Mar 7, 2019

I Don't Know How To Computer (Macintosh Edition)


So at work I use a fancy Macintosh computer.  I’ve used Windows for 90% of my computer using life.  With this fancy Mac, comes a fancy Apple Magic Mouse.  Two years ago when I first started working here I tried to turn on the scrolling function so you can scroll with your finger (like a wheel)  but it never worked.  The person who used it before me turned off all the “magic” touch features and I was curious and went to System Preferences and found the  settings called “Mouse” and turned most of them back on.  Except for the one I wanted, the scroll function.  I figured it didn’t work for some reason and for two years I have been using the arrow keys to scroll internet pages or manually clicking on and movie the thing on the side of the page up and down like a fucking schleb.  

Today the arrow keys stopped working on my keyboard. For scrolling and just moving through type so I restarted my computer and they started working again.  My coworker asked why I restarted my computer and I told him my plight with the mouse and the arrow keys.  He said I should be able to turn it back on. So I went to mouse settings and there’s only one setting that looks like it would be for scrolling and it’s been on all this time.  Frustrated, I dug deeper (Googled) and after finding a bunch of pages that describe how to get to the Mouse settings for dummies.. I finally found a page that explained that I had to go into Accessibility  settings…..oK? ….  Once there I found a sub section in Accessibility  called mouse/trackpad settings but even then the setting for scrolling was kind of hidden under a button down at the bottom called “Mouse Options” that’s literally on a window with fucking mouse options already on it.  Fucking Apple man.  So I clicked it thinking it’s probably going to take me to the main Mouse settings in System Prefs that I had already seen.  But it opened a new window that was just a scrolling speed slider and a check box for scrolling with a pulldown for with or without inertia.  It was unchecked.  Even tho I figured it was just to turn on inertia or not I checked the box anyway.   I went back to a web browser and holy shit … it worked.   What kind of fucking ass-backwards bullshit way to turn on a basic function of a mouse Apple?  Jesus christ on a corn dog.  This setting should have been with the other mouse settings in the main System Prefs/Mouse settings window.  Oh and the thing that was actually there that never seemed to change anything.  “Scroll Direction: Natural/Unnatural”  … that thing makes it so if you’re scrolling your finger up the page goes down, like a normal mouse wheel does.   Since I had that thing on all the time when I plugged an old wheel style mouse in the pages seemed to scroll fucking backwards all the time.  I just thought that was how stupid Apple did it.  

But speaking of stupid apple the scrolling works like a track pad on the top of your mouse so I moves the page up down and side to side, which is kind of annoying if you’re working on a  project in Adobe.  I don’t want to say that you can’t turn that off yet because I’ve learned my lesson that the settings for this motherfuck could be anywhere.  

Happy computering  nerds.