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Comment by Zarath | Hacker News Reader

That's like saying you took the pedals out of a car and people couldn't drive, it's to be expected unless they are driving a Flintstone's car.

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Perhaps you lack context. At the time navigating and running almost anything under Windows without a mouse was not a problem at all. Being that the OS was relatively new and evolving (transition from W3.1 to W95 era I believe) most everyone using these machines were used to learning and using keyboard shortcuts for everything. So, yeah, Windows users at the office had no problem if we removed the mouse. In fact the prank was pointless because it was almost a challenge to show us they could still function. With Mac users --again, at that time-- they just crashed and burned.

As a side note, this was also the pre-Google Internet era, with super early Linux (can't even remember the version). I remember using NCSA Mosaic!

You've missed the point. For Macs, the mouse is the pedals of the car because you absolutely need the mouse yo do basic things. On my Linux setup, I could do just fine without a mouse because I have multiple ways of doing the things I need to do

Yep, this is why so many cars come with a backup set of pedals in case the first set is disabled in a prank. Great to have multiple ways of doing the things that need to be done.

> On my Linux setup, I could do just fine without a mouse because I have multiple ways of doing the things I need to do

On your Linux setup, could you do just fine without a mouse AND without a keyboard?

Why is it OK for the keyboard to be an essential required device but a mouse should be optional?

A keyboard is not strictly required either. You can use an on screen keyboard with a mouse, text to speech, etc. And on anything that doesn't require text input, it's easy to avoid the keyboard.

The key is flexiblity. On Linux, I could avoid my mouse or my keyboard or my entire graphical desktop if I wanted to and still be productive. Macs don't have that flexibility.

I single out a mouse because it is a very low information density device. It doesn't really do much, so it is the low hanging fruit. Whether a mouse is required by an OS is like a litmus test of "can the user configure the OS the way they want, or does the OS dictate how the user will use it"

Computers didn't always have visual displays either; shouldn't they always be able to work with paper printouts?

Requiring a mouse and assuming it to always be present is not a bad thing; it's progress.

macOS has good accessibility features, so you can set it up to use it without a mouse if you really need to.

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