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Apple has been doing a really bad job at UX for the last few years. (Disclaimer: I say this as a person where I'm currently surrounded by two iMac's, a macbook

Apple has been doing a really bad job at UX for the last few years. (Disclaimer: I say this as a person where I'm currently surrounded by two iMac's, a macbook pro, and an iphone, so I'm not exactly a hater). The weird thing is I don't even know what they're going for. There are two trends I've seen: 1) Be more like iOS (for example, the dumb reverse scroll (wait sorry, "natural" scroll") and removing things like UI elements reacting to hovering.) I have no idea what's even clickable anymore. That's idiotic. I get consistency, but you shouldn't kick one platform in the knees to replicate the shortcomings of another. OK so touch screens don't have hover. Still, I'd like to have that back on the desktop. It'd be nice to know what's actually clickable. 2) Being more "social". Like now all my OSX devices want to be connected to my phone, and tell me about every goddamn text message. And if I try to ignore this, I get berated by annoying login screens. "Cancel". Hey maybe you want to see that screen again! NO! fuck off! I have no interest in iCloud, stop asking me five times to log in. Apple seems hell bent into annoying you into signing up for a lot of privacy degrading services. Not only that, but they just choose bizarre fucking defaults. Like, if I sync my iPhone, it will pop up iPhoto automatically with all my recent photos. Jesus christ. On the plus side, I'm boring, so there's nothing really there, but who the hell thought that was a good idea?!? Does apple have any idea what people actually use cell phone cameras for? Sure there are tame uses, but all the same, I mean jesus christ. That's the dumbest default I've seen, and turning it off is basically impossible.

stouset 12y ago
Sorry, but switching the scroll direction was completely justified. It takes literally five minutes to adjust to, and unifies the scrolling direction between touchscreen and non-touchscreen devices. It's not like, in lieu of this reason, there's some massively compelling argument to prefer one way or the other. If not for touch screens, the direction would be completely arbitrary. It didn't end up that way, so they've changed it now. There are plenty of reasons to complain about OS X. This isn't one of them.
- zerocrates 12y ago
  I (like many, I suspect) am a die-hard "natural scroll" hater. The fact that you're making physical contact with the thing you're scrolling does indeed make the "natural" direction feel natural on a touchscreen, but not on a separated scrollwheel or touchpad. Of course you're right, it's an annoyance that's removed in a matter of seconds by clicking a checkbox, and regardless its a difference you'd quickly adjust to, assuming you kept using Macs fairly exclusively. Still, it's not clear to me that there was any need for "unification" in this area. But then again, I don't use OS X anymore (and no, the scroll direction wasn't the reason).
  - stouset 12y ago
    Why would anyone be a "hater" toward natural scroll? The decision of which way a trackpad should scroll while swiping would otherwise be completely arbitrary. It's like being a hater of driving on the left vs. right side of the road (except in this case, I'm guessing it takes longer than five minutes to get used to).
    - overgard 12y ago
      > Why would anyone be a "hater" toward natural scroll? Because it's backwards compared to how every computer ever treated it before apple decided to reverse it? Hate hate hate hate hate. Haters ball.
- overgard 12y ago
  Why would I ever need it "unified"? Mouse interaction and touch interaction are night and day, I'm in entirely different mental modes when I use either of those devices. What is confusing is when suddenly, up is down. That's legit confusing. Admittedly I use an actual mouse with actual buttons. I tossed the "magic" mouse into a drawer after a week because it was annoying. Cute, but a pain when you're trying to get actual work done.
  - stouset 12y ago
    Apple prepares their moves well in advance, like a positional chess player. Can you really not see a future in which, for example, there's a display on a MBP trackpad? And it's not "suddenly". You toggle a checkbox. For about five minutes, you get scrolling backwards. Your brain adapts, and then you move on with your life. Seriously, this is a total non-issue, regardless of whatever "different mental mode" nonsense you toss out. You are literally griping about a five minute period of confusion, and I'm guessing have spent years avoiding it.
    - overgard 12y ago
      Well, I spent about 2 minutes figuring out how to turn it off, so close enough? I mean, I did move on with my life. I scroll up and things move up. I pointed it out because I thought it was dumb, not because I have some sort of obsession with it. You seem to be making an attempt to paint me as a luddite afraid of the future, but that's really not accurate. I just like my scroll wheel to not move in the wrong direction because "tablets ermahgerd!" I thought it was stupid to break well established behavior in an attempt to "unify" with a device that runs an entirely different operating system on hardware with entirely different input mechanisms. I don't really care if Tim Cook is playing chess nine moves ahead or something. I just want the damned thing to not get in my way.
Raptor22 12y ago
Am I the only one here who likes natural scrolling?
- lotyrin 12y ago
  Decades of Windows and Linux I figured I'd give it a shot for a few weeks before I would eventually give up on it. It took maybe a day, I'm hooked and now everything else is weird.
  - stouset 12y ago
    This exactly. The amount of griping over such a non-issue is ridiculous. It takes almost nothing to adapt to the change, but people act like Apple switched their keyboards from QWERTY to Kanji.
deong 12y ago
Several years ago, I wrote the iPhone app for a US retail company I worked for, and we had an internal beta test list. Users had no hope of being able to do the complicated dance of getting me their UDID and installing the resulting beta app through iTunes, I'd just have them bring me their phone, and I'd plug it into my Mac, install the provisioning profile needed, and get the app on their phone. I saw several naked co-workers that way, generally with them standing over my shoulder while I attempted to casually nuke iPhoto without drawing any more attention to it.

