Earth Hour

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Will Mac OS X Lion Kill the Mouse?

When Apple announced the release of OS X Lion next month, one of its new features that really caught my interest was the multi-touch gestures function embedded in the OS and its applications.  It's a new way to interact with your Mac, says Apple.  You now pinch, swipe, scroll. tap on your trackpad or magic mouse to control what's on your screen.

No need to click on the mouse buttons to select, highlight or scroll something on the page you're viewing. Oh, speaking of scrolling, Apple has also decided to hide the scrollbar in Lion to give us a bigger screen space when using any application.  It will only re-appear when the you scrolls down the page and quickly fades out when you stop.  That means, we will not run out of space when scrolling just like we do when using a mouse.


from apple.com


Now how does this kill the mouse?  Of course, every MacBook has a multi-touch trackpad that would recognize these gestures.  But it's a different scenario with desktops.  You see, aside from the Magic Mouse, one has the option to use a Magic Trackpad with the MacPro, iMac or Mac Mani.   There's a little bit of learning involved with the multi-touch gestures but it wouldn't take a lifetime I believe.

So come July, the days of the mouse and its buttons are numbered.  At least with the Mac for now.

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