Look and feel copyright case [from Unix-Wizards]

[TVR%CCRMA-F4 at SAIL.Stanford.EDU]

   In Patent Number 4,464,652, Granted to Apple Computer on August 7, 1984,
   entitled Cursor Control Device for use with Display Systems, Pull-Down
   menues are covered by claim number 11.  Thus, it is not possible to
   duplicate Apple's Pull Down Menu Interface without infringing on this patent.
   Remember, Patents do (and should) offer a stronger form of protection than
   copyrights.

I'm sorry, i can't get very excited about this one.  Having hacked various
types of machines which use mice, if anything, i find them annoying.  On a
limited resolution, landscape mode screen, they consume valuable display real
estate and require extra hand motion to get to.  As far as i'm concerned, they
aren't very innovative, except maybe to the naive users (to whom they might be
quite valuable), and do not at all compensate for the incredible choice of
only one button on their mouse.  Two button mice are bad enough, and perhaps
the single button is why they had to "invent" this thing.  To me, it's worse
than pop-up menus because you have to move the mouse so much (which will be
even more intensive on the new, larger screens).  All this for "modelessness".

The innovative thing they did do wasn't the pull-down aspects of the menus
at all, but rather defining [and allowing a hacker to redefine] a keystroke
to correspond to a menu item.  I'm sure it's been thought of before, but
Apple put it out as a part of a high visibility product.

Come on Apple, wise up.  If you think you can get away with 5 grounds on a
SCSI port where everyone else uses 30 grounds, and have flushed the other 9
pin connectors, you can certainly recycle one of the two grounds on the
mouse's 9 pin connector to at least give us two mouse buttons!  Better yet,
use the same connectors and pinouts as the other folk, and make some extra
money selling less expensive, easier to maintain mice to everyone else.

[My apologies to some Unix-Hackers for perhaps diverging somewhat from the
topic of that list, but several of you have, shall we say, managed to "push
my buttons"...]