Why did the computer mouse catch on?

Factual Questions
41

[QUOTE=Balthisar]

…
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.
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I think this is largely because PC track balls are too light and tiny. I think a large, heavy track ball makes it easy to control both large scale and very precise movements, and do it quickly. What I would point to as a model is those track balls on old arcade video games - the ones about the size and weight of a bowling ball, that operated as smooth as silk. At one time I used one of those old Kensington track balls that was slightly smaller than a pool ball, and rather liked it. I only gave up on that idea when optical mice started coming in, and allowed getting rid of moving parts which got dirty and failed (yes, I know there’s optical track balls, too).

42

Track-balls were used for some of the same functions as the mouse, and were around well before the invention of the mouse. The problem was that they were large and expensive, so you only tended to see them on systems, like military air-defense systems and antenna control consoles, where price wasn’t an issue and the software was designed to use them.

43

[QUOTE=mks57]
and the software was designed to use them.
[/QUOTE]
How could software be specifically designed for track balls, given that they do precisely the same thing as mice? How does an application tell the difference? (Hell, how does the OS tell the difference assuming standardized connectors?)

44

[QUOTE=Derleth]
How could software be specifically designed for track balls, given that they do precisely the same thing as mice? How does an application tell the difference? (Hell, how does the OS tell the difference assuming standardized connectors?)
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WAG: before “drivers” were common intermediate pieces of software, programs were hard-coded to take direct input from any device they were written to interface with rather than letting the OS get in between.

45

[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
WAG: before “drivers” were common intermediate pieces of software, programs were hard-coded to take direct input from any device they were written to interface with rather than letting the OS get in between.
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I know that. That’s why I specified standardized connectors: The computer can’t tell what it’s talking to because the signals look the exact same regardless of what’s sending them. That idea has been around long enough I can’t quite believe people forgot it briefly during the era that military system was designed. It seems like precisely the thing a contract would insist upon.

46

[QUOTE=Derleth]
I know that. That’s why I specified standardized connectors: The computer can’t tell what it’s talking to because the signals look the exact same regardless of what’s sending them. That idea has been around long enough I can’t quite believe people forgot it briefly during the era that military system was designed. It seems like precisely the thing a contract would insist upon.
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There were few existing standards for many of these systems. Much of the hardware was custom designed for the application the system was designed to support. New technology forced designers to invent their own standards. Every computer company had their own way of doing things, and even internal standards changed at a rapid pace due to advances in technology. They might buy a track-ball sub-assembly from an external vendor, but they would design their own housing, power supply, I/O adapter and driver software. Something like a track-ball might be tightly integrated into another system like a radar console. In many cases there might not be any software, just custom hardware. CPU cycles were precious and expensive. People often forget that before the invention of the microprocessor, “doing it in software” was usually not an option.

47

[QUOTE=Quartz]
Ah, yes. I know what you mean. I’ll bet you had a pad which used relative and not absolute placement.
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Actually, no, it’s a pad with absolute placement, it’s precisely that that makes it feel weird - no acceleration and you have to go right to the edge of the pad to make the cursor go right to the edge of the screen - which just feels wrong to my muscle memories.
Also exacerbated by the fact that you can’t slide the mouse cursor right along the edge of the screen like you can with a mouse - because with a tablet, this means the point has moved off the sensitive area.

I suppose maybe I could get used to it with a bit of practice, but there just wasn’t any need to try.

48

[QUOTE=Will Repair]
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.
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Actually, you’re probably doing things faster most of the time if you’re using a mouse than if you try to do everything by keyboard. The only case where you might actually get stuff done faster is if you’re very highly trained or are using extensive macros and other customizations to speed things up. Most of the time you’re keyboarding you just feel like you’re getting things done because you’re mentally busy doing that task, but actually you’re taking more time than you would if you used a GUI to do the same thing. AskTog:

Apple probably popularized the mouse, but GUI-driven OSs were on their way sooner or later. The first all GUI Macs were groundbreaking because they brought that graphic interface to the consumer level. Like others said, it was mostly higher end and specialized users who had the benefits of the technology before. If Apple hadn’t created a pervasive GUI and the tools for developers to make software for that environment, someone else would have done it eventually, but it might have gone differently. As it was, it took a long time for any other company to even copy what they did.

The mouse itself isn’t that big of a groundbreaking idea. It’s basically an inverted trackball with buttons on it. Trackballs are sometimes better than mice, in my opinion. I used to use a wireless thumb-ball Logitech instead of a mouse until it broke on me after a few years of hard use. I’m mostly mobile now and don’t game as much, so I never bothered to replace it. I still prefer a trackpad to a mouse most of the time though. I get annoyed having to pick the damn thing up all the time to avoid running off the pad, or having things on the desk get in the way. Plus, it gives me a stiff neck sometimes because I’ve never had a nice ergonomic desk to work at and I always end up having my right shoulder hunched up unconsciously so that my wrist doesn’t get strained oddly.

