Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
Summary: Lion introduced a new feature called natural scrolling that's causing fits for some users. If you haven't upgraded you can test Lion's new scrolling behavior with a free app.
Mac OS 10.7 Lion introduced a new feature called natural scrolling that's causing fits for some users upgrading from older versions of the Mac OS X. If you haven't upgraded to Apple's latest cat you can test the new "up is down" scrolling (without installing Lion) by installing a freeware app called Scrollvetica.
But I'll warn you: it's going to drive you nuts.
For years (decades?) we've been trained to drag a scrollbar down, to scroll down a page. Lion reverses this and requires you to scroll or drag up to see the lower portion of a page. It sounds counterintuitive at first, but it actually makes sense, especially when coming from a touch-based device. Lion does away with scroll bars in the Finder, Safari and elsewhere exposing them only while scrolling to provide a visual reference of your location in a particular document.
Because Lion doesn't rely on scroll bars, it doesn't make sense to scroll down to move a page down. Your hand would move down as the content moves up -- exactly backwards with the real world. Lion's natural scrolling is comparable to grabbing a document and pushing (or flicking) it up to see the lower portion of a page - just like you do on the iPad.
Much has be written about the iPadification of the Mac OS and it's now a fact of life that major portions of the iOS (launchpad, full-screen apps, gestures, etc.) have leapt into Lion with both feet. It's time to embrace change and adopt Lion's new scrolling behavior or risk getting left behind, or at least not being able to scroll for a while.
Enter Scrollvetica, which inverts all scrolling events on Snow Leopard, mimicking Lion's new natural scrolling features (and iOS by extension), without installing Lion.
If you spend part of your time living in the future, with default Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad settings, you may find it difficult to switch between the future and the present and maintain any sort of input device sanity.
I use Lion on my MacBook Air 11 but I have yet to install it on my production MacBook Pro 15 because Verizon's 4G/LTE drivers haven't been updated for Lion (grrr). When I switch between my Macs the whole natural versus reverse scrolling thing drives me nuts.
Sure, I could simply uncheck natural scrolling in Lion, but it feels like I'm just putting off the inevitable.
What do you think of Lion's new natural scrolling? Will you switch?
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Talkback
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
A: There is no difference, both think that they are unmistakable ...
You spelled al-Qaeda wrong.
Unless Al Kaida is some actual, infallible tech entity. Then your statement would be correct. ;)
But do you really have a problem with giving an option to provide ergonomic continuity across Apple's GUIs? Really? That's al-Qaeda to you?
Really?!!
Hyperbole city, man.
Ya gotta love idiots who compare the behavior of
Nah...
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
Anybody who posts offensive posts about an attempt to improve a user interface may be considered to be an extremist.
Unmistakable? You are worried that Apple thinks people cannot confuse them with Microsoft?
The odd thing is that you have confused them with Microsoft and you have confused them with a non existent organisation!!!
Maybe you had better work out what you meant to say before you realise you are 'mistakable'.
Enough hate speech - please leave the hate speech to the terrorists, the extremists and anyone who wishes to stifle good in the world because it conflicts with their religion.
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
Fortunately Apple's decision to make content "bounce" beyond the end of the scroll point makes it visually obvious what you've done when you make a mistake. This makes learning the new behaviour far easier.
It works if you are using a trackpad, but feels odd with
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
I think it's a good idea
But seems like it would have had scroll wheel behavior the same. Still, it does make sense why they would do it on the whole so I can't say anything bad about it, just brand new interfaces don't always make an old interface bad or inefficient.
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
I just tried it, maybe at first I am not quite comfortable but I will get used to it.
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
Since day two, I am scrolling naturally. It just makes me feel being in a new and different environment, I just like the change:) It is no problem to switch, it's better if you get the Trackpad instead of mouse, Lion and the pad are made for each other.
Gives me a migraine
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
i.e. Pan
I wonder if they can fool the USPTO with that.
If you want to try it...
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica
Trip to Best Buy.
Hmmmmm... If you use multiple OSs, yup, turn the thing off.
Hair brained... Just my opinion :(
RE: Prepare for Lion's natural scrolling with Scrollvetica