> You know, I'm a mac convert through and through, but for a company that favors simplicity so much that they create mice with just one button, I've never quite understood why there are SO many modifier keys on a mac.
The two are very closely related.
Even though Jobs claimed for years that a secondary click was unnecessary, the market disagreed and very soon, applications started offering a context-sensitive menu, but since you only had one mouse button, you had to use a modifier to simulate that right click.
Jobs never changed his mind, one of the things where he remained wrong until the very end (Macs never shipped with two button mice nor trackpads).
The new mouse detects double touch to show a context menu, though right? At least that's what I heard. I've always immediately discarded the included mice, windows or pc, for a logitech.
The first Apple mouse to support right click was the Mighty Mouse, released all the way back in 2005. I believe it wasn't a double touch, but rather would detect what side of the mouse you were touching at the time. (This required you to lift up your left finger to do a right click, which was pretty dumb.) Not too long after, every Mac portable started shipping with trackpads that interpreted a two-finger click as a right click. The idea that Jobs never changed his mind on this is pretty obviously wrong.
I believe it is also an option that had to be turned on in the OS, and that by default it still worked in one button mode.
The thing I like about the "one button" philosophy is that it meant that you never needed to use the second button to access something. There was always a menu or some other way, the right-click was just a shortcut (so I've heard). There were things in Windows and common applications that couldn't be accessed without a right click. It's also less confusing for new computer users.
Of course today, that's all basically gone. I'm sure some people use one button mice and are happy, but everyone I know ends up with a two button mouse or enabling the right-click function on the mighty mouse/trackpad. And it wouldn't surprise me if there were right-click only functions.
The two are very closely related.
Even though Jobs claimed for years that a secondary click was unnecessary, the market disagreed and very soon, applications started offering a context-sensitive menu, but since you only had one mouse button, you had to use a modifier to simulate that right click.
Jobs never changed his mind, one of the things where he remained wrong until the very end (Macs never shipped with two button mice nor trackpads).