Apple has always used a combination of internal innovation and adopting established technologies to get things done. I’ve never gotten the impression that either Jobs or Apple claim to always innovate every single piece of their products, just that they always try to push for new promising technology and for improvement and polish in the next release of either hardware or software. Take a look at OS X for a prime example; it’s a combination of old, proven, established tech, open source, and a bunch of core technologies created in-house. Every new release has been a bit faster, more stable, and included new capabilities and other improvements. Some things have been truly innovative (like Expose), but most are just solid and polished implementations of things that have been around for years or even decades.

49

Back when there was a Computer Museum in Boston, they had a giant “walk through” computer, showing you the parts of the computer. They had giant motherboard, and giant speakers, a giant monitor, a giant keyboard*, and a giant – Trackball.

I suppose they wrere worried about making a working mouse that large (the Trackball was functional, as was the monitor), partly because of the technical problems, but I suspect more because the kids using it would’ve been trying to run each other over with it.

But I’m sorry they never made it. I could just see the Warner Brothers cartoon cat emerging disheveled from the room it was in, gasping out
[spoiler Giant…Mouthhhhhhhhh[/spoiler]

*After the Boston Computer Museum closed, some of its holdings went to Menlo Park, CA, where a new museum opened up. Part went to the Boston Museum of Science, including the Walk Through Computer. The giant keyboard keys were up on the wall in the Computer section for a while.

50

Concerning huge trackballs:

There’s one thing I wish Logitech, Kensington or somebody would notice - it isn’t really necessary to expect the user to operate the buttons with the same hand as the ball itself. For a large trackball, you get a lot of control by palming the thing and moving it with your whole hand, not just your fingers. That makes clicking buttons with the same hand awkward. When I’m in “point with the mouse” mode, my non-mouse hand isn’t doing a damned thing which is computer related, in fact, it’s often resting in my lap, scratching various parts of my anatomy, or supporting my chin with my elbow on the desk. It could easily click the buttons. Why not make the buttons a detachable thing that could live on the other side of the keyboard if you preferred. A scroll wheel could go with them. And make the ball at least the size of a grapefruit.

If such a thing were available, I’d probably try it, if it could be had at a reasonable price (THAT might be the rub. The mounting to give the correct feel to a large heavy trackball is probably expensive to manufacture). But, then, I’ve tried lots of pointing systems over the years, including one of those gyroscopic things you wave around. I’ve been using a Logitech cordless mouse for the last few years, since they wised up and made the base station a recharger cradle. That always seemed an obvious way to cope with the fact that cordless mice are horrible battery eaters, but a lot of their models are shifting away from that again. I don’t understand why.

51

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]

[spoiler
Giant…Mouthhhhhhhhh[/spoiler]
[/QUOTE]

Is there some special corollary to Gaudere’s Law that covers this type of situation? :slight_smile:

52

[QUOTE=Sleel]
Actually, you’re probably doing things faster most of the time if you’re using a mouse than if you try to do everything by keyboard. The only case where you might actually get stuff done faster is if you’re very highly trained or are using extensive macros and other customizations to speed things up. Most of the time you’re keyboarding you just feel like you’re getting things done because you’re mentally busy doing that task, but actually you’re taking more time than you would if you used a GUI to do the same thing. AskTog:
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That article’s from 1989, though, and it’s safe to say that even Windows wasn’t ubiquitous then. Why do I mention Windows? Because it’s use of accelerator keys (at least among MS apps) is consistent, and once you know your shortcut, is definitely faster than using the mouse for everything. My favorite example is, Alt-E,S, cursor-down a bunch of times, enter. The alternative is to stop everything, grab the mouse, go to the edit menu, find out where paste special is, look for plain text, and hit the OK button (of course it would help if there were a global preference for always paste plain text, but what can I say other than Microsoft sucks?).

Of course Macs have keyboard access now, and I could take the trouble to learn them, but the only thing I’ve learned by rote is how to navigate dialogue boxes. It’s still a pain to use the application’s menu with the keyboard,which is almost the only thing I could ever want to do. Oh well, the rest of the OS justifies its use for me.

On the other hand, Windows has kind of gotten worse. By default, all of the accelerators keys are now hidden!

All those vi and vim people probably would be able to argue against mouse speed, but I’m perfectly happy using pico and my mouse rather than learning all of those key commands.

