ITWire

If you follow the white rabbit further into the new Trackpad preferences panel you'll find an intriguing new "secondary click" option.

Apple can't even bring itself to call this new feature a right-click, but that's exactly what it is. Once you tick it you'll notice the virtual button at the bottom of the trackpad has now been cleft in twain. The right side of the bottom third of the trackpad is now a right-click button.

Forget holding down the control button. Forget placing two fingers on the trackpad as you click. The MacBook now has a proper right-click button, that works just like the right-click button on any Windows machine. It takes a while to grow on you, because your brain just refuses to believe that it's there.

The MacBook's virtual right-click button is disabled by default and Apple isn't drawing attention to its dirty little secret so as not to trigger outrage from Mac fanatics. The only way Apple could get away with introducing the right-click option was to remove the trackpad button completely, figuring Apple users would rather no buttons than the sacrilege of two buttons.

The introduction of a right-click button might seem like a godsend for those who run Windows in Boot Camp, but the news isn't good in the short term. Apple tells me it is yet to develop a right-click Windows driver for Boot Camp, so for the time being owners of new Macs will be pining for the right-click button when they switch from Leopard to Windows. The irony is almost too much.

What's next? A Taskbar in Leopard? A Start Menu? Such thoughts are ludicrous, but then so was the thought of a true right-click button on a Mac.