About the little scrollbar arrows...

I think what irritates me about this most is the fact that I am now presumably going to have to replace a perfectly good optical mouse, which is in fine working order and has served me well, with a new one with a wheel, not because of some exciting new feature that I desperately want to make use of, but because the operating system of my choice has now become less functional by dropping a function I liked and made regular use of. I fail to see that this is progress.

Bittersweet. I hate seeing problems with any new OS, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that is finding it difficult to be without the scroll arrows. Maybe there are 'work arounds', but there shouldn't HAVE to be on this. Do those arrows really take up that much space/speed that they had to be eliminated for an new bell or whistle? If you're listening, Apple, can't you please just put 'em back?

Hopefully this gets reinstated or someone makes a plugin...

I am in full agreement and I am glad to see others mentioning this on the Apple Support Forums.

May I suggest that everyone file a report with Apple Feedback.

Here is the address:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

We need as many people as possible to send suggestions to Apple.

Also you may want to email Tim Cook.

It seems to me that Apple forgot that people actually use computers for real work not just for reading email and browsing websites.

I sent my message, and I have an appointment with a Genius tomorrow. I'm going to pick his brain about it, too.

I'll post what I hear.

Agreed, hard to use the scroll bars for any fine detail work in Photoshop and Illustrator for a start. This is something I would like to see back in a future update, not having a trackpad to work with. But if I must, I'll update machines at some stage.

Cheers

I know it seems silly. But I'm a bass player and I use the scroll arrows with a foot moust to step on to sroll sheet music. now i'm stuck.

i put my 2¢ in at feedback apple site.

My visit with one of my local Geniuses resulted in an answer of "we're pretty much S.O.L." Along with Lion tossing the previous Microsoft Office tools and documents in the gutter, I was told all these things were stated in the 'Licesnce Agreement' type information that we should have read. Brings the episode of 'South Park' to mind, huh?

The keyboard arrows don't seem to work with Pages documents either. Is there any other way to scroll line by line instead of page by page with Pages?

Even in Apple's Mail, if you have many messages (as most humans do), you get this tiny scroll handle that's very hard to move without flipping too far up or diwn.

After reading all the discussion threads on this issue and talking to someone at Apple support I've decided to downgrade to Leopard. There does not seem to be any way around this problem for someone like me who cannot use a magic mouse and needs to scroll through documents in small increments to do my work efficiently. I'll upgrade again if they come up with something that enables me to do this in Lion. Very frustrating as Lion does have many good features but I have to be able to do my work!

Unfortunately, I have also decided to downgrade to Snow Leopard. I want to like Lion. I like a lot about Lion. But I feel Apple has really let me down. With this release I think Apple has made a lot of bad interface decisions. Decisions which impact my workflow and countless other Mac users. I do not want iOS on my MacBook. I want a stable operating system that is virtually invisible in my daily use - but is there when I need it (scrollbar arrows). It used to be that Apple combined a beautiful aesthetic with unparalleled usability. Sadly, that is no longer the case. With Lion, form has won out over function.

Doesn't anyone know how to get the arrows back? Is there a tweak made yet that will get them back?

No solution to add, just to point out that the missing scrollbar arrows are also a big problem in Excel. So far that's the only program where I find it a serious annoyance, but I haven't used Photoshop in a while.

Ridiculous that there isn't an option to bring them back. I got used to the "natural" scrolling, I'm fine with the new smaller scrollbars (but I definitely wanted them back, after I realized I no longer had a clear idea of how long an online article was), but the missing arrows... blech.

Agreed. Another dumb-*** design issue from the amateurs who've clearly been put in charge of OS X. I refuse to believe that the usability experts that designed Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard would have ever let these issues get through.

Meanwhile, when is Apple going to realize that no-one, except perhaps those who choose the macbook air, buys expensive and powerful Mac computers just so they can have a bigger iPad.