- Apr 14, 2021 Once in a while, you may encounter the Spinning Pinwheel of Death (SPOD) on your Mac. It's that multicolored pinwheel that signifies a temporary or never-ending delay while the Mac tries to figure something out. The Mac is trying to function, but nothing is happening, so the pinwheel keeps spinning and spinning.
- Jul 13, 2020 A copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (or earlier): We can’t tell you how to obtain this, but a simple Google search will. You will need an.ISO file that should be saved directly to your iPhone or iPad.
- Should I Unplug My Computer? - Apple Community
- Can Macs Get Viruses & Do Macs Need Antivirus Software ...
Spinning Wait Cursor as seen in OS X El Capitan
Explore the world of Mac. Check out MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini, and more. Visit the Apple site to learn, buy, and get support.
The spinning pinwheel is a variation of the mouse pointer arrow, used in Apple's macOS to indicate that an application is busy.[1]
Should I Unplug My Computer? - Apple Community
Officially, the macOS Human Interface Guidelines refers to it as the spinning wait cursor,[2] but it is also known by other names, including the spinning beach ball[3], the spinning wheel of death[4], the spinning beach ball of death,[5] or the ferris wheel of death.
History[edit]
A wristwatch was the first wait cursor in early versions of the classic Mac OS. Apple's HyperCard first popularized animated cursors, including a black-and-white spinning quartered circle resembling a beach ball. The beach-ball cursor was also adopted to indicate running script code in the HyperTalk-like AppleScript. The cursors could be advanced by repeated HyperTalk invocations of 'set cursor to busy'.
Wait cursors are activated by applications performing lengthy operations. Some versions of the Apple Installer used an animated 'counting hand' cursor. Other applications provided their own theme-appropriate custom cursors, such as a revolving Yin Yang symbol, Fetch's running dog, Retrospect's spinning tape, and Pro Tools' tapping fingers. Apple provided standard interfaces for animating cursors: originally the Cursor Utilities (SpinCursor, RotateCursor)[6] and, in Mac OS 8 and later, the Appearance Manager (SetAnimatedThemeCursor).[7]
From NeXTStep to Mac OS X[edit]
NeXTStep monochrome (2 bit)
NeXTStep 1.0 used a monochrome icon resembling a spinning magneto-optical disk.[a] Some NeXT computers included an optical drive which was often slower than a magnetic hard drive and so was a common reason for the wait cursor to appear.
NeXTStep color (12 bit)
When color support was added in NeXTStep 2.0, color versions of all icons were added. The wait cursor was updated to reflect the bright rainbow surface of these removable disks, and that icon remained even when later machines began using hard disk drives as primary storage. Contemporary CD Rom drives were even slower (at 1x, 150 kbit/s).[b]
Mac OS X (24 bit)
With the arrival of Mac OS X the wait cursor was often called the 'spinning beach ball' in the press,[8] presumably by authors not knowing its NeXT history or relating it to the hypercard wait cursor.
The two-dimensional appearance was kept essentially unchanged[c] from NeXT to Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server 1.0 which otherwise had a user interface design resembling Mac OS 8/Platinum theme, and through Mac OS X 10.0/Cheetah and Mac OS X 10.1/Puma, which introduced the Aqua user interface theme.
Mac OS X 10.2/Jaguar gave the cursor a glossy rounded 'gumdrop' look in keeping with other OS X interface elements.[9]In OS X 10.10, the entire pinwheel rotates (previously only the overlaying translucent layer moved).With OS X 10.11 El Capitan the spinning wait-cursor's design was updated. It now has less shadowing and has brighter, more solid colors to better match the design of the user interface. The colors also turn with the spinning, not just the texture.
System usage[edit]
In single-tasking operating systems like the original Macintosh operating system, the wait cursor might indicate that the computer was completely unresponsive to user input, or just indicate that response may temporarily be slower than usual due to disk access. This changed in multitasking operating systems such as System Software 5, where it is usually possible to switch to another application and continue to work there. Individual applications could also choose to display the wait cursor during long operations (and these were often able to be cancelled with a keyboard command).
