Ipad’s Mouse Support ….. Is Half Baked. Couldn’t See That Coming

Just saw a video demonstrating Mouse Support. Basically, the mouse isnt acting like a normal mouse … its acting like your finger so the same tedious crap you had to do wiith your fingers, your just tediously doing with your mouse now. For instance, there is no natural click and drag selection process that you would come to expect from using a mouse (which is one of the situations people were wanting a mouse for). Instead, You have to double tap the first word of the sentence you want to select, then you have to CAREFULLY hover your mouse over the blue dot, then you have to select and hold the blue dot and move the blue dot and release.

This is just one of the examples I saw, but it make me wonder how many other scenarios we all think a mouse funciton that acted like a normal mouse would be so much better for on an Ipad when in fact, its going to be just as tedious and aggrevating (perhaps evern more so now since they have dropped the ball)

Really Apple? What is going on there?

This was a simple thing and you F’d it up.

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Conversation 24 comments

  • madthinus

    Premium Member
    04 June, 2019 - 12:55 pm

    <p>They added it as Accessibility feature. So it not designed to be a mouse pointer, it is designed to be a virtual finger.</p>

    • Thom77

      04 June, 2019 - 1:32 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#433146">In reply to madthinus:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Or they half baked the implementation knowing they have 4 years to slowly get it to where it needs to be and hid it in the accessibility feature so they had the excuse you just supplied to them.</p><p><br></p><p>There is a reason they didnt mention it in their presentation. They knew the reasonable expectation of mouse support is that it … acted like a fully functional mouse … and it doesn't. </p><p><br></p><p>This company virtue signals about anything they can …. and suddenly they bypassed an opportunity to virtue signal about how they included a new feature to help handicap people who have problems moving their fingers on the screen by including a limited mouse support designed to mimick fingers on the mouse? </p><p><br></p><p>I find that very naive.</p><p><br></p><p> the NORMAL BEHAVIOR of the mouse in selected text is actually WAY EASIER then mimicking the finger manipulation on the screen to do the same thing. If they wanted to make it easier for handicapped people or older people with limited dexterity, they would of introduced the normal mouse behavior. Either way, you still have to hold a button down to slide the selected portion to where you want it… their way makes you do an extra step and precisely select the blue dot instead of just dragging where you first click all the way to the end where you want it.</p><p><br></p><p>I'm not falling for the marketing propoganda.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

      • lvthunder

        Premium Member
        04 June, 2019 - 2:01 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#433174">In reply to Thom77:</a></em></blockquote><p>They don't want mouse support. It's not the future they are going for and I agree with them.</p>

      • skane2600

        04 June, 2019 - 5:40 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#433174">In reply to Thom77:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's not as if adding full mouse support is such rocket science they need years to get it right. They obviously did exactly what they wanted to do. I know some tech enthusiasts who are also Apple fans would love to see iPads transformed into laptop replacements but I suspect most iPad users are quite happy to use them as consumption devices and wonder why they would need to use a mouse.</p>

        • Vladimir Carli

          Premium Member
          05 June, 2019 - 10:28 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#433260">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I agree and I am one of the iPad users who are very happy to use it as a consumption device. However, I would also like to use it to replace my laptop, so that when I travel I don't have to carry two devices with me. I wonder why this is so difficult to achieve. What most of us need is just a way to easily, quickly and reliably select text in large documents and cells in large spreadsheets. That's about it…</p><p><br></p>

          • skane2600

            05 June, 2019 - 12:21 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#433432">In reply to Vladimir:</a></em></blockquote><p>Or you could just bring your laptop that can also be used for consumption. It seems like a self-inflicted problem to me. </p>

            • Vladimir Carli

              Premium Member
              05 June, 2019 - 7:31 pm

              <blockquote><em><a href="#433456">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>a laptop is not a good consumption device, it's larger, heavier and lacks the ecosystem. I would never leave my ipad behind when I travel 🙂 </p>

              • wp7mango

                06 June, 2019 - 12:37 pm

                <blockquote><em><a href="#433529">In reply to Vladimir:</a></em></blockquote><p>Maybe a Macbook lacks the ecosystem, but a Windows laptop probably doesn't – it has the largest ecosystem out of all the platforms.</p>

        • macguy59

          05 June, 2019 - 9:17 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#433260">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Really ? Dazzle us with your coding skills and show us how easy it was to add that code to iOS</p>

          • skane2600

            05 June, 2019 - 11:06 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#433535">In reply to macguy59:</a></em></blockquote><p>Has Apple released the IOS source code so a third party could do that?</p><p><br></p><p>I don't claim to be God's gift to programming but I did write an Atari 2600 game in assembly on salary back in the day – a system with 128 bytes of RAM, no code whatsoever in the console, no interrupts, no video RAM and with vertical blanking in software. So I think I could compete quite well with the average Apple internal developer.</p><p><br></p><p>BTW, I'm not dissing Apple's developers. Like I said before, they did exactly what they intended to do but had they wanted full mouse support I'm confident they could have implemented that too without too much trouble.</p>