53

[QUOTE=Balthisar]
Of course Macs have keyboard access now…
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Macs have had keyboard shortcuts since 1984…

54

[QUOTE=Balthisar]
That article’s from 1989, though, and it’s safe to say that even Windows wasn’t ubiquitous then.
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Its age doesn’t stop it from being true, especially since Woz wasn’t speaking exclusively about Apple computers. And as beowulff said, Apple computers have had key shortcuts since the beginning. In fact, the copy/paste standard keys for Windows were almost certainly copied from the standard set by Macs.

55

[QUOTE=beowulff]
Macs have had keyboard shortcuts since 1984…
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Oops, I meant by that “full keyboard navigation.” Of course they’ve had keyboard shortcuts since the very beginning!

56

[QUOTE=Balthisar]
Oops, I meant by that “full keyboard navigation.”
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Do you mean arrow keys, page up/down keys, home, end, and the like? Mac keyboards have had those since the Macintosh II, introduced in 1987. (At least on their “Extended” keyboard anyway. Apple sold extended and simplified varieties of keyboards for many years.)

Here are some pictures of the extended keyboards, for the curious.

Of course your remark, “Macs have keyboard access now,” is certainly true. They once didn’t have those keys, and now they do. It’s just that the “now” covers about 20 years.

57

[QUOTE=Bytegeist]
Do you mean arrow keys, page up/down keys, home, end, and the like? Mac keyboards have had those since the Macintosh II, introduced in 1987.

Of course your remark, “Macs have keyboard access now,” is certainly true. They once didn’t have those keys, and now they do. It’s just that the “now” covers about 20 years.
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No, I guess I’m still not making myself clear. Keep in mind I’ve been using all manner of Macs since the Mac Plus (not quite the original Mac). I mean “Full Keyboard Access” as is named that feature in Mac OS X.

Macs since Mac OS X 10.0 or 10.1 have had full keyboard navigation in the sense that you can almost (but not quite) be completely keyboard free. You can access the main menu, the dock, dialogue box items, and virtually everything else in the OS using the keyboard. I’ve not figure out how to bring up a contextual menu that way, though, and it’s not something I do even when in Windows (need to figure out how to map my Sun “Compose” key to “Control” instead of the current mapping to the stupid menu key).

In a lot of respects (to use the main menu as an example), the Mac is more flexible than Windows. In Windows, you’re dependent upon the developers to specify an accelerator key. In the Mac, you just type the first letter. On the other hand, in a proper Windows program, you’re usually only two, known, keystrokes away from the menu item you want. On the Mac, if you have more than menu item with the same name, you either have to hit the first letter multiple times, or start to spell out the whole menu item name. You can’t develop muscle memory for frequently used items, because they’re context sensitive, meaning inactive menu items are skipped if they’re inactive, or not if they’re not. That means I have to watch the selection to see where it’s going. Let’s say a “paste special” type of command in the Edit menu. On my Macs, I have to do this: Ctrl-F1, E, return-or-down-arrow to select this menu, then p as many times as it takes to get to “paste special,” then finally, return. The problem with doing this blindly is the number of times I have to hit p will change depending on whether previous menu items that being with “p” are enabled or disabled. Of course I could type out all of p-a-s-t-e-space-s to get there, but then it’s not much of a shortcut. Now on Windows, without moving my eyes from my test, Alt, E, s, and there’s my dialogue box. I could shorten that to Alt-E instead of Alt, E, but it’s quicker and less strain to hit them in sequence. On the Mac, I’m forced to hit Ctrl-F1 and actually watch what I’m doing, which breaks my rhythm as much as the mouse does.

Of course the simple solution – not offered in Windows – is to try to assign a keyboard shortcut in the control panel. That works for most applications.

58

[QUOTE=Balthisar]
(of course it would help if there were a global preference for always paste plain text, but what can I say other than Microsoft sucks?).
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Of course, that’s why God created macros. You can even assign your own keyboard short cuts to them.

59

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
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.
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As Quartz said, you’d be really surprised at how accurate a small tablet can be. I use a 4x5" Intuos from Wacom. It’s definitely a lot easier on the wrist in day to day use over the mouse. Of course, I work in graphics and animation, so a tablet makes sense there, but it can easily be (and is) used for navigation across the board.

I’ve tried the bigger tablets, but for the most part, they offer little in the way of more precision, and just take up more desk space. The only reason I can see getting a larger tablet is for tracing actual drawings or computer painting? A 4x5" fits perfectly in front of the keyboard.

60

[QUOTE=PoorYorick]
Of course, that’s why God created macros. You can even assign your own keyboard short cuts to them.
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Yeah, but then I need a macro for every program, including lots of programs that don’t have macros.