alt Hacker NewsApple, to my knowledge, never sold a mouse with a wheel. Their first mouse with scrolling was the Mighty Mouse, which used a small trackball to simulate a touch surface. It was spring mounted and would fall flush when scrolling oven a sensation similar to the Magic Mouse (this is my favortite mouse and the one I still use today). The Magic Mouse extended on this idea by replacing the ball with a multitouch trackpad.
In either scenario, “natural scroll” feels like you’re pulling on the surface which maps directly to sliding on the screen.
It makes less sense if you think about a wheel pulling the page beneath it.
All mice supported scrolling. In the before times, you use the mouse to drag the scroll thumb, which was located on the scrollbar. And you'd drag it down to see information further "down" in the document.