      • madthinus

        Premium Member
        05 June, 2019 - 8:05 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#433174">In reply to Thom77:</a></em></blockquote><p>Honestly, I think come next year they will build on this and add it. Personally, I think iPadOS is diverging from iOS to be this touch friendly version that runs great on Apples' own A-series chips. I can see them two years from now debuting a Macbook with an enhanced version of this OS powered by a Apple A series chip. What if the future of Macbook laptops / Air's is not MacOS, but rather iPadOS powered by an allways connected Apple designed A series chip. This makes more sense to me that trying to retrofit touch into MacOS. </p>

        • skane2600

          05 June, 2019 - 12:20 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#433408">In reply to madthinus:</a></em></blockquote><p>So someday they can make an iOS-based Macbook (iOSBook?) that is almost as capable as one based on MacOS. What is the point? IMO Always connected will always be a niche need.</p>

      • bob_shutts

        05 June, 2019 - 9:45 am

        <blockquote><a href="#433174"><em>In reply to Thom77:</em></a><em> By all means buy a Surface and Android phone instead. ;-)</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • macguy59

        05 June, 2019 - 9:16 pm

        <blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><a href="#433174"><em>In reply to Thom77</em></a></blockquote><p>You must rush to the front of the "piss in Cheerio's" line </p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    04 June, 2019 - 2:01 pm

    <p>They don't see the mouse as the future. Quite frankly for most things I don't ether. I have a Surface Book that I use with the screen on backwards 90% of time. I very rarely use a mouse. I use ether touch or the pen. About the only time I use a mouse is when I'm working in AutoCAD. Autodesk has screwed up touch and Surface Pen Support in AutoCAD. Strangely if you use a Wacom tablet and turn off Windows Ink it works like you would expect a pen to work.</p><p><br></p><p>Also remember this is Beta 1. It could change.</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    04 June, 2019 - 4:59 pm

    <p>I didn’t even know it was there! Cool! </p><p><br></p><p>I for one am happy they’re opening iPadOS up for more people. I’m guessing it uses the same HID class driver as macOS so that any pointing device will function?</p>

  • PeterC

    05 June, 2019 - 9:11 am

    <p>As has been mentioned, they're not planning on implementing a traditional mouse, seriously, why bother. Everyone has got loads of legacy kit around, ipadOS is going forward not looking back. </p><p><br></p><p>Madthinus pointed out below its a "virtual finger" and I assume users will be wagging their finger around in front of the face id cameras in future releases (perhaps?) …. you know ipad sitting in its case/holder upright and you moving your finger on the desk…….. air gestures maybe and the same gestures drawn on a surface etc.</p><p><br></p><p>Makes sense to me….</p>

  • j_c

    05 June, 2019 - 9:51 am

    <p>What others have said only I am also adding that this is a developer release version of iOS 13 distributed for developers. For all we know this accessibility feature won't even ship in the final version or it will ship but work completely different than it does now. In these releases a lot of stuff just plain doesn't work.</p><p><br></p><p>What we have now thanks to YouTube and social media along with people completely not caring about the process is a rush to immediately post every detail about the developer release and point out every flaw. This raises the ire of a bunch of people who race to crap all over it. They don't look at it with any of the context that this isn't finished software or that the intent of the features may be different than what they personally envisioned in their own head. Flame on.</p><p><br></p><p>This is happening all the time now. You see it with movies where a few leaks of unfinished scenes are held up as evidence that some writer has completely retroactively destroyed someone's childhood. In their world the finished product is definitely going to be terrible because of this one data point and now they race to get the mob mobilized. Everyone needs to relax.</p><p><br></p><p>Wait until the software comes out and the features are "finished", maybe try the darn thing for yourself and if it doesn't suit your needs buy a PC or a Mac.</p>

  • macguy59

    05 June, 2019 - 9:10 pm

    <p>Apple clearly designed this for people that can't (for whatever reason) interact directly with the display. It's also version 1, a first step. It has enough functionality to be useful and reduce display interactions for us able bodied.</p>

  • scj123

    Premium Member
    06 June, 2019 - 3:12 am

    <p>So Apple never said they were adding full mouse support, every crappy tech blog out there found it under accessibility features and wrote articles, along the lines of “Apple to finally add mouse support to iPads”. Now people are complaining that it doesn’t work how the tech blogs claimed they wanted it to but actually works how Apple did want it to.</p><p>Couldn't see that coming.</p>

  • jedwards87

    06 June, 2019 - 11:26 am

    <p>Really whats going on is your inability to see what this feature is and isn't. </p>

  • arthemis

    07 June, 2019 - 3:15 am

    <p>There is no "mouse support" in iPad OS. There is assistive touch which are for people with disabilities. </p>

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