Apple's obsession with a one-button mouse dates all the way back to the 1983 release of the Lisa, the company's first PC to ship with a mouse.
According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder insisted on a one-button mouse for simplicity's sake. The three-button mouse Apple saw Xerox demonstrate was too busy and confusing, Jobs argued.
Jobs was so insistent that people use the mouse, that he designed the Macintosh without arrow keys. But as with the arrow keys, Apple eventually relented on right clicking.
With the proliferation of Microsoft Windows, which embraced the right click, Apple eventually enabled users to CTRL-click to simulate a right click. It then began to support right-click mice with Mac OS 8, which debuted in 1997. And with the 2005 introduction of the "Mighty Mouse," Apple finally made a mouse with a programmable button that could be used for right clicking.
Still, Apple hasn't fully embraced the right-click. Its new "magic mouse" is capable of right clicking, though users have to program the mouse to do so. The company even jokes that that the feature is available "if you're coming from a right-click world."
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