Tuesday, August 02, 2005

 

What's up with Apple?

Courtesy of Slashdot, I noticed Apple released a new mouse called Mighty Mouse. I see this as whole history of Microsoft/PC-copied-Apple's-GUI-ideas lawsuits and debates happening all over again.

This time the playground is not the desktop GUI, but the hardware. It first started with Apple announcing the switch to Intel, most likely Pentium class processors, and now officially producing 2+ button mouse along with a scroll wheel(and sort of ditching the one-button mouse).

I remember when Windows 95 first came out, there were lots of debates even from Apple's Steve Jobs side about Apple's Macintosh having the advanced GUI years ago. And that the PC users are finally getting to enjoy what the Mac users have already absorbed.

Same thing now goes for the Intel processors and Mighty Mouse. The old arguments that Steve used against Microsoft for their Windows 95 attempt now applies to the Mighty Mouse. The cheap OEM PC scroll mouse has been around for years now. Technology and profit issues aside, Apple finally caved in and adopted the Intel processor that PC users have been using for ages.

About scroll mices in particular, my first one was a MouseSystems ProAgio 5-button mouse. And it started out for Windows 3.1 and eventually had support for Windows 95. It was such a cool mouse and I loved it. The scroll wheel was this wide plastic wheel. The scroll wheel was also a button and below the wheel was another button. On the left side there was a long "slit" button. And finally it had the usual left and right buttons for a total of 5 buttons.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?