Why can't Apple make a good mouse?

After being an OS X convert for a little over a year I’ve finally given up the battle with the Mighty Mouse. First I had the wired version which came with my iMac, and admittedly I thought it a little uncomfortable, but hey, I have lots of things to get used to with switching, perhaps the idiosyncrasies of an Apple mouse are one more thing. After playing awhile I managed to get used to the awkward left click (where you have to physically life your left finger off the mouse, otherwise it has a preference to treat uncertain clicks as a primary click), and even began to find the squeeze buttons useful, so I upgraded to a bluetooth version.

So far so good, everything seemed fine and I was really enjoying the mac experience. But then the problems began, starting with an odd tendency for my right-click technique to just stop working for no apparent reason. In fact, on some occasions I even lifted my entire hand off the mouse, clicked the right-hand side, and still no contextual menu! This began to get frustrating, so I resorted to the tried and tested method of holding down ‘control’ and clicking (the obligatory mac ctrl+click). Now you may think, dear readers, that this may have seriously irked me enough to ditch the Mighty Mouse, but no I did persist. This was partially due to the money the mouse had cost me, but also because I read a very interesting article exploring Apple’s persistent emphasis on a single-button mouse. I’m not sure where the original article is, but I shall reiterate the main points here to illustrate why limited right-click ability was not a deal breaker for me. Basically, the one-button mouse has a twofold advantage, firstly, it’s simpler and therefore more intuitive to only have one button to use, and secondly, it prevents bad programming. In relation to the first point, as the original author rightly pointed out, many problematic calls made to IT services are from people who have trouble understanding that some programs require you to access ‘hidden’ functions by clicking with a different button, upon which they’re unsure whether they should be further clicking within the contextual menu with the right button or the left. For those of us used to power-using with right clicks these mistakes seem pretty silly, however, they do highlight an important fact, right-clicking is not necessarily an intuitive function. In relation to the second point, the Apple philosophy is the not-so-crazy idea that all a programs functionality should be available without the need for contextual menus (something I do really agree with), because lazy programmers will often tack-on features into contextual menus as an easy-fix, which represents poor design and un-intuitive computing (something I may write an article about soon). All this amounts to the fact that right-clicking is much less of a necessity in OS X than it is in Windows (though perhaps I just prefer keyboard shortcuts these days, it seemed more necessary in Windows but it may not be), meaning that troublesome right-click behaviour was still not a deal breaker.

My real issue with the Mighty Mouse came when the little scroll ball (or mighty nipple, if you like) just stopped working. I cleaned it, I blew into it, I held the mouse upside down, nothing. That was really the last straw with me, I need to scroll, I really hate using the scroll bar in browser windows, dammit Apple! For a company who can seemingly revolutionise touch-screen computing, create the thinnest laptop in the world, and apparently come out of nowhere and create arguably one of the most successful mobile phones of all time a mouse seems like a small ask. But no, the Mighty Mouse is an absolute failure, Apple tried to be too clever and it just doesn’t work. I gave the Mighty Mouse a year of my life, and it repaid me with nothing. I just hope that soon Apple will suck in their gut and say ‘actually the Mighty Mouse was a problem, here you go, have a mouse with some physical buttons everyone can use.’ But you know what, I bet they don’t, because at times Apple are just far too stubborn to admit when they’ve made a mistake.

I now have a Logitech VX Nano, and you know what, I couldn’t be happier. Come on Apple, get a grip.

Thoughts? Comments? Feel free to leave them here.

Do Psystar deserve to go bankrupt?

As many of you may know the online computer manufacturer Psystar have filed for bankruptcy during their long-standing legal battle with Apple over supplying computers with OS X pre-installed. Specifically, Psystar was intentionally breaking Apple’s EULA by claiming that the proprietary nature of the OS was against fair-play rules of the market place. Apple, in-turn have started a very lengthy and expensive legal retort that not only claims a break of their EULA, but that the methods used to install the OS infringed upon the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, presumably because the PCs in question had to use a hacked version of OS X. This filing for bankruptcy seems to show the court case is slowly coming to end, with Psystar running out of money, presumably because it’s backers may have stepped down. This in itself is an interesting point, as the equity creditors will have to revealed in court, so those who have been secretly supplying cash to Psystar (who, lets face it, are a tiny company who would never have been able to keep this court case running for so long on their own) will be revealed...one can only speculate on who it may be, if it turns out to be a big competitor to Apple I’m sure there will be even more hell to pay.

All this legal mumbo-jumbo aside, the real focus of this blog entry is to consider whether Psystar were in the right not necessarily legally, but morally, to provide OS X on their machines.

First of all the reasons behind Apple’s iron grip on its OS must be considered. I think this may be an easy one, basically it’s because OS X adds value to a machine in a way Windows could only dream of. If Apple produced their products with Windows installed I very much doubt their market share would be anything like it is now, and furthermore I doubt their pricing could be sustained either. The core to the Apple computing arm is the OS, clear and simple, it’s the OS you pay the premium for, and as such Apple don’t want anyone else using it, because despite how nice their products are from a hardware point of view a large percentage of people would stop buying them if they could get the OS elsewhere for less.

Secondly, Apple sells an experience. As Steve Jobs has said ‘those who love software build their own hardware,’ which neatly sums-up Apple’s entire view of the computer market. As anyone in the know will tell you, the majority of BSODs on Windows are due to bad drivers, namely the hardware and the software aren’t playing nice, and one of them inevitably throws a tantrum. The whole of Apple’s ‘it just works’ ethos would come crashing down if OS X were licensed out to other companies, because then OS X would be become completely open to all the Windows problems mac users often claim superiority over.

