Is complexity (and wearing this on the outside) an inherit part of open source design? FactoryJoe compares the OpenOfficeMouse (a mouse with 18 programmable buttons and even an analogue joystick) and the Apple Magic Mouse-“To me, the OpenOfficeMouse seems like such a typical product from the open source community.“ [Kroc: I honestly believed the OpenOfficeMouse to be a very clever satirical joke, the irony that it isn’t suspends belief]
Finally a mouse equal to emacs.
Just stick on a blackberry keyboard and we’re done.
Continue your idea to the real consequences: Computers are so compact these days, why not put a full-featured PC inside so you can actually run OpenOffice without a PC?
Seriously, from my little CAD experience I remember the conceept of having more than three (the standard amount) mouse buttons; we had mice for digitizer tablets with 16 buttons (1, 2, 3, …, A, B, C, D, E, F), very handy for entering programs directly in Hex.
If they could make a mouse with, let’s say, 30 buttons, you could at least get rid of the keyboard, the bug bulky thing with the many strangely-labelled keys that scares PC users, offering them a way that you could to word processing without that scary keyboard. (I know that there are virtual keyboards where you can click the letters on the screen, but you have to *look* at the screen to do that. Why not look at the nice mouse instead?)
NB: In the past, people were afraid of the mouse, today they are scared by the keyboard. “I have to *write* something? No, I can’t do that, I just want to send a nice letter to Timmy!”
Finally, integrating the keyboard into the mouse would be much more appealing to the “mobile phone generation”; their writing doesn’t require punctuation, so a bit less than 26 keys should be enough. “tday meet timy 800 bus stayshun greetz jony”
Sorry for making such stupid jokes ad nauseam, it’s already (too) late here. 🙂
If you work with the mouse a lot and need more shortcuts to get stuff done I could imagine this hideous mouse to be useful.
I love my wired 5 button mouse and I wouldn’t mind another button. Those forward / backward buttons are awesome IMO and I wouldn’t exchange them for not 100% working swiping gestures etc.
The Opera web browser featured the back / forward switching without strange swiping gestures many years ago. Press the right button, hold it down, press the left one = back; you can press the left one e. g. 3 times to go back last 3 links switched. Forward works similar.
Because I always have one hand at the keybord, I’m fine with a standard (and wired) three button mouse. The programmable 2 x 10 keys on the left of the Sun Type 6 keyboard are very handy in modifying what happens when pointing or clicking something with the mouse.
Ditto.
My first thought was “holy crap, that’s hideous” – followed by “well, I imagine it could appeal to people who spend all day using Photoshop or doing video editing.”
With mice, my general rule has been “the number of buttons should not exceed the number of fingers I have.”
Edited 2009-11-09 00:18 UTC
I’d like to give it a test run. It’s probably overkill, but I am in need of a replacement for my trusty MS Trackball Optical. Sad they don’t make them anymore, best thing to come out of Redmond.
Certainly useful for some power users, more useful to me than Apple’s latest mouse. (Dear Apple, our index and middle fingers aren’t good at lateral movement, and that’s where our thumbs come in.)
Just ducktape an amiga to your mouse and get it over with.
Using a mouse a lot with a text processor is a really bad idea in the first place. But i still got the idea this is a bad aprils fools joke.
these 2 pictures perfectly show how f–ked-up apples mouse is:
http://images.apple.com/magicmouse/images/gestures_20091020.jpg
http://images.apple.com/magicmouse/images/gestures_list_20091020.jp…
you can’t rest your hand on it
and you have to constantly switch between 1 and 2 fingers on the mouse to use it
no tactile feedback at all
We plug always purchase a normal logitech mouse with a new iMac and plug both the mighty and logitech mouse in so users can choose. Our experience is that te mighty mouse can lay being shiny and all next to the iMac and the logitech mouse is the one who will be used.
In other words, it would have sucked even as closed source. it’s also painfully obvious that it has a completley different design goal than the Apple mouse and that a comparison is pretty much pointless.
I guess it’s hip to take cheap shots on open source these days?
Why do so many always feel the need to deride anything open source these days, particularly around its supposed complexity?
