The iPod wasn't the first digital music player either, and we see how that turned out! Like most things where Apple is "late" to the game, they wait patiently while countless other get it wrong, and in one brilliant stroke, show them how to get it right.

Indeed, although there have been plenty of 2 button mice with scrollwheels, I'm yet to see one that:

Looks as elegant as Apples - particulalrly the way, they've managed to keep the outer shell all one piece

Uses a a trackball kind of thing instaed of a wheel - seems like a much more sensible idea.

What Apple does so well is to design products from the point of view of the _user_, not the engineer. The current Apple Pro Mouse is not a one-button mouse, there is no button to push, the USER presses the mouse.

Now the Mighty Mouse is not a "two-button" mouse. What matters is whether the user presses the mouse with the index finger or the middle finger.

This is what Apple has gotten right, as usual. The focus is on how the user behaves, not on how the device is manipulated.

Brilliant!

i believe the wireless mouse appeared in 2003, not 2002...

What are his qualifications anyway? It can't be because of his track record.

Rob Enderle is neither innovative nor unique. Other analysts have been spewing forth their unqualified opinions long before he did.

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Rob Enderle wrote:
adding a second button and a trackball to the mouse is neither innovative nor unique. These are things that others were doing in the mid-1990s.

The implication being that those companies in the 90's were innovating, and that's 100% pure bunk. They were copying Apple by adding a mouse in the first place! And since Apple held a patent on the one-button design, they had to add the second button. They didn't have a choice.