So I was a Mac user for years and accepted and adapted to natural scrolling after it appeared as the default in 2011. When I switched back to a Windows laptop for work around 2018, I kept it on natural mode.
But then two years ago I got a desktop computer with an external mouse again and.... natural scrolling doesn't work for me on a physical wheel. With a trackpad, the metaphor is direct, that the page or document is being moved by the motion of your fingers; but with a wheel, I still want to pull it toward me to scroll down, because that feels like rolling the little wheel along the document, or turning it to advance the document beneath, like a printer finishing a page.
Maybe that's all silly, but for me it's natural scrolling on trackpads and conventional scrolling on mice with scrollwheels.
That's the sane handling of scrolling. macOS is weird for tying the scrolling direction of trackpads and mouse wheels in a single setting.
> Maybe that's all silly
No it isn't.
Both examples match perfectly physically:
- Touchpad is like dragging the piece of paper directly.
- Scroll wheel is like having the paper on the other side of the wheel.