Default preferences are an important part of every application. They are the dialect in which the developer welcomes us into their home. Complex applications often require more preferences because a greater amount of translation is required to make the user feel welcome. Simple applications that anticipate the user’s needs, are better hosts, and require fewer preferences.

The operating system is not only the computer’s most complex application, it is also the first host to greet the user after the computer is powered on. The default preferences selected by the operating system’s creators convey more than a simple greeting, they set the tone for the user’s entire stay. All of the applications installed on the computer are dependent upon the operating system making the right first impression. Decisions like default screen brightness, tracking speed, font size, and desktop wallpaper may sound like trivial adjustments to the trained user but their values provoke an unmistakable impression upon the uninitiated guest.

With the release of Mac OS X Lion, Apple has modified their greeting from the traditional salutation of the returning Mac faithful, to a welcoming address targeted at new users coming to the Mac from iOS. The default preferences for scrolling, dragging, and swiping have seen the most drastic changes, and long time Mac users might stumble when they first encounter multi-touch gestures originally designed for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Scrolling

Unlike in iOS the Mac still requires two fingers to scroll, but the default preferences in Lion have the direction reversed to match your fingers with the movement of the content, and not the movement of the scrollbar. Push the page by moving your fingers up and you are scrolling the content down. Pull the page by moving your fingers down and your are scrolling the content up. This behavior makes sense on the screen of your iPad where your fingertips manipulate the content directly, but is hard to get used too when performed on an out-of-sight trackpad. Luckily Lion’s reversed trackpad scrolling can be turned right side round by visiting the Scroll & Zoom section of the Trackpad System preference pane, and unchecking “Scroll direction: natural.”

Dragging

Trackpad dragging in Lion is a three finger affair, that has no clear connection with iOS. The simple one finger drag and drag lock pioneered by the earliest Mac trackpads is not even a option in the TrackPad preference pane, but an advanced feature of the Universal Access preference pane’s new Trackpad Options. Here you will find such out of the way options as Scrolling with inertia, and ignore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is present. Three finger drag is a drag, but it is nice to know Lion’s default Trackpad dragging preference can be returned to a one digit gesture with the check of an out of the way preference.

Swiping

Swiping between pages, swiping between full-screen apps, is there any task in Lion that swiping cannot perform? Apple’s Magic Trackpad taught us swiping three fingers was a shortcut for navigating backwards and forwards in the filesystem or on a webpage and that behavior can be returned by visiting Lion’s Trackpad preference pane. Make sure swipe between pages is checked under the “More Gestures” tab, and set the key to “swipe left or right with three fingers.” Now you too can return to the multi-touch magic you first experienced in Snow Leopard. Just make sure Three finger drag is unchecked, because that awkward form of trackpad massage conflicts with the three finger swiping behavior you are used to.

These are just a few of the default preferences Lion has changed to give iOS users a more familiar environment in Mac OS X. By helping reset these preferences back to their traditional values I hope long time Mac users will be better prepared for translating the rest of Lion’s awkward iOS inspired greeting.