It's strange their persistence to not use a scroll wheel.  

 

   When you think about it like this, there is only one knob on a standard computer that even resembles the knob used to tune real world radios.  It so happens the scroll wheel resembles that knobs function uncannily.  The one input on our computers that is most ideal is the one input they dont like.

 

   Even steve jobs went to two buttons on the mouse so all is not lost for the long term.

I think the folks reminding us about the mobile platforms had a point, or a click spot. This click and drag option is super fast but I sometimes go 'and there goes my heading/course/target altitude' just because of that. :mellow: ^_^

 

Now there is a sort of 'MS-style' habit in me, I admit, but you eloquently summarised why the mouse wheel is that good. Also worth pointing out that it can coexist with other input methods.

Mouse wheel is the easiest for me.   There isn't a mouse on a touchpad but there isn't a joystick, pedals, throttle etc so supporting something that is not on a touchpad shouldn't be too difficult unless they have made it too difficult themselves.

Jason - The issue for those of us who otherwise successfully run X-Plane 10 on Apple notebooks (I have a 15" MacBookPro with 16GB and 2.2GHz processor), using a joystick/yoke and rudder pedals, is that there are only two USB ports, and the joystick/pedal/mouse port combo requires three.  I was unaware of the phenomenon of scroll wheels activating controls when I bought the MacBookPro earlier this year.  My bad?  Maybe!  Just wish there was a way to revert to the non-scroll option to fly my new PA46 Malibu!  Guess the only option is using yoke/joystick yaw rather than real rudder pedals.  Could be worse.

Can you not just plug them into a usb hub then you only need 1 port?

Then you can have yoke, pedals, throttle quadrants and scrolly mouse support!!

 

Chris

Same, I'm on a Macbook Pro, and I need to use a hub to use my external drive, controls, TrackIR etc all together :-)

My old MacBookPro touchpad handled manipulation in X-Plane 9 well, as did the touchpad in the new MacBookPro purchased for X-Plane 10.  Then I bought the Carenado PA-46 Malibu - and couldn't fly it. The need for a mouse became clear.   There are only two USB MacBookPro USB ports: yoke, one, rudder pedals (hopefully soon), two.  So I bought an Apple bluetooth wireless mouse, because it better mimicked a scroll wheel - not.  No better than the touchpad.  That was swapped for Logitech's MX Master bluetooth wireless mouse with ratchet wheel.  A little VS tweaking by Carenado with their Malibu 3-2.2 update, and ... fixed.  

 

Yes, Apple mice have scroll capability, but no better, or not much, than their scroll pads.  But they seem not to offer a ratchet wheel mouse, and that's the only way to get there from here with scroll wheel manipulators.

I am between both FSX and X-plane and Click and drag as implemented by Real;Air is a very viable option.

 

Donald