After the transition to Mac OS X (macOS), Apple narrowed the wait cursor meaning. The display of the wait cursor is now controlled only by the operating system, not by the application. This could indicate that the application was in an infinite loop, or just performing a lengthy operation and ignoring events. Each application has an event queue that receives events from the operating system (for example, key presses and mouse button clicks); and if an application takes longer than 2 seconds[10] to process the events in its event queue (regardless of the cause), the operating system displays the wait cursor whenever the cursor hovers over that application's windows.
This is meant to indicate that the application is temporarily unresponsive, a state from which the application should recover. It also may indicate that all or part of the application has entered an unrecoverable state or an infinite loop. During this time the user may be prevented from closing, resizing, or even minimizing the windows of the affected application (although moving the window is still possible in OS X, as well as previously hidden parts of the window being usually redrawn, even when the application is otherwise unresponsive). While one application is unresponsive, typically other applications are usable. File system and network delays are another common cause.
Guidelines, tools and methods for developers[edit]
By default, events (and any actions they initiate) are processed sequentially, which works well when each event involves a trivial amount of processing, the spinning wait cursor appearing until the operation is complete. If processing takes long, the application will appear unresponsive. Developers may prevent this by using separate threads for lengthy processing, allowing the application's main thread to continue responding to external events. However, this greatly increases the application complexity. Another approach is to divide the work into smaller packets and use NSRunLoop or Grand Central Dispatch.
- Bugs in applications can cause them to stop responding to events; for instance, an infinite loop or a deadlock. Applications thus afflicted rarely recover.
- Problems with the virtual memory system—such as slow paging caused by a spun-down hard disk or disk read-errors—will cause the wait cursor to appear across multiple applications, until the hard disk and virtual memory system recover.
Instruments is an application that comes with the Mac OS X Developer Tools. Along with its other functions, it allows the user to monitor and sample applications that are either not responding or performing a lengthy operation. Each time an application does not respond and the spinning wait cursor is activated, Instruments can sample the process to determine which code is causing the application to stop responding. With this information, the developer can rewrite code to avoid the cursor being activated.
Apple's guidelines suggest that developers try to avoid invoking the spinning wait cursor, and suggest other user interface indicators, such as an asynchronous progress indicator.
Alternate names[edit]
The spinning wait cursor is commonly referred to as the (Spinning) x (of Death/Doom).[d] The most common words or phrases x can be replaced with include:
- Disk
- (Beach) Ball[11][12]
- (Rainbow) wheel
- Pinwheel
- Pizza[e]
- Pie
- Marble
- Lollipop
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^NeXT Optical Discs, Photo of the underside, showing the rainbow effect depicted on the icon (a then new type of media that was built into the early NeXT Cubes.)
- ^often an external AppleCD drive was used
- ^not a single bit was changed
- ^named after the Blue Screen of Death
- ^frequently encountered across Mac users forums as The SPOD
References[edit]
- ^'Mini-Tutorial: The dreaded spinning pinwheel; Avoiding unresponsiveness/slow-downs in Mac OS X'. CNet. 10 March 2005. Retrieved 16 July 2012.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'macOS Human Interface Guidelines: Pointers'. developer.apple.com. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
- ^'Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball'. Macworld. 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2020-03-22.
- ^'How to Fix a Spinning Wheel of Death on Mac'. MacPaw. Retrieved 2020-03-22.
- ^'Frozen: How to Force Quit an OS X App Showing a Spinning Beachball of Death – The Mac Observer'. www.macobserver.com. Retrieved 2020-03-22.
- ^'Using the Cursor Utilities (IM: Im)'. Developer.apple.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'SetAnimatedThemeCursor'. Developer.apple.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Macworld 2002-04-01
- ^Ars Technica Jaguar review: 'The dreading 'spinning rainbow disc' has an all new look in Jaguar'
- ^'WWDC 2012 – Session 709 – What's New in the File System'(PDF). Apple. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
Applications SPOD if they don’t service the event loop for two seconds
CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link) - ^Swain, Gregory E. (28 May 2010). 'Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball'. ((MacWorld)). Retrieved 16 July 2012.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Todd, Charlie (9 March 2012). 'Spinning Beach Ball of Death'. ((Improv Everywhere)). Retrieved 16 July 2012.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
External links[edit]
- Apple Human Interface Guidelines: Standard Cursors from Apple's website.