So it’s not for you, fine don’t buy it or use it, pretty simple really.
And as far as open source stuff being complex, that’s a matter of opinion — or intelligence I suppose. Open source provides options for advanced users, so what? Stupid users have options too, they’re called windows and macos. If you don’t like complexity, stick to those and leave the advanced stuff to people that can use it/want it, no need to deride them!
I believe in complexity, but only to a point where it is absolutely necessary. For example, if there’s 2 ways to get something done, and one is more complex than the other, assuming everything else is equal, I’ll take the less complex route every time. I don’t believe in complexity just for the sake of complexity, or the ‘my dick is bigger than yours because I can do things the hard way’ mentality. Sometimes I take a look at open source stuff, and I get the feeling that things are harder than they need to be, ‘just because’.
I think the very BEST way to do complexity is give the user as much control as possible (the open source way), but also have a default option that works out of the box, every time (the Aplle way). So then, it’s like “This isn’t exactly what I want, but this default configuration will do for now, until I can figure out how to change it” instead of “this piece of sh*t doesn’t work at all”.
As for the mouse, I love the idea of programmable buttons. Plug one of these babies in and map some of those buttons to AutoIt scripts, or whatever. However, I think 18 is just overkill. Maybe 7-8 max.
Edited 2009-11-08 20:27 UTC
People that solve problems without hastle just can’t handle the elite power of open source.
If you think 18 buttons is too many then you’re probably retarded. I think every mouse should have 223 buttons but I could handle 1000.
Oh and Linux is passe, switching to OS 7 is the new way to look smart even if you are just dicking around.
http://www.jfplayhouse.com/2009/11/5-reasons-why-os-7-is-better-tha…
The default configuration of open source software works out of the box, every time, for almost all hardware.
LiveCDs demonstrate that this is so.
I have booted a Kubuntu 9.10 liveCD on many an x86 system of different configurations, and the LiveCD has detected it all automatically and booted with all parts of the system working in each case.
In the rare case where a system doesn’t work with open source software (which I haven’t encountered yet myself), a LiveCD will also show this nicely, before any commitment to changes to a systems hard drive are done.
Edited 2009-11-09 04:12 UTC
Seriously? Have you seen all the recent anti-Apple articles? Even MS is looking like gold compared to Apple on OS News. LOL!
I actually thought the OpenOfficeMouse was some sort of a joke, now I am deeply troubled and worried about the fact that it isn’t a joke! It looks absolutely horrible, it isn’t ergonomically shaped, there’s just _way_ too many small buttons too close to each other…
Of course, these are all just my opinions, but I fear this makes us F/OSS supporters look even more ridiculous in the public eyes than before!
This mouse isn’t a requirement to run FOSS or OpenOffice. If you don’t like it … don’t use it.
Why would you be deeply troubled? The majority of FOSS supporters would think, as do you and I, that this mouse is indeed ridiculous. Strange as it may seem, I’d imagine there might be a tiny minority who would like and appreciate such a mouse. Why would the fact that either group exists make FOSS supporters look ridiculous?
Looks like a joke to me too. Typical internet hoax.
The mouse looks like a photoshop job.
It’s designed by a gamer, what did you expect?
I used to hate the complexity of my computer, until I realised something. I love the city. Cities are beautiful things that thrive on complexity. As with software, some of that complexity is hidden under the surface (communications, electrical, sewers, water). Yet a lot of that complexity is also exposed to us, to enrich our lives.
I may choose not to enter those dingy fortune teller shops, sterile post-modern art museums, gaudy tourist attractions, mind numbing box stores, sleezy bars, and all of that other stuff. But that’s okay. The people that I spend my life with may, and they enrich my life with the stories of their experiences.
Open source design is much the same. I will choose not to use stuff like the OpenOfficeMouse because I love trackballs and trackpoints. But the people around me may choose to do so. I may disregard the mind boggling widgetness of KDE and abandon the elegance of Gnome for the crudeness of an old style window manager. But that is a choice that I choose to make in the richness of our open source “city”.
