From the Rhetorical Questions Desk here at the House of Hum
As part of the CIO's everyone must be Mac friendly push, I now have a new MacBook -- the all white plastic model, not the spiffy machined aluminum job. It's a speedy enough machine, with a nice display. OS/X is, just another UNIX with pretty GUI on top. But the keyboard ... ugh. And the track pad...?
Apple has taken their "fewer controls are better" approach one step further -- there is no button. None. The whole track pad is the button. Of course, the OS is rife with instances where a right-click is required. So, Apple wants you to use two fingers on the pad ... to emulate a right-click. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? It's a nice machine, with a nice OS, whose usability is totally hamstrung by an asinine pointing device.
I am deeply amused by the fact that I get the best results from this machine when I plug in my USB optical mouse ... made by Microsoft.
As part of the CIO's everyone must be Mac friendly push, I now have a new MacBook -- the all white plastic model, not the spiffy machined aluminum job. It's a speedy enough machine, with a nice display. OS/X is, just another UNIX with pretty GUI on top. But the keyboard ... ugh. And the track pad...?
Apple has taken their "fewer controls are better" approach one step further -- there is no button. None. The whole track pad is the button. Of course, the OS is rife with instances where a right-click is required. So, Apple wants you to use two fingers on the pad ... to emulate a right-click. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? It's a nice machine, with a nice OS, whose usability is totally hamstrung by an asinine pointing device.
I am deeply amused by the fact that I get the best results from this machine when I plug in my USB optical mouse ... made by Microsoft.
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And yes, unless I'm just pulling out the laptop to check something really quick, I always have a USB mouse plugged into it. I see the touchpad and the nipple mouse as equally bad solutions. Back in the 486 era, some folks were using little mini-trackballs, which I kind of liked, but even that isn't a substitute for a real three-button mouse.