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Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

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Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#41

Post by naravara »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #35
mikestew wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are OS X's metaphors slipping, or are they just being folded into how developers write their apps, or consumers use them? I ask because of the iOS Settings app: it used to be that was the place one changed the settings of an app, not in the app itself. IOW, kinda like the macOS System Preferences panes...sorta. Point is, it can appear that the OS settings pane/app/whatever is for stuff Apple controls, and the rest ha…

> I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that Apple has let the messaging get really confused. Right—part of Apple's job is to create an environment where the "correct path" is clear and developers want to follow it. Either Apple used to do a better job, or else developers did. And, consider: • Apple encourages developers to distribute via the Mac App Store as much as possible. • Preference Panes cannot be sold in the…

> Either Apple used to do a better job, or else developers did.

A bit of both I would think. When the Mac was a more niche platform the developer community tended to be more bought into philosophy and design sensibilities around it. And as the Mac has gotten more widespread in popularity, Apple has gotten less good at planning around power-user use cases or communicating how to handle them elegantly.

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#42

Post by Wowfunhappy »

toyg wrote: post #40
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #28

I miss when apps like this were built as preference panes. An app that does nothing but change an OS setting—and whose user interface exists purely to adjust those settings—does not belong in my applications folder, and certainly not in my menu bar. Such apps ought to live in System Preferences, alongside other, well, system preferences. And what do you know, Apple built a way for third party developers to do just th…

I agree but I think the issue here is complexity. This app is built with Swift, probably because most developers prefer high-level languages like that over system-level languages like ObjectiveC. Unfortunately, OS vendors typically don’t provide interfaces for high-level languages in their OS machinery unless strictly necessary. Can you actually write a Preferences panel in Swift? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answe…

> Can you actually write a Preferences panel in Swift? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer were “nope, Obj-C only”.

If that was the case (I don't believe it is), it would only be because modern Apple doesn't care enough about Preference Panes to add easy support. A third party Preference Pane is not any more "OS machinery" that a third party screen saver.

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#43

Post by rgovostes »

toyg wrote: post #40
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #28

I miss when apps like this were built as preference panes. An app that does nothing but change an OS setting—and whose user interface exists purely to adjust those settings—does not belong in my applications folder, and certainly not in my menu bar. Such apps ought to live in System Preferences, alongside other, well, system preferences. And what do you know, Apple built a way for third party developers to do just th…

I agree but I think the issue here is complexity. This app is built with Swift, probably because most developers prefer high-level languages like that over system-level languages like ObjectiveC. Unfortunately, OS vendors typically don’t provide interfaces for high-level languages in their OS machinery unless strictly necessary. Can you actually write a Preferences panel in Swift? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answe…

I wouldn't characterize Swift as "high-level" and Objective-C as "system-level." One of Swift's stated design goals is to work at all levels of the technology stack, including system programming where you need a lot of control over struct layouts and so on.

I'd agree that most of the focus has been on app development, but I just found this toy kernel written in Swift the other day: http://si.org/projects/project1/

On the Objective-C side, sure you have access to all of the low level stuff of C, but Objective-C's message passing is probably a poor choice for very low-level system programming (in the kernel, for example). Apple uses C and C++ in the xnu kernel.

Swift was also designed to interoperate with C and Objective-C APIs, so you could certainly write a preference pane in it. It even automatically generates Swiftier interfaces for APIs that follow conventions. Here's the NSPreferencePane API: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/preferencepanes/ns...

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#44

Post by aptgetrekt »

toyg wrote: post #40
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #28

I miss when apps like this were built as preference panes. An app that does nothing but change an OS setting—and whose user interface exists purely to adjust those settings—does not belong in my applications folder, and certainly not in my menu bar. Such apps ought to live in System Preferences, alongside other, well, system preferences. And what do you know, Apple built a way for third party developers to do just th…

I agree but I think the issue here is complexity. This app is built with Swift, probably because most developers prefer high-level languages like that over system-level languages like ObjectiveC. Unfortunately, OS vendors typically don’t provide interfaces for high-level languages in their OS machinery unless strictly necessary. Can you actually write a Preferences panel in Swift? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answe…

I don't know much about macOS development, 72 hours ago I had never done any at all! But as far as I can tell anything you could do in Objective C you can also do in Swift. I would have made a preference pane and would prefer it myself but I explained why I didn't in another comment. Apple kind of discourages preference panes unfortunately.