With this in mind I can see how Apple would have a momentary heart-attack when they discovered some tiny company has taken their OS and are selling it to people on potentially incompatible hardware. Now, Apple are ruthless when it comes to legal-battles, really ruthless, and despite the fact Psystar wont have made even the tiniest of dents to Apple’s revenue stream they went straight after them. But are Psystar really that bad? After all they’re doing what Apple have refused to do for years, make their products affordable for the average user. Macs are seen as luxury items, and as such there is a premium, but sometimes Apple comes across as plain greedy (take their online prices for RAM upgrades). Now I’m all for more affordable macs, but obviously you don’t want the quality to falter either, it’s a balancing act, but lets be honest the one reason holding many switchers back is the price, and I’m pretty certain there’s something Apple could reasonably do about it.

I must say, I quite like the peppy little underdog throwing a finger up to the big companies, however, I also understand that if someone buys a Psystar machine and has a problem using OS X (which was never designed for that computer) they wont blame Psystar they’ll blame Apple, thereby denting the reputation of the OS. Now I’m not trying to sound too much like a fan-boy (though that ship may have long sailed), but what I don’t like are uninformed lies, and someone who buys from Psystar, has a problem, blames Apple and then goes around telling everyone that OS X sucks is lying. It would be like buying a pirate DVD of an incomplete screening of a movie and saying the movie sucked because the image quality was poor and the special effects were bad.

Despite Apple’s reputation for nasty legal battles, I must say I think they were in the right this time. Psystar broke the law, but more than that, I think they were morally unjust in potentially creating poor computing experiences on the back of Apple’s OS. In addition, the continuing claims by the company that they didn’t do anything wrong, and that because of their size they didn’t have to keep financial records are a joke. It’s going to be interesting seeing who’s been behind them all the way, but as far as I’m concerned Psystar got everything they deserved.

What’s your view? Comments are always welcome (as long as they are posted in a considerate nature, this is a debate not an argument).

Switching 101 or: why that little red x just wont close your application

Here is a re-post of an entry I placed on http://geeks.pirillo.com explaining the differences between window behaviour in OS X and Windows, enjoy!

When you tell people that your are a principle OS X user there are usually three types of reaction. First is the fairly technology ambivalent general member of the public who will say ‘oh really,’ and continue with their daily lives, probably completely unaware of what OS X is. Secondly is the Windows fanatic who will take this statement as a challenge, viciously prompting you to prove why OS X is better than Windows, usually to a slurry of statements about hardware being the same and cost differences. And thirdly is the type of individual who inspired me to write this blog, the curious one who asks you to show them OS X, explain the differences, and highlight the advantages and disadvantages over Windows or Linux.

It is this kind of user with whom I often find myself sitting down and sharing my stories of switching, and showing them the ins and outs of Apple’s OS, calmly answering their questions and demoing the features. However, there are two questions I always get asked, why doesn’t the green plus make a window go full screen, and why doesn’t that red cross close the application. Both these questions concern window behaviour in OS X, and for those who have ever been confused, unsure, or just unaware of the difference I dedicate this entry, because there is a rhyme and a reason why windows behave the way they do in OS X, and if you sit close children I shall explain.

First, let us deal with the easier of the two explanations, the green plus button. Now, as those in the know will often tell you this button is not called ‘maximise’ (or ‘maximize’ if you live over the pond) but ‘zoom’. This difference may seem trivial, however it highlights the important difference between the two behaviours, the same way in which ‘fullscreen’ commands are never called ‘zoom’ commands as this would imply that the resolution remained constant but the image was stretched to fit. When a user presses that green button the window is resized to fit all the necessary content, whether it be a webpage or a Pages document. To put it more simply, the window resizes so that the user has no need for horizontal scrolling. But what about all those apps which seem to go fullscreen when I press the green icon I hear you cry! Well, there will be two reasons for this, firstly the program is a Windows port and the developers did not both to learn about window behaviour in OS X, or, the windows content is not fixed in place, and is relative to the window size, in which case it will resize to the last biggest size set by the user. Simple eh! It all makes sense when you know how.

Now then, let us deal with the Windows switchers number 1 error in OS X, thinking the red button closes an application. To understand why this doesn’t happen a few things must be made clear. Unlike most (if not all) Linux distributions, and Windows, OS X makes a clear distinction between the program itself, the functions of the program, and the contents of the program. This distinction will admittedly seem foreign to users of any other OS, however, it works as follows: the program itself is the dock icon, the functions of the program are the menu bar, and the contents of the program are the windows. Once this distinction is understood then the behaviour of the windows becomes apparent, and makes an awful lot of sense. Closing an application is either a function of the application, or something you do to the program as a whole, and as such this function is provided either via the menu bar or the dock. The red, yellow, and green buttons are on the window, and are therefore a function of the window meaning green zooms the window, yellow minimises the window, and red closes the window. The key difference is that in Windows, despite the fact the minimise and maximise buttons only affect the window in question, the cross closes the entire application. If you do not consider a window to be the whole application, the close button should only close the window, simple!

I hope that all made sense, I was very aware that I was writing ‘window’ and ‘application’ an awful lot. If there is one thing to understand from all this (other than I’m a sad bastard for writing a blog entry about application behaviour) is that in OS X a window is a window, and as such the coloured buttons on the window will only affect the window.

Now there is more to all this, however, I feel I have tortured you all enough. Sufficed to say some apps will close when you press that red x (shock horror!), however, this is to do with the usefulness of having an application like System Preferences open but running in the background, namely none. I am also not going to delve into the murky waters of why this method of using applications is better or worse than the Windows or Linux way, all I will say is that it is what it is, if you wanted to understand why then hopefully by now you do, or else I must apologise for putting you through this geeky exploration of the logic behind OS X.

Until next time, adieu.