On my Dell XPS running Ubuntu, I have the touch pad set to "natural" scrolling but I also use a mouse and have that set to traditional scrolling. I find I like this combination a lot, so being able to set up my Mac the same way would be great.
As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. In both cases, it's as if I'm manipulating the screen content directly with my finger. With the scroll wheel, it's a different tactile experience and the traditional behavior seems more "correct". Someone could do a nice human factors study on this.
> As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone.
My personal experience is that after years of keeping the "natural" scroll setting enabled, my scroll wheel has gained some of that tactile feeling in my brain. It's like the wheel is the content, and I'm pushing it up and down with my finger.
However, it definitely took longer for this to happen than with a TrackPad.
Interesting observation. I've never taken the time to try to retrain myself to use a mouse in natural mode. This is in part due to the fact that I am a Linux system administrator and I am often working on systems that aren't mine. I think it would be very confusing if the mouse on my Linux workstation worked one way and everyone else's worked differently.
As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. In both cases, it's as if I'm manipulating the screen content directly with my finger. With the scroll wheel, it's a different tactile experience and the traditional behavior seems more "correct". Someone could do a nice human factors study on this.