Yes, I remember reading a review of the Lisa when it was introduced, and they spent a lot of time talking about this strange new “desktop” environment, with “icons” and a “mouse”. It was actually quite difficult to imagine what it would be like to use the computer, it sounded so radically different!
So while Apple may not have invented any of those things, as far as the masses are concerned they did introduce them.
Cad/Cam packages generally did not use “mice” - they used digitiser pads with pucks and pens - similar, but a digitiser measures absolute position (mice measure relative motion). Digitiser systems were point accurate, and had template based menu systems. A drawing could be taped to the digitiser and transcribed into the CAD package. Setting up digitisers and templates in Autocad was always a bit of a mission. I hated it.
As for the mouse, it became successful because (like many things) it is a fairly natural hand/eye co-ordination operation that is easily picked up. I hate playing FPS games on my son’s XBOX360. The twin joystick control seems really un-natural. Using a mouse and WASD on a PC is much better, IMHO. Must look for an XBOX controller for me to use…
Si
That’s why I can’t understand cymk’s preference for a wacom tablet for mouse operations. A small tablet lacks accuracy, a larger one requires big hand movements.
The short answer is that a small tablet does not lack accuracy. The human hand is capable of very fine movements. I used an A6 pad, a Wacom Grapphire, instead of a mouse for a very long time. I switched to avoid RSI.
How did the mouse overcome manufacturers before they tried to get it to take over consumers? I thought the path to glory was the demonstration Steve Jobs saw of the mouse and a GUI, and he’s pretty well known at being pushy in the workplace IIRC.
I probably used the wrong term, but I’m not sure what’s the right one.
I’ve got an A6 pad myself and although I agree it doesn’t lack accuracy in the technical sense, I found it very difficult to use accurately as a mouse (its fine for drawing) - I found it particularly tricky working with menu bars and other things near the screen edges - it just felt like I was going to fall off the edge, and this translated to a kind of involuntary reluctance to go there.
I’m still not expressing it all that clearly, I know. Compared to a mouse, using a small tablet as a mouse felt a bit like using a mouse inside a bowl.
Yes, but my point is that prior art is what would have made it impossible for Apple to keep other companies from making mice or implementing mouse support.
As with many other things (iPod, for example), Apple didn’t invent the mouse, but they did make the first mass-market machine that required a mouse to run. Without Apple, we would still have mice, but it might have taken many more years…
Anyone who is interested in this period of computer history should read “Revolution in the Valley” by Andy Hertzfeld (one of the original Mac team).
I just want to say what “an early adopter” of mice like myself thought about them at the time.
I did use Xerox Altos quite a bit back in the late 70s-early 80s. And using a mouse was just The Right Tool. It really made doing basic work on a computer so much simpler.
While the Alto didn’t have the whole “GUI”, individual programs were programmed to use it in a way similar to current programs. The WYSIWYG word processor I used was Bravo. You could use the mouse to move the cursor to a selected point, select characters, words, lines with clicking and so on. The graphics program was something called Griffin. Basic shapes, bezier curves, fills, etc. You could use the mouse to drag points around to move things, alter shapes etc.
I had used light pens on graphics workstations before, but mice were just so much easier to do the same things and more, there was no looking back as far as I was concerned.
(I also use the followup to the Alto: the Star/Dandelion/8010. Just a bad product made too late.)
I do remember, later at another place, that one of my fellow faculty members got a NeXT workstation, his first computer with a mouse. He started out making fun of it. Claiming it took too much time to move his hand from the keyboard to mouse and back, etc. Within a few weeks he was praising it.
Note that lightpens, joysticks and pen-pads have a problem that mice don’t: you can’t take your hand off them and come back later with the cursor in the same spot. As for trackballs, I’ve used them and never liked them.
So I think it all comes down to user experience. Users like mice.
We used ‘mice’ for digitizing maps back in the early '90s.
This wasn’t a roller ball though. It was used on a tablet or table to pick up the feeds and position. We called them cursors. My first one had 12 buttons.
We called this a “puck.”
These are both digitiser tablets, as I noted above… They don’t work anywhere else but on the tablet.
Absolute and accurate, as opposed to mice. I wrote some tools using digitisers, some stuff to digitise printed/handdrawn graphs etc. It was fun but hard work. The Three-D point digitiser I played with was even more cool, and that was in '93/94.
Si
Actually, they were quite useful in DOS word processors like WordPerfect. My dad’s computer had one that I remember using well before Windows came out.
Yeah. That’s it, “puck” not cursor. It was quite advanced for it’s time. At least for me.
Apple did pay Xerox for those graphical interface ideas. It’s not unlike buying a company to get their technology, or paying a company to do your research work for you.
Light pens always sucked; they were never really precise, and depended too much (in those days) on the raster scan, limiting their usefulness to only specific displays. Trac balls aren’t ambidextrous, unless you design them so that they suck for both users. Mice (in my own experience) are much, much more precise and easier to control than a trac ball. I suppose that in another sense, mice are also more natural than trac balls, especially for novices. I remember that lots of tube jockeys used to love their space-mouse, which was really a track ball, but with an extra dimension of motion.
I used one from time to time in '87-'88 working at a place that made rubber stamps, engraved signs, big banners, etc. We’d use it to digitize art like company logos and such to transfer them to our engravers and vinyl cutters for putting on name plates and signs. It had a little target with a crosshairs made of very fine wire encased in a clear plastic sheet about the size of a quarter. I think the one I used had about 8 buttons.
Ah, yes. I know what you mean. I’ll bet you had a pad which used relative and not absolute placement.
Because the computer is used for more than just word processing or data entry. Anytime you use the mouse for either application you are slowing yourself down by taking your hands off the keyboard.
The mouse is great for graphic applications and it’s use has become so integrated into the GUI that it’s even used in word processing.
Exactly like that! In fact, my earlier recollection aside, I think that four-button model was the one I used. I blame the unusual arrangement of the buttons for confusing me about the number. 
