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Submission details

7 +12/-5 votes

Ugly "loading" mouse cursor

Submitted by mojo2012 on July 16, 2009 to Aesthetics

Sometimes a realy ugly loading cursor appears. It seems to be a watch/clock. I think this is something like the "small" loading cursor on windows (mouse cursor + small hour glass).

Remove the cursor or make a nice beachball-like one!

Low

Low

Not fixed

Discussion (3 comments)

ebaur wrote on July 16, 2009, 3:00pm

Trivia: it's actually the original wait cursor from Classic Mac OS. It used to show up more often, about 1/2 the time in Mac OS X 10.0

I've never been clear on why it's still there... maybe it shows up when the system can't animate anything and just needs a static image. (Which seems silly, you can still show the beach ball, even if it's not spinning.) I've also thought it may be due to applications that were ported from Classic (ie: they use Carbon). If that's the case, the OS can't do much about it, to remain backwards compatible with those apps.

jasper wrote on July 23, 2009, 3:57pm

Honestly, I don't mind at all. What bugs me is that you call the icon 'ugly' - it's a great design and it doesn't annoy at all.

I think MacOS has these icons in backup, in case that animating the beachball puts to much strain on the system that's already trying hard to load.

Omi5280 wrote on August 12, 2009, 7:34am

I think its kinda cute :p


I think it must mean something about the system state....

-Omi

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