In my mind, the messiness of that complexity is a good thing. It enriches our lives much like a thriving city enriches our lives. I would much rather that over the sterile gated communities of closed source gadgets and stylish Apple products.
if you value complexity for the sake of it.
Some us swim in endless software complexity at work and don’t need even more when we come home, especially when it exists to make people feel special and not to improve productivity.
I’ve always felt that design aspects of Unix appeal more to bored admins who want a difficult learning curve rather than to strongly left-brained engineers. The Unix command list was created by programmers who when boys insisted upon secret handshakes for the sake of them. Thank god VMS/NT broke with the unix tradition of silly command line names and counter-intuitive, cryptic design.
Edited 2009-11-09 01:06 UTC
Let me guess, you haven’t used a contemporary Linux desktop for serious use recently at all, have you?
As a user, there is no need whatsoever to use the command line.
OTOH, if a person has even modest training, then the fact that Linux adopts the same command names for its UNIX work-alike commands is a boon, because it means that shell scripts written for UNIX bash shells will also run on Linux. As it turns out, I myself as a “strongly left-brained engineer” have written (self taught) my own bash scripts (procedure calls and everything). Let me tell you that it is both considerably more powerful and also, at the same time, many times easier to write for than MSDOS and NT.
As for OpenOffice itself … it is an Office suite. It uses a GUI. It is easier to use and to adapt to for MS Office users than trying to migrate to the ribbon:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0/
Edited 2009-11-09 04:56 UTC
Look at that!
Modded down for pointing out that “dir” (short for directory) is no less or more cryptic than “ls” (short for list structure), and that bash shell scripts are far, far more powerful and useful than NT/MSDOS batch files, and as a bonus the bash shell scripts are source-backwards-compatible with the industry standard predecessor OS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ls
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/ls.html
Edited 2009-11-09 09:17 UTC
You probably got modded down for plugging OpenOffice and Linux like you do in every story. We all know about OpenOffice and Linux. This is OSNEWS afterall.
As for ls it a lousy acronym where list would be a better choice. But even barring lousy two letter acronyms there are plenty of common Unix commands that have poor names and give no indication as to what they are used for like Grep, Sed, Awk, Emacs, Lpr/Lprm, and Vi to name a few. The fact that they chose ‘man’ instead of ‘help’ and didn’t even bother creating an alias says enough. What else would someone try if they don’t know what to do?
Unix is a silly handshakes club. It gets the job done yes but only after you learn all the silly handshakes.
Unless something goes wrong which happened to most people who upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 according to this poll:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305924&page=2
Command line fix for xorg:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=320524
Well, between this and the Magic Mouse…. I’d certainly pick this one. The Magic Mouse is a total and utter usability disaster – as is every Apple mouse. It’s uncomfortably shaped, you can’t rest your hand on it, it’s too flat, you need to lift your index finger to right-click…
Right from the first time I read about it I thought it might have serious usability issues, but I would like to try it for myself.
There is no nearby Apple store where I live, however. I suppose it’s not worth the trip to another city and the search for a store. Right?
What can I tell you, Serbia is an all-PC country.
It says designed by a game designer, so perhaps it’s related to the MMO mice coming out now?
Edited 2009-11-08 21:42 UTC
What a terrible article. It’s full of flimsy arguments and stereotypical notions from an Apple-worshiping author. Obviously, he’s too lost in the RDF (and too steeped in his own Apple-derived notions of “proper” interface design) to offer any precise reasoning.
Congratulations! I plugged in my non-Apple, scroll-wheel mouse and went to work one second later — no acclimation necessary.
Guess what? Most open source users have simple scroll-wheel mice or 2-button/3-button mice — again, no acclimation necessary.
Why is he comparing the OpenOfficeMouse to a peculiar, unituitive Apple mouse?
Probably should have stopped reading right there. Sounds like this guy has very limited experience with open source software. If he did have a lot of open source experience, he would realize that there are no generalizations about what is “typical” regarding open source, except that there is great variety and it’s usually free in almost every sense.
My guess is that his encounters with open source are limited to the occasional, theoretical open source web articles he reads on his Mac (running OSX).
