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I've been using a mouse on my 2016 iPad 9.7" iPad for a few days now. Here are my thoughts: - Anything related to selecting or copying text is improved, inclu

by poglet 6y ago

I've been using a mouse on my 2016 iPad 9.7" iPad for a few days now. Here are my thoughts: - Anything related to selecting or copying text is improved, including web browsing. - Sometimes right click brings up context menus and sometimes 'long left click' brings up context menus. Sometimes both work but with different options. - I would like to change the cursor to an arrow pointer. - I would like to change the scrolling direction (it's the opposite of Windows). - Scrolling doesn't feel smooth, many people report different scrolling issues. - You can assign different actions to different mouse buttons, this has made multitasking more efficient for me.

madeofpalk 6y ago
> - I would like to change the scrolling direction (it's the opposite of Windows). You can. You want to turn off "natural scrolling" in settings, somewhere.
- blhack 6y ago
  Its always seemed so passive aggressive that they call that "natural scrolling".
  - Operyl 6y ago
    It makes sense in my head, I'm "pushing the page up" with my fingers, like a long sheet of paper. EDIT: please, if you’re going to downvote me please discuss why
    - mantap 6y ago
      It's natural if you've never used a mouse before and only ever use Apple devices. Honestly it is pretty cultish, there was a perfectly good standard before but someone at Apple decided to make their mark on the world in this annoying way.
      - revscat 6y ago
        Pretty rude there.
      - hombre_fatal 6y ago
        You're getting weirdly extreme. I bet most Macbook users have used Windows before and preferred to just get used to the suddenly inverted scrolling behavior on the Macbook rather than change it to what they were familiar with on Windows. I vastly prefer "natural scrolling" now. It was awkward for about 10min. Now when I use someone's laptop that scrolls in the opposite direction, it's jarring to see the content move in a direction different than my fingers. You're speaking from the comfort of familiarity just like anyone else is, though I can't believe anyone feels so strongly about default scroll direction. Why let something so stupid annoy you?
        arvinsim 6y ago
        > I bet most Macbook users have used Windows before and preferred to just get used to the suddenly inverted scrolling behavior on the Macbook rather than change it to what they were familiar with on Windows. That's a pretty big generalization. I, for one, prefer things to be consistent on both my windows and mac machines.
        zapzupnz 6y ago
        Of course it's a generalisation. That should be clear enough by the words "I bet most". You also missed the point of the comment, which was to state why natural scrolling doesn't rile up Mac users so much as Windows users — by now, the majority of us are used to it.
        vvanders 6y ago
        The implicit opposite of natural is unnatural, which implies some sort of deviance from normal. Should we call all right-handed people "natural" and left-handed people something else? Convention since far back as I can remember('90s) was "invert", as to why Apple decided to buck this trend, your guess is as good as mine.
    - mbreese 6y ago
      I think it's worth noting that "natural scrolling" was only a thing once iPhones and iPads came out. The reasoning was that we were already in a cognitive dissonance when switching between touch interfaces and mouse interfaces. As more and more of the interaction with Apple became touch (or touchpad -- the Magic Trackpad came out around the same time), the original direction of scrolling stopping making sense. When you aren't moving an object with your fingers, it matters less which direction you move. When you start directly interacting with objects, the "natural" scrolling direction makes more sense. That said, it took me a few years before I ended up switching. Unchecking the scroll direction checkbox was the first thing I used to do on a Mac. Now, I'm quite happy with the natural direction. Here's example press from the time: https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/apple-s-mousetrap-why-did-apple-reverse-the-way-we-scroll-up-and-down.html https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/apple-s-mousetrap-why-d...
      - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
        The hand tool in Acrobat Reader did this earlier.
        sgerenser 6y ago
