In praise of the one-button mouse.

Yeah, I know. All those Windows studs and a whole lot of Mac geeks too are nuts about the buts - all those extra buttons on the mousen (and the keyboards too). Two, three, four buttons, click click click. Not me.

Now I've been using a mouse ever since the MS-DOS days when there was nothing much they would do. And I've had just about every kind there is, at one time or another, including Apple's "Mighty Mouse" which has, effectively, four buttons and a multi-directional scroll wheel. Mercifully it can easily be set so all the buttons do the same thing. Which is what I do when I use it. Which I don't much. In fact there it sits on my shelf as we speak, gathering dust.

Because a one-button mouse is a whole lot easier on my hand and wrist, both of which require a little pampering these days. No matter how you use a multi-button mouse - even if you yaw it and kind of do the sideways mouse thing - you have to grip the object itself always in exactly the same way or it won't work. Apple's current one-button mouse I can hold any way I want, click with any finger anywhere, even just push down on with the palm of my hand if that's what I'm in the mood to do, and get the same result. It works just fine. My hand feels just fine. Everybody's happy here.

(And yes, you can still do the right-click thing. You do it by holding down the Ctrl key on the keyboard when you click. It does require both hands, but once you get in the habit of it it's a natural thing to do.)

So I'm thinking about adding a wireless keyboard to my iMac, sort of to reward myself for deciding not to buy a whole brand-new computer just now. And it looks like, from Apple's store on the web, the only kind of wireless mouse they sell any more is the "Mighty" multi-button kind. But - aha! - I still have a wireless one-button Apple mouse I bought a few years back to use with my laptop. So I'll stick with that.

Macs work just fine, BTW - plug 'n' play - with all sorts of third-party mousen, any kind of mouse there is, as far as I know, as long as it's USB. But only Apple makes a one-button mouse, and hooray for them.

Hang in there, Apple. Don't give it up. (But I'll hang on to my one-button model JIC.)