4 ms·

Its always seemed so passive aggressive that they call that "natural scrolling".

by blhack 6y ago

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.
      - hombre_fatal 6y ago
        I suppose it's somewhat cheeky. Like it has a cheekiness rating of 0.0001 instead of 0.0. But I really cannot relate to the sort of person who cares. At the same time, giving it a name is useful. "Do you have natural scrolling on or off?" vs "So, which direction does the content scroll when you move two fingers down on your trackpad? No, I mean, when you're touching the trackpad with two fingers and you move them towards you, does the page go up or down? Oh, by up, I mean that the text actually is going down but you're moving towards the top of the website."
  - Operyl 6y ago
    I’m not a cult member for expressing my thoughts, I was just explaining why I felt like the naming made sense in my head.
- 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

Its always seemed so passive aggressive that they call that "natural scrolling".

by blhack 6y ago

Its always seemed so passive aggressive that they call that "natural scrolling".

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.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      I suppose it's somewhat cheeky. Like it has a cheekiness rating of 0.0001 instead of 0.0. But I really cannot relate to the sort of person who cares. At the same time, giving it a name is useful. "Do you have natural scrolling on or off?" vs "So, which direction does the content scroll when you move two fingers down on your trackpad? No, I mean, when you're touching the trackpad with two fingers and you move them towards you, does the page go up or down? Oh, by up, I mean that the text actually is going down but you're moving towards the top of the website."
- Operyl 6y ago
  I’m not a cult member for expressing my thoughts, I was just explaining why I felt like the naming made sense in my head.
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