        Acrobat reader didn’t invent the hand tool. Pretty sure there were Mac apps on the original Macintosh in 1984 with a hand tool that worked the same way.
      - robin_reala 6y ago
        It’s the same thing with computer games and what you started on. I have to invert the y-axis on the look stick on every game I play, because I grew up in the 80s with joysticks and flight sims. Pushing up on the stick to look up is semantically obvious, but completely the opposite of pushing forwards on a flight-control style joystick that tilts the plane down.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        The weirdest thing is that many of my friends have forgotten that it was every not like this. I mention that I prefer the old method of scrolling and they are insistent that it has always been "natural."
    - criddell 6y ago
      I think you're right. It does make more sense. I think the pull-down-to-scroll-up action came from the scroll bars at the side of the page.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    It's the "natural" direction on a touchscreen, where you're literally acting via a fixed viewport while dragging/flicking the content (i.e. the actual "scroll"). The other direction is more natural when you're using something like a mousewheel or a touchpad scrolling area, since that renders it quite "natural" to think about dragging the viewport, or a representation thereof such as the scrollbar handle. Dragging the "handle" downwards on a mouse or touchpad is also more ergonomic, so it's better to match it with the common direction of scrolling.
  - ajmurmann 6y ago
    While I have come to embrace that direction, at least with trackpads, the naming always made me upset and is reminiscent of "patriot act".
    - gowld 6y ago
      USA PATRIOT Act. It's an initialism.
  - auggierose 6y ago
    When you are using a trackpad, it IS natural to scroll that way. Haven't used a mouse in years (except when setting up Linux for GPU compute, and it was a pita). Edit: years -> a decade
wayneftw 6y ago
I don’t think you will ever be able to change the cursor to an arrow pointer because Apple is more interested in being different than they are interested in being useful. This became very clear to me when I realized that you have not ever been able to even change the color of the pointer in macOS, nevermind the shape. I wanted it to be white so it would stand out more. Apple doesn’t care - they are too busy projecting style to care about users petty practical needs.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I remember doing this with ResEdit, on Mac OS 9. Not sure if it was ever possible on OSX
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    Yes, exactly. You have always had to use some third-party hack tool to work around Apple. That’s why it will never, ever be an option on the iPad.
  - xoa 6y ago
    Don't think there was ever a setting for changing color and cursor shape native in macOS (though size and such is in Accessibility), but it's always been possible by digging into the system a bit (just like all the icons are simply .icns bundles in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ and can be easily replaced to change the mediocre current icons with better ones). There have long since been many 3rd party utilities to make it easier/more automated, though some of them seem to have gotten abandoned. Here's an open source one called Mousecape if you're curious for example, but you have to fork it and remove the sparkle framework to make it work in 10.15: https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape There's various commercial pointer modification utilities, as well as simpler highlighter-effect ones like Mouseposé and Pinpoint. Theming on macOS was a big awesome thing at one point, kind of too bad it seems to have fallen away a bit (in part because Apple's new security efforts have made it ever more work). At least it's still doable though.
- greggman3 6y ago
leokennis 6y ago
Regarding the scrolling, is it maybe the case that when touching the screen, iOS can “prepare” for a scrolling event by preloading stuff around the viewport? Whereas a cursor does not signal “scrolling intent” as good: it can be sort of anywhere (it can be “left behind” while you are reading som text) and is always on screen as opposed to your finger.
jackbrookes 6y ago
The inverted scrolling direction is now standard on Windows precision touchpads I believe, as well as Macs (i.e. two fingers upwards scrolls the page downwards).
bluedino 6y ago
>> Anything related to selecting or copying text is improved, including web browsing. You couldn't make text selection in iOS any worse if you tried.

