s used for all the scrolling, why not the clicking too?)
Really, the default for clicking the pea (now there’s a euphemism waiting to happen) should just be a mouse click, and people can change it when they are comfortable with what they’re already doing. If they never change it then they’re unlikely to be really missing it, and I doubt that the Dashboard is what they’d choose anyway (I think I’d probably go for Expos?…¨©).