I prefer the direction apple doesn’t call “natural” and I don’t appreciate the implication my preference is “unnatural” because of it.

The whole point is that people have different mental models of these things.

I was using a trackpad before I’d ever owned a device with touchscreen, and so my concept for trackpad is based on mouse:

• Moving the cursor with a finger is like moving a mouse on the desk - movement agrees with direction
• Scrolling is like treating the trackpad as a ‘virtual mouse wheel’ - towards you moves the content up.

And as for why I think the mouse wheel itself should behave like that? It’s because my mental model of the mouse wheel in turn was that it’s a literal physical wheel like a roller that is “against” the view content - and so when the top of the roller moves down the underside of the roller moves the content up.

All the people who grew up with phones will insist my preference is wrong and freaky and I don’t blame them because I think theirs is.

There’s no wrong or right here, just whatever collection of mental models built up since childhood our life paths took us down.