I don’t know of any “regular Joe” users who get upset about this, they jiggle the scroll a moment to get used to it, and start using the device. Users generally find it takes just a moment to adjust to the new paradigm when the scrolling is working the opposite way. But when I plug my old-school mouse with the real wheel into my Mac, the Apple’s “Natural Scrolling” doesn’t feel so natural anymore.

If you imagine the scroll wheel sitting on a paper you were reading, the “Windows” scrolling direction is intuitive - the content moves in the direction the wheel would push it.Īpple mice don’t have these physical wheels anymore, so they are pushing for the touchscreen analogy for all their scrolling devices. And the first scrolling mouse had physical wheels (many still do). The first trackpad scrolling mimiced how mouse scrolling worked. This pushes the concept of scrolling gestures interacting directly the content. Apple is not keen on the whole concept of scrollbars currently, and hides them in many contexts by default. The Scroll Bar AnalogyĪnother way to look at (Windows-style) scrolling is that you are interacting with the scrollbar, rather than with the controls. A few years ago, Apple switched their scrolling direction to follow this analogy.

When you use a touch screen, the scrolling behavior is intuitive - it’s like you put your finger on the actual content and push it around.

Automator mac scroll direction