"That is also why I don't understand everybody raving about Macs. Macs are not consistent with the second mouse button rule (they used to have only one button), therefore there is no way to become an instant expert on a Mac."
Although you may have answered your own question, as it seems that the right-click button does not fit the mental model of non-computer-experts (at least, that is what we have been discussing).
Maybe the Mac works better for those people because it does not assume that the user will just right-click to figure out how to do something?
Right-click does work well, of course, in most contexts on the Mac. Interestingly, though, I've been finding myself appreciating having a big obvious button to click even when I know the functionality I want is also in the right-click menu. I suspect Fitt's law has something to do with it.
Yes. There has traditionally been a drive toward putting all major functions of a Mac app in the menu bar — even if they also additionally got a shortcut such as through a "right-click" contextual menu. This leads one to expect to be able to find any available option through scanning a single set of options (categorized roughly by the thing or type of action they effect) rather than having to mentally union all the options from several disparate places to get a complete mental model of the app's actions and options.
Although you may have answered your own question, as it seems that the right-click button does not fit the mental model of non-computer-experts (at least, that is what we have been discussing).
Maybe the Mac works better for those people because it does not assume that the user will just right-click to figure out how to do something?
Right-click does work well, of course, in most contexts on the Mac. Interestingly, though, I've been finding myself appreciating having a big obvious button to click even when I know the functionality I want is also in the right-click menu. I suspect Fitt's law has something to do with it.