[zapzupnz]

It makes sense on a trackpad too which is what the majority of sold Macs come with. You’re “pushing” the document, not moving the scroll bars. Seems perfectly natural to me. My fingers move up, the document moves up; just like what would happen to a piece of paper being slid up a table.

Yes, it’s less direct than touching the screen, but it makes more sense for the model of UI they’ve been going for over the last 20 years where the content of the window is more meaningful than the window itself, which is to say worrying about where the scroll bars are rather than what part of the document you’re looking at is what’s not natural.

[stronglikedan]

> It makes sense on a trackpad too

No, it doesn't. Trackpads always worked fine until "they" reversed the motion. Now it's always a guessing game for the initial scroll. It's terrible, unintuitive, and doesn't make sense. "Natural" is unnatural.

[chuckadams]

What I did when I introduced my very non-technical partner to a mac was leave it at "natural" scrolling, show her the two-finger scroll gesture, let her try it out, then I turned off natural scrolling and asked her which she liked better. She picked the latter hands down. I knew there's a reason I'm with her :)

It's totally a matter of personal taste, both are objectively right depending on what one thinks the thing being manipulated is.

[marmarama]

So why doesn't the mouse pointer work that way on an Apple trackpad?

Surely if that's the case then when you move your finger to the upper left then the pointer should move to the bottom right. Because that's how it would work if it was a real object and you were pushing the pointer around with your finger. Why is scrolling a special case?

Honestly though, I wouldn't mind that much if Apple hadn't decided to call it "natural" scrolling, like you're weird if you prefer up for scroll up and down for scroll down. It's both smug and reeks of the same kinda of discriminatory attitude that made life hard for left handers.

[addaon]

The pointer represents your (pointer) finger. Single-finger motions affect the pointer. Scrolling motions affect a representation of the document. When I move my (real) finger up, my (real) finger moves up. When I put my (real) finger on a (real) document and move it up, the paper of the document moves up, causing new text from the bottom to appear in my field of view.

[card_zero]

Or scrolling represents a viewpoint, such as a frame, or a finger pointing at the document. Then it's the other way round again. You can't just declare what the metaphor is, it's arbitrary.

[CarVac]

It's the ergonomics that I have an issue with.

[tjoff]

On any non-apple system it has the "natural" scroll on the touchpad AND sane scrolling behavior.