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#45

Post by flaxton »

I would never use this - it makes sense for the trackpad and mouse to work in the “natural” direction, just like on an iPhone and iPad screen. When I use Windows on a real PC then it confuses me, but that is rare I do that. So this makes no sense to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat ;-)

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#46

Post by jaywalk »

snissn wrote: post #8
dpcx wrote: post #2

As someone who prefers Natural Scroll (and who understands that there are people who don't), why would someone want Natural Scroll on one interaction method and not on another? That feels like confusion waiting to happen, IMHO.

I get confused about which is natural and which is normal scroll but I have subconscious muscle memory, so if this tools helps people that for whatever reason were trained to have this subconscious muscle memory / why not? It's all pretty arbitrary anyway. Aren't your eyes bolted on upside down and your brain has a layer that inverts it?

Our eyes aren't "upside down" it's just that light passing through a convex lens (the front of our eyes) gets flipped.

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#47

Post by Wowfunhappy »

naravara wrote: post #41
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that Apple has let the messaging get really confused. Right—part of Apple's job is to create an environment where the "correct path" is clear and developers want to follow it. Either Apple used to do a better job, or else developers did. And, consider: • Apple encourages developers to distribute via the Mac App Store as much as possible. • Preference Panes cannot be sold in the…

> Either Apple used to do a better job, or else developers did. A bit of both I would think. When the Mac was a more niche platform the developer community tended to be more bought into philosophy and design sensibilities around it. And as the Mac has gotten more widespread in popularity, Apple has gotten less good at planning around power-user use cases or communicating how to handle them elegantly.

> When the Mac was a more niche platform the developer community tended to be more bought into philosophy and design sensibilities around it.

I still kind of hold Apple accountable for that, though. As the platform grows, Apple has more resources they can dedicate to clarifying UI patterns, or systemic coaching via API design. But they've gone in the opposite direction.

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#48

Post by jedberg »

Since HN users tend to be more traditional in how they expect their computers to act, I wonder, how many people turn off "natural" scrolling the second they get a new Mac?

I never understood why it was there. It makes a ton of sense for content to scroll in the direction your finger moves when your finger is touching the content, but I fail to understand why you'd expect it to move that way when using a touchpad or a mouse.

Was this done specifically for users who were coming to Mac from iPad?

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#49

Post by dhosek »

jedberg wrote: post #48

Since HN users tend to be more traditional in how they expect their computers to act, I wonder, how many people turn off "natural" scrolling the second they get a new Mac? I never understood why it was there. It makes a ton of sense for content to scroll in the direction your finger moves when your finger is touching the content , but I fail to understand why you'd expect it to move that way when using a touchpad or…

Arguably, the other direction is less intuitive. When Apple introduced this, it took me a couple days to adapt, but now if I ever end up on a Windows machine with the scroll setting in "unnatural" mode, it makes no sense.

Re: Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

#50

Post by w0mbat »

I've used wheel mice on the Mac from the time the Microsoft USB wheel mouse came out, back when there was a Mac driver that controlled classic Mac apps by looking for scroll bars and sending events, licensed from an Italian developer.

I myself added native wheel support to some major Carbon apps, and convinced other engineers to do it, as I was at Microsoft MacBU at the time.

But anyway, when Apple decided that scroll wheels should work the other way around, I gave it a try. I soon acclimatized to it and never had to change the default again. I would recommend all Mac users try out the "natural" setting and see if you get used to it.

Now explain why I HAVE to invert the y-axis in Halo on XBOX (any version of either). I tried but I can not adjust to the default.

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