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Re: [LUG] An insanely long rambling bad apple review of apple: was Re: OS X v Wheezy was Re: Windows 8 vs Ubuntu 13.04

 

On 11 May 2013 17:52, Martijn Grooten <sweetwatergeek@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What others have said, already: fantastic post.

One thing:

> 10: Mouse scrolls the wrong damn way by default (seriously). Easily
> changeable, but it's another example of Cupertino's "we tell you how to
> do it" attitude.

Apparently this is because that's how scrolling works on touch
screens: you move your finger downwards and you scroll up - and vice
versa.

Now I use a touch screen (phone) and also a desktop PC, and somehow
this never confuses me. Actually, it took me a while before I realised
that, indeed, the movements happen in different directions - so
natural both movements have become to me. Are there really people who
find this confusing?

Martijn.

I guess it comes down to history.

Things-on-screen (let's call them documents) have been longer than the screen can display for a very long time. Scroll-bars at the sides of the application "window" seem to be the most agreed-upon method of both conveying this concept to people and providing a mechanism for moving through the document. The vertical scroll wheels on mice typically follow the same convention - you want to move your position "down", you pull the bar down and so you should pull the wheel "down" (if the mouse were up against the screen... as it's flat on the desk, this action equates to pulling the wheel towards you).

With touchscreens, perhaps because it is more directly "tactile" than using a mouse, you are not so much moving your position in the document as you are moving the document itself, so you are "pushing" it up.

Apple are trying to encourage this latter concept on all their devices. I have not found many people that are immediately comfortable with the change. The distancing of your digits from the document seems to go against Apple's ideology.

Grant (not top-posting for a change).
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