stouset 12y ago

Sorry, but switching the scroll direction was completely justified. It takes literally five minutes to adjust to, and unifies the scrolling direction between touchscreen and non-touchscreen devices. It's not like, in lieu of this reason, there's some massively compelling argument to prefer one way or the other. If not for touch screens, the direction would be completely arbitrary. It didn't end up that way, so they've changed it now. There are plenty of reasons to complain about OS X. This isn't one of them.

zerocrates 12y ago
I (like many, I suspect) am a die-hard "natural scroll" hater. The fact that you're making physical contact with the thing you're scrolling does indeed make the "natural" direction feel natural on a touchscreen, but not on a separated scrollwheel or touchpad. Of course you're right, it's an annoyance that's removed in a matter of seconds by clicking a checkbox, and regardless its a difference you'd quickly adjust to, assuming you kept using Macs fairly exclusively. Still, it's not clear to me that there was any need for "unification" in this area. But then again, I don't use OS X anymore (and no, the scroll direction wasn't the reason).
- stouset 12y ago
  Why would anyone be a "hater" toward natural scroll? The decision of which way a trackpad should scroll while swiping would otherwise be completely arbitrary. It's like being a hater of driving on the left vs. right side of the road (except in this case, I'm guessing it takes longer than five minutes to get used to).
  - overgard 12y ago
    > Why would anyone be a "hater" toward natural scroll? Because it's backwards compared to how every computer ever treated it before apple decided to reverse it? Hate hate hate hate hate. Haters ball.
overgard 12y ago
Why would I ever need it "unified"? Mouse interaction and touch interaction are night and day, I'm in entirely different mental modes when I use either of those devices. What is confusing is when suddenly, up is down. That's legit confusing. Admittedly I use an actual mouse with actual buttons. I tossed the "magic" mouse into a drawer after a week because it was annoying. Cute, but a pain when you're trying to get actual work done.
- stouset 12y ago
  Apple prepares their moves well in advance, like a positional chess player. Can you really not see a future in which, for example, there's a display on a MBP trackpad? And it's not "suddenly". You toggle a checkbox. For about five minutes, you get scrolling backwards. Your brain adapts, and then you move on with your life. Seriously, this is a total non-issue, regardless of whatever "different mental mode" nonsense you toss out. You are literally griping about a five minute period of confusion, and I'm guessing have spent years avoiding it.
  - overgard 12y ago
    Well, I spent about 2 minutes figuring out how to turn it off, so close enough? I mean, I did move on with my life. I scroll up and things move up. I pointed it out because I thought it was dumb, not because I have some sort of obsession with it. You seem to be making an attempt to paint me as a luddite afraid of the future, but that's really not accurate. I just like my scroll wheel to not move in the wrong direction because "tablets ermahgerd!" I thought it was stupid to break well established behavior in an attempt to "unify" with a device that runs an entirely different operating system on hardware with entirely different input mechanisms. I don't really care if Tim Cook is playing chess nine moves ahead or something. I just want the damned thing to not get in my way.

Raptor22 12y ago

Am I the only one here who likes natural scrolling?

lotyrin 12y ago
Decades of Windows and Linux I figured I'd give it a shot for a few weeks before I would eventually give up on it. It took maybe a day, I'm hooked and now everything else is weird.
- stouset 12y ago
  This exactly. The amount of griping over such a non-issue is ridiculous. It takes almost nothing to adapt to the change, but people act like Apple switched their keyboards from QWERTY to Kanji.

deong 12y ago

Several years ago, I wrote the iPhone app for a US retail company I worked for, and we had an internal beta test list. Users had no hope of being able to do the complicated dance of getting me their UDID and installing the resulting beta app through iTunes, I'd just have them bring me their phone, and I'd plug it into my Mac, install the provisioning profile needed, and get the app on their phone. I saw several naked co-workers that way, generally with them standing over my shoulder while I attempted to casually nuke iPhoto without drawing any more attention to it.