Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this "natural" scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.
I've been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered...how many of you folks prefer this method?
There is nothing natural about "natural scrolling".
Natural scrolling acts as if you're pushing a piece of paper up and down with your finger. Normal mouse scrolling acts as if you're using the mouse wheel to move a piece of paper.
Both are leaky abstractions, neither is natural or unnatural. "Natural scrolling" is just a fancy name for "we prefer scrolling the other way around".
It's like calling putting the close button in the top left "natural window controls" because that's what macOS does.
It feels like gaslighting.
I view it as controlling the scroll bar rather than the content. Down moves the bar down. Up moves the bar up.
I guess it depends on what the base line is. When reading a large news paper for example, I presume most people hold it steady in their hand and move their head to progress. Which would be the "traditional scrolling". If you assume a large scroll of paper (ancient egyptian style) I guess moving the scroll and keeping the head (mostly) steady works fine or even better. That would be the "natural scrolling".
But yes, in modern times I can't think of an equivalent of the scrolls to explain why we would consider that "natural", if we don't do it outside of the computer.