How do people like this get onto the boards of organizations with names like “Open ID” and “Open Web?”
This is the only good point in the entire article.
Really?
The operation of the OpenOfficeMouse config window is self-evident.
We see an image of the OpenOfficeMouse with one button highlighted (a function is being assigned to that button). There is a list of basic button function categories. Next to that list is a list of the precise operation that the button will execute. There are tabs at the top to assign button functions specific to the other Open Office modules.
We’re setting one highlighted button at a time. The OpenOfficeMouse config page is very simple and straightforward.
On the other hand, the MagicMouse config page is confusing. There is an image of a hand with an extended index finger holding a blob of white plastic (the MagicMouse). Above that, in the image, is the floating window of what appears to be an image viewer with a large image showing two other floating, diagonal superimposed images.
So, in other words, we see two diagonal images, superimposed over a larger image, with a group of smaller images next to it, within a window, within an image that includes a hand and a plastic blob, within the main window!
WTF?! That’s incomprehensible.
It gets worse when looking at the non-image part of the MagicMouse config window.
There are check boxes and multi-choice buttons. The first check box says, “Secondary click” with a multi-choice button reading “Right.”
The question arises: secondary click of what? Are there any buttons/areas of the MagicMouse highlighted? I can’t tell to what is being referred. Also, does this mean that I can only use secondary clicks on “right” (whatever that is)? Does this selection exclude “left” (whatever that may be)?
The second check box says, “Scroll” with an adjacent multi-choice button that reads, “with momentum.” What is being scrolled? Again, no highlighed buttons nor areas on the MagicMouse.
The next check box says, “Screen Zoom,” with an adjacent button that reads, “Options…”
Screen Zoom?… how? I see only an index finger over a blob of white plastic!
The “Two Fingers” section is self-evident, provided one is aware that the MagicMouse uses a touch surface.
However, it looks like the Apple config page has us setting several mysterious mouse functions at the same time (possibly at the exclusion of other desired mouse functions) with a complex image, while the OpenOfficeMouse config page has us very easily setting one mouse button at a time.
Again, with the stereotypes. Has this guy ever used Gnome? — it’s worse than Apple! Open source offers a wide variety of interfaces, some simplistic and some complex. Open source cannot be stereotyped in this way.
Dude! Get out of the RDF. Requiring over a week of acclimation merely to use a mouse does not equate an “instantly-usable product.”
The original Engelbart mouse from the 1960s only took a few seconds to learn.
This guy doesn’t use an open source OS very often — he just “supports” the use of open source. In addition, his notions of usability are Apple-centric.
Beauty has nothing to do with the degree of usability of a product. This fact is something that is usually escapes most Apple fans. In fact, many of the most usable interfaces are often the ones that are generally considered ugly.
In the case of Apple, usability is often sacrificed for “looks.”
I don’t know of any “norm” in “open source design.” I don’t even know what he means by “open source design.”
However, the “norm” mouse for most users of open source OSs is probably a simple 2-button/3-button/scrollwheel mouse.
What a terrible, erroneous article.
Precisely so. Mod parent up.
BTW: I have seen literally thousands of “FAIL” designs touted for Windows or Mac applications, with never a suggestion that this makes Windows or Mac users look ridiculous. After all, the Windows or Mac users didn’t make the design.
So why this article’s inane slur against “open source design” whatever that is supposed to be?
What is wrong with simply having a go at the designers of the mouse in question, and leaving it at that?
I don’t know of any “norm” in “open source design.” I don’t even know what he means by “open source design.”
KDE, Gimp, OpenOffice. A generalization yes but way to defend a parody lol.
I don’t know how one can argue that the menus are more cluttered in open source. There is just too much open source variety to stereotype open source software.
Also, I have shown that a Mac config window is more cluttered than its open source counterpart. Furthermore, the two window examples that I use happen to be the very examples put forth in the original article to assert the opposite point. Care to compare two more examples?
Besides, one can merely use Gnome (or one of the lite distro/projects) if one wants limited choices with open source.
