Comments on: Did you know that Apple’s status bars uniformly suck?

By: D*****

D***** — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 07:38:14 +0000

I agree with Grant, have you ever seen the progress bar on a Mac?

I’m using a Mac right now and its so much better than a PC.
Ignorant PC addicts. A Mac excels against a PC so much but you PC people think its nothing;hhhuuuuuu:-(

By: grant

grant — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:09:52 +0000

are you guys serious, that a windows progress bar up there, maybe its iTunes, but its probably your windows machine ******** it up. Have you ever seen a mac progress bar, its blue, and the animation lets the user know that its still thinking. you windows people are so ignorant, have you even used a mac?

By: Elliot

Elliot — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 06:08:23 +0000

I definitely agree. I was always confused about this issue ever since I saw the first OS X progress bar a few years back. I decided it was just eye-candy that served absolutely no practical purpose, other than to make users feel good. Maybe not showing how long something actually takes makes Apple’s users feel like things are actually moving faster. At least the animation cycles across the bar more times!

By: Elliott Back

Elliott Back — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 19:45:47 +0000

Sure, but this is ALL the status bar does–it doesn’t give any idea of what’s happening. A traditional left-to-right status bar accomplishes both.

By: Matt Spong

Matt Spong — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:33:21 +0000

Actually, if an operation is going to take a long time, it’s a very good idea to show some sort of animation or other indicator that “things are happening,” even if it doesn’t tell you how long it’s going to take.

Without some sort of indicator, if the application is just sitting with an hourglass cursor or whatever, users tend to start getting restless and assuming that it has crashed.