settings vs. preferences

Every time I need to tweak something on my work mac, I'm irked by the title of the settings pane. What every computer interface has referred to as "settings", Apple chose to rename "preferences".

Settings implies a certain relationship between us and our tools. You set the fuel / air mixture of a carburetor for optimal performance and efficiency. You set an air compressor to the pressure you need to pump a tire. These are not preferences; you are trying to complete a job, and your tools are the means through which you accomplish it.

Preferences, on the other hand, are subjective. Do you prefer light mode or dark mode? Do you prefer your track pad to scroll up or down? It doesn't really matter, since you're probably just scrolling Twitter anyway, aren't you?

When we think of our tools as means to an end, we push our individual whims and desires out of our conscious minds to get the job done. But years of brilliant marketing campaigns have convinced us that our tools are our ends.

Now that we spend so much of our time using tools, it makes sense to "prefer" this color over that, or one particular behavior over another with no functional difference between them. It's a paradigm shift in the way we relate to our tools; suddenly, aesthetic considerations become relevant. And if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it only makes sense to refer to these new "settings" as something more subjective.

Why is this a problem? Because we've blurred the line between means and ends so thoroughly that it's no longer obvious whether something is a setting or a preference; we've lumped them all under the category of subjective, and that's a red flag for me.