The New Default 💻

Why default settings often shape your behavior—or why, if you first used a laptop after 2010, you might prefer natural scrolling.

Howdy! Here’s another edition of Lesser Tedium, the natural scrolling version of Tedium. Wanna try a different default? Subscribe over this way.

(Adrian Regeci/Unsplash)

One of the reasons I think Linux has never truly caught on at the level of Windows isn’t so much the openness factor of it—I think many can see the value of software that respects choice and privacy—but the fact that, by its very nature, there’s no real default to how it’s used. It gives you too much choice, and choice is scary.

You have to pick a distro. Then a desktop interface. Then set up your keyboard. And 100 other small choices that add up to something the average user finds too much.

Many people stick with the defaults on their machines as a result, but sometimes, those defaults change. And no default change has been more controversial than “natural scrolling.” In 2010, Apple introduced the concept on MacOS essentially as a way to make scrolling on a trackpad basically the same as scrolling on a touchscreen—a concept introduced as Apple was attempting to sell iPhones and iPads to the masses.

Steve Jobs, in one of his final major product announcements before his 2011 passing, didn’t talk very much about this change on stage—but did describe why the company felt like touchscreens weren’t a fit on the Mac.

“We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical,” he said.

Not having a touchscreen didn’t change much for the Mac experience, but trying to push natural scrolling as a default had a more significant long-term effect. One thing I’ve noticed is that people who grew up using scroll wheels or owned a Mac before 2011 tend to prefer the non-natural approach to scrolling, and it’s one of the first things they change when getting set up on a new computer. But those who grew up afterward are often fine with using their trackpad upside down for some reason.

Chalk another one up to the power of defaults.

» Wanna learn more? I wrote more about natural scrolling and defaults back in 2021, including how nudges help shape product design.