In addition, the few open source examples you give cannot begin to characterize the whole of open source software. There are numerous other desktop/WMs, image editors, office programs (and zillions of other programs) that are open source.
By the way, where exactly are the menus cluttered in the examples that you mention?
In regards to the notion that I am reacting to a “parody,” please see the two links that I posted below, which lead to OpenOffice.org sites that refer to the OOmouse. It appears that the OOMouse people have already made a presentation at OOoCon 2009.
An 18-button mouse is plausible, considering that there is already a 17-button mouse on the market: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/razer-naga/
Here is a 15-button mouse, too: http://gizmodo.com/5061632/steelseries-world-of-warcraft-mouse-dest…
Even if the OOMouse is a hoax, the article on which this thread is based is real. The Apple-worshipping author really believes that Mac products are more usable and better designed than their open-source counterparts. I was merely countering the author’s staggering misconceptions.
Wow. Who needs YouTube?! Now, we have viral stories!
Folks, it’s a joke. No, really, it is! The most serious satirical pieces are supported by elaborate, designs and background; the authors will stand by their “product” until everyone propagates this story to their feed.
I gotta say though, that fake 3D rendering of the ‘prototype’ sitting atop a piece of paper with matching pantone color samples screams sarcasm. There is a deeper underlying meaning to this piece — OpenOffice.org needs a better UI.
Fair enough about it being a joke. I would have expected exactly that, but there were several claims that it wasn’t a joke.
Regardless, OpenOffice is quite useable with the current GUI. In my limited sampling, people that I know about who have used both OpenOfffice and the ribbon interface for recent versions of MS Office find OpenOffice far easier to adapt to.
Thought so. The number of links to “#” on openofficemouse.com is a bit of a tip-off.
The mouse definitely exists, its not a hoax!
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/06/openofficemouse-isnt-free-isnt-p…
An updated FAQ from the dev is available here:
http://openofficemouse.com/blog/
I try to keep my stomach at a good condition. I can guess it’s not another Joke from Steve Jobs. I’ve also heard they are also designing a keyboard with 1024 keys and 4GB Ram … and -can you believe it- a gamepad!!!
It claims to have worked with OpenOffice.org, who own the trademark “OpenOffice.org”, but categorically *do not* own the trademark OpenOffice (which is why they add the clunky .org to it)[1]. So logically it should be OpenOffice.org Mouse as OpenOffice.org would have pointed out to their “partner” that OpenOffice Mouse would be a trademark violation.
Pointing to articles on the net by news sites/blogs that point to the original website is not proof, I want independent verification before I believe it.
If it is something they have been working on together, where is the information on the OpenOffice.org website. Once it is linked from there I will believe it to be real, until then, I call shenanigans!
[1] http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-other.html#4
It appears that there was already an OpenOfficeMouse presentation at OOoCon 2009: http://conference.services.openoffice.org/index.php/ooocon/2009/pap…
In addition, there is correspondence about involvement with the OpenOfficeMouse project on the OO forums: http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/Search;jsessionid=704EFF5E557481…
…A mouse is meant to move the cursor and click. I actually might have liked this if it had been designed vertically, so one’s hand could be held more naturally while accessing the buttons. Same for the new Apple mouse… heck, same for my new MS mouse (which I like very much). I wanted to try/purchase one of those vertical mice, but no local stores have them. I guess I should try Frys.
I’ll wait until these are on eBay because I’m not paying so much for any mouse, but I want one simply to have one. I have a Sun optical mouse and pad, a vax mouse, this seems like the next logical step.
Thanks for a cheap smile.
I suppose it’s intended to further the MACOS spell on its customers…Geniality deserves money. Open mouth gasping and you can swallow everything.
I am glad OSX owes nothing to OpenSource..
What ? Some parts are coming from OpenSource,really?
At least, I’m sure not the nicest parts of OSX, its so advanced file system for example.
Here is calculator mouse with 31 buttons and a scroll wheel: http://gizmodo.com/284875/usb-calculator-mouse-puts-the-numbers-whe…
The number pad can be used in the computer, so it’s possible that key bindings can be assigned to all the buttons.
Here’s another one: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/calculator_mouse.html