Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this “natural” scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.
I’ve been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered…how many of you folks prefer this method?
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It’s a good thing Apple doesn’t make cars. They’d put the gas pedal on the left just to be different, and claim it’s more “natural” that way.
Don’t give Tesla any ideas.
Trackpads and touchscreens get the phone way of scrolling.
These feel like you are interacting with a piece of paper, so you move the paper around.Mousewheels get the traditional way of scrolling.
Mice are more like controlling something.
It just is. Like F1-F12 keys are always F1-F12 keys, not the alt-function (like media/brightness etc).I hate that Apple has called it “natural” Vs “reverse” in some psychological reconfiguring that you are going against the grain if you don’t agree with them (as opposed to them changing the established standard).
Real gangstas also switch their PGUP and PGDN keys to natural scrolling.
There is nothing natural about “natural scrolling”.
It feels like gaslighting.
Natural scrolling acts as if you’re pushing a piece of paper up and down with your finger. Normal mouse scrolling acts as if you’re using the mouse wheel to move a piece of paper.
Both are leaky abstractions, neither is natural or unnatural. “Natural scrolling” is just a fancy name for “we prefer scrolling the other way around”.
It’s like calling putting the close button in the top left “natural window controls” because that’s what macOS does.
I guess it depends on what the base line is. When reading a large news paper for example, I presume most people hold it steady in their hand and move their head to progress. Which would be the “traditional scrolling”. If you assume a large scroll of paper (ancient egyptian style) I guess moving the scroll and keeping the head (mostly) steady works fine or even better. That would be the “natural scrolling”.
But yes, in modern times I can’t think of an equivalent of the scrolls to explain why we would consider that “natural”, if we don’t do it outside of the computer.
Natural is totally unnatural.
Traditional for both scroll wheels and trackpads (trackpads are emulating a mouse, you heathers!) And inverted Y for gaming.
Traditional for mouse, natural for touchpads.
I like traditional scrolling, that’s how I learnt and how I like it on all my computers.
Unfortunately, I also have a MacBook, which I love! The touchpad scrolls the “Natural” way, like on any modern phone, but if you plug in a mouse, it scrolls the “Natural” way, too. Which I hate! You can change the scrolling direction in the settings, but that will change the scrolling direction for the touchpad as well, so I’m stuck.
It’s so frustrating that I gave up using a mouse on the MacBook.
I use a roll reverser app on my macbook to get around this problem. You can configure touchpad to be natural and mouse to be traditional
Can you link me the app?
Thanks.
Start realising that the way you’re used to scrolling with your mouse wheel, is a cog between you and the service it’s moving. Actually you were using natural all along. It was the early touch pads that were wrong and nonsense.
This! I use traditional with wheels and natural with touchpads
