Jerry King’s Mac411: Lion and Dead Sea Scrolls – Naples Daily News
Lion has been out for a while. What are some of the more interesting or confusing things of Lion?
— AB of Naples
Operating system Lion has been released long enough for a first update (OS 10.7.1) to be available. See tinyurl.com/44cc6vc for the July 7 Mac 411 article on some Lion features. Today I’ll cover two of many items that are confounding owners of Lion.
Normal vs. natural scrolling?
Historically paper or parchment documents of length were wrapped across two rolls. They were unrolled from one and rolled up on the other with a small viewing area showing part of the document at anytime. Some documents were held and “scrolled” in a vertical position; others are scrolled horizontally. Wars may have been fought over which was better: horizontal versus vertical scrolling? Lion has started a different war.
For more than 30 years the presentation of information on a computer screen was based upon this metaphor. If the information document was too large to be totally displayed on the screen then a viewing window was moved over the document. The computer display (viewer) moved and the document was still. Visually text (or image parts) moved as vertical and / or horizontal scroll bars were used to drag the scroll position (squib) icon along the edge of the document.
You moved the scroll squib down to move the viewer window down over the document. Trackball mice, the track pad on a laptop, or use of the cursor trained our minds to drag the scroll squib down to move the viewer down. You were moving the document viewer, not the document. In essence you were touching the viewer when making viewing changes.
Enter the iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (the iDevices) to upset the Apple cart. The operating system (iOS) for these revolutionary devices changed the metaphor. When you touched the screen you weren’t affecting the viewer; you were touching the document and telling it by your gestures to move and in what direction. When you pushed a document up it was because you wanted to see what was at the bottom of the document. You had reached through the viewer to manage the document. This was reinforced by touch actions like spreading your thumb and index finger to expand the size of the viewed image.
One element of Apple’s product strategy seems to be to make it easier for the millions of customers (who first met Apple with an iDevice) to transition to a Mac as their next computer. Thus the motions for scrolling in Lion are reversed from those used in Snow Leopard, or any prior Mac OS. Apple calls these new directions “Natural scrolling.”
Those with years of motor skills patterned from prior Mac (or PC OS) experience will find that things go in the wrong direction if you just act. Those with only iDevice experience will breeze along. There is great turmoil amongst longtime Mac users about unlearning and relearning autonomous muscle motions. In reality this is not too far from household arguments on whether the toilet paper roll should feed over or under. Net, net the job gets done.
There are options, in Lion’s System Preferences, to change scroll management back to the way your muscles are trained if you are a fossil like me. However you might expect that OS 10.8 won’t provide the option. Apple does discard prior capabilities.
If you are running Snow Leopard but are an adventurer getting ready for Lion then download Scroll Reverser (tinyurl.com/scrollreverse). This Snow Leopard application will make your Mac’s scrolling actions duplicate most of Lion’s scrolling features.
Launchpad
iDevices display windows of installed App icons. You swipe the window to the side to see other Apps and touch the App you want to activate. Similar purpose Apps can be placed on one another to collect into named folders to ease the locating process. The location of Apps on a window or which window can be modified in two ways: 1) within the iTunes application or 2) by touching until the icon starts jiggling and then sliding the icon to the desired position.
The dock of Lion includes a Launchpad icon. Clicking this presents multiple windows of the applications in your Application folder on your display. The number of icons per window depends upon display size and display resolution. NMUG’s 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro presents groups of 40 (5 rows, 8 columns). You move between windows to the App you want and click to start. Click and hold an App to start them jiggling and drag to the position window you desire. Drag Apps on each other to create folders containing the Apps.
Two examples of the many issues follow. First, there seems to be no rationale for location of Apps. Most Apple Apps were the first displayed but not for all their Apps. Second, starting and quitting an App often changes the location of the App.
Do you have a question about using your Mac? Send your question to Jerry: AskJWK@Gmail.COM
An index of prior Mac 411 articles is available (tinyurl.com/Mac411Index)
Jerry King is president of the Naples MacFriends User Group (NMUG), founded to help Macintosh users get the most out of their computers. NMUG is open to area residents and seasonal visitors. For membership information visit: www.naplesmug.com/