My current subject of wrath
Disclaimer: If you have no interest in me griping about computer-y things, you probably want to stop reading now because it’ll get boring really fast for you.
Say what you will about Apple’s products, but if there’s one thing Steve Jobs has it’s an incredible ability to make stuff look pretty. I’m not saying it’s all him, but he at the very least approves everything down to the fonts that go into OS X. So when all is said and done, the buck stops at Jobs. My beef with Apple almost exclusively comes down to hardware: it’s crappy and overpriced. OS X is actually fairly decent to work with (I have to use it at work), and aside from the near complete failure in the implementation of Workspaces, I don’t have many complaints on it as an operating system.
No, what currently has me up in arms is this. Sure it’s sorta pretty to look at, but it is most definitely a case of function taking a back seat to form. Hell, function got punted to the side of the road while form took a bloody road trip to Mexico. Why you ask? Well in finally giving into the the fact that two button mice are a necessity, Apple decided to put forth this not-so-mighty creation. The scroll ball, while neat in theory, gets dirty faster than a 5 year old in a mud pit. The difference is that a 5 year old is easier to clean and still functions like a child afterwards; the same cannot be said for a cleaned Apple Mighty Mouse. The one-piece top is aesthetically pleasing, but it makes it more difficult to discern between left, middle and right clicks. I’ve had the mouse insist I’ve right-clicked even though I’m quite firmly pressing the left side of the mouse. And before you go suggesting that perhaps the buttons got interchanged, right-clicking STILL RIGHT CLICKS. After some experimenting, it seems hitting command click turns everything back to normal…until the next time it doesn’t feel like left clicking. As such, I have endeavoured to use the mouse as little as possible for work, which is odd for such an operating system that has so much mouse-based eye candy. Asking for a new mouse gives me the same type of mouse, so short of bringing in my own mouse, I’m stuck.
So what is a geek to do when a useful tool of his disposal is more gimped than Christopher Reeves? (Okay that’s an unfair comparison. Reeves didn’t get gimped on purpose.) I turn to the old standby text editor vim for inspiration. Now I’m not here to start an emacs vs vi flameware. You can Internet jihad that until your keyboard wears out for all I care, I’m not interested. But the usefulness of vim to me recently extended beyond just editing code. The solution for my problem? Using Spotlight to launch programs, terminal to do everything outside of the browser, and the vimperator Firefox extension.
Why vimperator? Well given how used to vim keyboard shortcuts I am, it was a short hop to making browser commands do what I wanted just through the keyboard. The efficiency of movement got me all giddy because there was no longer any wasted movement from keyboard to mouse to do browser stuff AND everything went more quickly too (shut up, it’s efficiency not laziness). I finally realized what my old co-worker Jesse was talking about when he said the mouse was a clumsy way to interact with an internet browser (he was the first one to demonstrate vimperator to me about a year ago). Of course, that weird look that I gave him, you know the same one you give crazy old uncle Jack for his hippie conspiracies (hurrr Jack Layton), is the same look that my current co-workers are giving me when they see me give me as much care to my mouse as a red headed stepchild.
This setup isn’t for everyone, and I must admit I likely would never have gone to using the vimperator extension had it not been for the spectacular fail that is the Apple Mighty Mouse. I haven’t yet set up vimperator on my browser at home, but that’s because I have a mouse that does what I tell it rather than what it feels like it should do. You can insert your own joke about wives, children or cats here if you wish. But efficiency is winning out, and more and more I’m seeing just how damn slow that mouse is. For note, the vimperator extension doesn’t do everything; interacting with Flash and other similar media objects still needs the mouse. Using it less has to be a win for everyone (or at least me).