by poglet 6y ago

madeofpalk 6y ago

> - I would like to change the scrolling direction (it's the opposite of Windows). You can. You want to turn off "natural scrolling" in settings, somewhere.

blhack 6y ago
Its always seemed so passive aggressive that they call that "natural scrolling".
- Operyl 6y ago
  It makes sense in my head, I'm "pushing the page up" with my fingers, like a long sheet of paper. EDIT: please, if you’re going to downvote me please discuss why
  - mantap 6y ago
    It's natural if you've never used a mouse before and only ever use Apple devices. Honestly it is pretty cultish, there was a perfectly good standard before but someone at Apple decided to make their mark on the world in this annoying way.
    - revscat 6y ago
      Pretty rude there.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      You're getting weirdly extreme. I bet most Macbook users have used Windows before and preferred to just get used to the suddenly inverted scrolling behavior on the Macbook rather than change it to what they were familiar with on Windows. I vastly prefer "natural scrolling" now. It was awkward for about 10min. Now when I use someone's laptop that scrolls in the opposite direction, it's jarring to see the content move in a direction different than my fingers. You're speaking from the comfort of familiarity just like anyone else is, though I can't believe anyone feels so strongly about default scroll direction. Why let something so stupid annoy you?
      - arvinsim 6y ago
        > I bet most Macbook users have used Windows before and preferred to just get used to the suddenly inverted scrolling behavior on the Macbook rather than change it to what they were familiar with on Windows. That's a pretty big generalization. I, for one, prefer things to be consistent on both my windows and mac machines.
        zapzupnz 6y ago
        Of course it's a generalisation. That should be clear enough by the words "I bet most". You also missed the point of the comment, which was to state why natural scrolling doesn't rile up Mac users so much as Windows users — by now, the majority of us are used to it.
      - vvanders 6y ago
        The implicit opposite of natural is unnatural, which implies some sort of deviance from normal. Should we call all right-handed people "natural" and left-handed people something else? Convention since far back as I can remember('90s) was "invert", as to why Apple decided to buck this trend, your guess is as good as mine.
  - mbreese 6y ago
    I think it's worth noting that "natural scrolling" was only a thing once iPhones and iPads came out. The reasoning was that we were already in a cognitive dissonance when switching between touch interfaces and mouse interfaces. As more and more of the interaction with Apple became touch (or touchpad -- the Magic Trackpad came out around the same time), the original direction of scrolling stopping making sense. When you aren't moving an object with your fingers, it matters less which direction you move. When you start directly interacting with objects, the "natural" scrolling direction makes more sense. That said, it took me a few years before I ended up switching. Unchecking the scroll direction checkbox was the first thing I used to do on a Mac. Now, I'm quite happy with the natural direction. Here's example press from the time: https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/apple-s-mousetrap-why-did-apple-reverse-the-way-we-scroll-up-and-down.html https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/apple-s-mousetrap-why-d...
    - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      The hand tool in Acrobat Reader did this earlier.
      - sgerenser 6y ago
        Acrobat reader didn’t invent the hand tool. Pretty sure there were Mac apps on the original Macintosh in 1984 with a hand tool that worked the same way.
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      It’s the same thing with computer games and what you started on. I have to invert the y-axis on the look stick on every game I play, because I grew up in the 80s with joysticks and flight sims. Pushing up on the stick to look up is semantically obvious, but completely the opposite of pushing forwards on a flight-control style joystick that tilts the plane down.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      The weirdest thing is that many of my friends have forgotten that it was every not like this. I mention that I prefer the old method of scrolling and they are insistent that it has always been "natural."
  - criddell 6y ago
    I think you're right. It does make more sense. I think the pull-down-to-scroll-up action came from the scroll bars at the side of the page.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's the "natural" direction on a touchscreen, where you're literally acting via a fixed viewport while dragging/flicking the content (i.e. the actual "scroll"). The other direction is more natural when you're using something like a mousewheel or a touchpad scrolling area, since that renders it quite "natural" to think about dragging the viewport, or a representation thereof such as the scrollbar handle. Dragging the "handle" downwards on a mouse or touchpad is also more ergonomic, so it's better to match it with the common direction of scrolling.
- ajmurmann 6y ago
  While I have come to embrace that direction, at least with trackpads, the naming always made me upset and is reminiscent of "patriot act".
  - gowld 6y ago
    USA PATRIOT Act. It's an initialism.
- auggierose 6y ago
  When you are using a trackpad, it IS natural to scroll that way. Haven't used a mouse in years (except when setting up Linux for GPU compute, and it was a pita). Edit: years -> a decade

wayneftw 6y ago

I don’t think you will ever be able to change the cursor to an arrow pointer because Apple is more interested in being different than they are interested in being useful. This became very clear to me when I realized that you have not ever been able to even change the color of the pointer in macOS, nevermind the shape. I wanted it to be white so it would stand out more. Apple doesn’t care - they are too busy projecting style to care about users petty practical needs.

gnicholas 6y ago
I remember doing this with ResEdit, on Mac OS 9. Not sure if it was ever possible on OSX
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. You have always had to use some third-party hack tool to work around Apple. That’s why it will never, ever be an option on the iPad.
- xoa 6y ago
  Don't think there was ever a setting for changing color and cursor shape native in macOS (though size and such is in Accessibility), but it's always been possible by digging into the system a bit (just like all the icons are simply .icns bundles in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ and can be easily replaced to change the mediocre current icons with better ones). There have long since been many 3rd party utilities to make it easier/more automated, though some of them seem to have gotten abandoned. Here's an open source one called Mousecape if you're curious for example, but you have to fork it and remove the sparkle framework to make it work in 10.15: https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape There's various commercial pointer modification utilities, as well as simpler highlighter-effect ones like Mouseposé and Pinpoint. Theming on macOS was a big awesome thing at one point, kind of too bad it seems to have fallen away a bit (in part because Apple's new security efforts have made it ever more work). At least it's still doable though.
greggman3 6y ago

leokennis 6y ago

Regarding the scrolling, is it maybe the case that when touching the screen, iOS can “prepare” for a scrolling event by preloading stuff around the viewport? Whereas a cursor does not signal “scrolling intent” as good: it can be sort of anywhere (it can be “left behind” while you are reading som text) and is always on screen as opposed to your finger.

jackbrookes 6y ago

The inverted scrolling direction is now standard on Windows precision touchpads I believe, as well as Macs (i.e. two fingers upwards scrolls the page downwards).

bluedino 6y ago

>> Anything related to selecting or copying text is improved, including web browsing. You couldn't make text selection in iOS any worse if you tried.