Who's the undisputed king of the GUI? Apple, of course. Why? Ease of use. There are dozens of studies that show that Macs improve people's performance in everyday tasks. One of the main reasons for this ease of use is consistency: the same menu items and the same keyboard shortcuts perform the same actions in different applications. As a result, you don't spend hours learning that it's Apple S to save in Word, Apple Option S in Excel, Shift F3 in Quark and so on.
So quick question guys: how do you right-click on a Mac (assuming you haven't got a two-button mouse that is)? Long-time Mac users will instantly answer “Hold down the Control key then click”. Try it now, if you've never tried it before. See? A whole range of commands you never knew existed will suddenly appear.
Another question then: how do you right-click in Word? That's right. It's Control click. How do you right click in the Finder? That's right. It's Control click.
Last question: how do you right-click in Safari? If you answered, Control click, you'd be right. Kind of. Try it on this web page and you'll get your menus. Try it on a Java applet though. Doesn't work does it? Why? Because the correct combination for a right-click is Command click. That's right. Hold down the Apple key instead.
Daft, isn't it? Insane even. How long would you try looking for a contextual menu if you didn't know that? You wouldn't. You'd give up.
Now I've looked and looked for a technological or usability reason for this, but can't find one. Anyone know why this should be?
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