Okay, except this is nothing like that. Computer programs can have defaults.

When you don't like the default, you go to the settings screen to change it. If you don't want to deal with settings, you never have to open up the screen.

But the scroll settings is much more annoying than that. Apple provides two completely independent settings for "Mouse" and "Trackpad". Under each, there is a toggle for scroll direction. If you toggle one, it magically and silently toggles the other as well.

That's not "simple", that's not "easy to use", that's 100% bad UX. If there's only one global setting, why present it as two independent options which are magically linked?

> Okay, except this is nothing like that. Computer programs can have defaults. When you don't like the default, you go to the settings screen to change it. If you don't want to deal with settings, you never have to open up the screen.

This is possible, but never as easy as it sounds when written down like that. Even when advanced settings are tucked away out of sight from regular users, at the kind of scale OS X or iOS operates in (or Linux, for that matter), there will be a non-negligible number of people who by accident or intent fool around with the advanced settings and get themselves into a state from which they lack the expertise to extricate themselves.

This is why Apple layer their own UX on top of Bluetooth, for example. And why many settings have no UX, you have to know the magic incantation to use in Terminal.

Again, I don't disagree, I'm just pointing out that "Making a boat for passengers AND for sailors" is a hard problem.

versus ubuntu where the kernel may be fine, but it's certainly nontrivial to bork some random config file or the nvidia/xwin/wayland configuration setup or some other part of the app layer on top of it, and rather than spend the next few hours trying to google whatever arcane setting it is, I've just thrown up my arms and wiped the drive and reinstalled the OS from scratch...

Don't get me wrong, I run ubuntu on a home fileserver/nas box but when I need it for some scientific computing package or something, the best way to run it is on top of Mac OS in a VM....

Maybe they should present it as one setting. But linking it makes sense for the vast majority of users. Because if it wasn’t you would see a flood of people asking why their mouse or trackpad is scrolling in the wring direction.

I‘m more and more convinced that the Apple way is the right way for the vast majority of users and deeper customization should only be available through the CLI or extensions.

> Okay, except this is nothing like that.

And yet… desktop Linux isn’t widely popular.

Probably because it's hard to come to a store and buy one.

Linux is “selling” a billion “jars of jam”, a different one for each person… Apple is “selling” like 6.

Why is this relevant? You probably know that Ubuntu is the most popular one. It should be enough to only offer this one.

Ubuntu’s customizability (valued by the article’s author) is Linux offering a billion jars of jam.

Default settings still exist and can be delivered just fine.

Original comment was “this is nothing like that”

I’m pointing out how this is like that.