Apple Introduces Multi-Button Hysteria.


Apple introduced the Mighty Mouse – a multi-button scrolling input device – today, finally responding to user requests since multi-button mice were first introduced in 1947 and ensuring a round of lawsuits from whoever holds the “Mighty Mouse” trademark.

Reaction from the Mac community varied from unbridled exuberance to shocked dismay.

“The Mighty Mouse shall usher in a glorious age for the Macintosh,” hailed Cult of Mac author Leander Kahney. “With multi-button input, Mac users will experience fits of euphoria, occasional bursts of stunning clairvoyance that will allow them insights not clear to ordinary mortals and, of course, longer and harder erections.

“Um… for the men.”

Kahney’s optimism, however, was not shared by all.

“AAAAAGH!!! I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY I COVER THIS COMPANY SOMETIMES!!!,” noted the usually staid John Gruber. “TILT-CLICKING! SQUEEZING! ROLLING! IT’S A USABILITY NIGHTMARE! A NIGHTMARE!”

Taking a deep breath, Gruber added “But ultimately Apple’s decision to add the Mighty Mouse as a $50 add-on to any Mac will have little effect as other multi-button alternatives are available for less. Until the Mighty Mouse is included standard on all Macs, the situation can only be considered status quo.”

Meanwhile some lamented the passing of an era.

“First they switch to a Unix-based operating system,” said a distressed Low End Mac editor Dan Knight, “then they announce they’re switching to Intel processors, and now a multi-button mouse…

“If we as Mac users are not all about a superior user interface based on a crash-prone cooperative multitasking operating system using shared memory space running on a niche processor and accessed by a one-button mouse… then who are we?”

Others reacted somewhere in between.

“Mouse!” screamed editor Jason Snell, rushing into the Macworld magazine offices and startling a sleeping Jonathan Seff. “With… with… many buttons! And… and… some… scrolly thing! Stop presses! Must… warn… readers!”

Finally, some believe the fault lies not in our mice, but in ourselves.

Staring out the window of his Griffin Technology office at the carnage being wrought by rioting Mac users in the streets of Nashville, Tenn., Your Mac Life‘s Shawn King shook his head in disbelief.

“Goddamn it, I hate the Mac community sometimes.

“I mean… that’s my car down there.”