- Perceived Responsiveness: Avoid the Spinning Cursor from Apple's website.
- Troubleshooting the 'Spinning Beach Ball of Death' Excerpt from “Troubleshooting Mac OS X” book where there are some information on how to deal with Spinning Wait Cursor problems.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spinning_pinwheel&oldid=1012710173'
I remember getting my first Mac, I was excited and somewhat exhausted. Exhausted because I had just walked up 5 flights of stairs carrying my shiny new 27″ iMac. Never before had I touched a Mac, besides playing around with them at the Apple Store.
For my previous computing experience I had only ever used Windows and was feeling fairly confident about switching to Mac. I mean it’s a computer, I know how to use Windows, and a Mac shouldn’t be that much different. Right?
Can Macs Get Viruses & Do Macs Need Antivirus Software ...
Not 10 minutes after logging in for the first time, I found myself on Google asking how to install an app on Mac OS X. To anyone who’s used a Mac for a while now, installing an app is just common sense. To someone brand new, the little things can be somewhat confusing. Here’s is a list of top 10 things every new Mac user should know.
#1 – Installing & Uninstalling Apps
Most commonly apps are installed on Mac OS X by simply dragging the downloaded file into the Applications folder. This is a big difference from Windows, and something that may at first be a little difficult to wrap ones head around for anyone new to Mac OS X.
For this example I’ll use Firefox. The process of installing it went like this:
- Downloaded Firefox from the Firefox website (downloaded in .dmg format).
- Opened (mounted) the .dmg file.
- Dragged the Firefox icon into the Applications folder.
- Ejected the Firefox .dmg file.
Mounted DMG
That may actually sound a little bit confusing, at least the .dmg part. It becomes a lot simpler if you just think of the .dmg file as a zip file, which when extracted shows the app. In fact it works a lot like a zip file as well, the downloaded Firefox .dmg file was just over 44 MB and the extracted (mounted) Firefox app was over 100 MB.
And then there’s the whole mounting and ejecting the .dmg. What’s that all about? When you mount a .dmg file it acts as if it were a portable external flash drive. As you can see from the adjacent screenshot it even adds itself to the sidebar right next to my actual external drives.
Once you are done installing your application, you simply eject the mounted .dmg as you would if it were an actually external drive (right-click on mounted .dmg and select eject) or eject it from the sidebar.
A Couple More Tips:
- Not all apps are installed this way. Some apps (such as Parallels) use a setup wizard.
- Apps downloaded from the Mac App Store install automatically without any manual setup process of any kind.
- Apps don’t have to be dragged to the Applications folder to install. It can be any folder. If you don’t drag it to the Applications folder however it won’t be included in the Launchpad. Simply put, it’s recommended to just install apps to the Applications folder, that’s what it’s there for.
- Apps with the .app extension don’t need to be installed. Even while it’s in its mounted state you can just open it. (it’s still recommended to drag them into the Applications folder though)
Uninstalling Apps
Uninstalling apps is really simple. See that trash bin located in your dock? Just drag the application you want to remove / uninstall to the trash bin.
A Couple More Tips:
- Not all apps are uninstalled this way. Some apps (such as Parallels) use an uninstallation wizard.
- Commonly small preference setting files and other minor files remain when you just drag on application to the trash bin to uninstall. If you want removed every detail of an app use AppCleaner.
#2 – No Need to Defrag
If you’ve switch from Windows to Mac OS X, then you should be pleased to hear you no longer need to defragment your computer. Yay!
Mac OS X is built on the powerful UNIX system and uses the Mac Journaled format. If any part of your hard drive is fragmented it automatically gets defragmented by the OS. Usually your Mac will wait until it’s idle before defragmenting anything that needs to be defragmented.
To Defrag or not to Defrag
Some would argue that defragmenting a Mac is actually necessary, and in some cases it may be. If you are interested in manually degramenting your Mac I’d recommend you check out either iDefrag or Stellar Drive Defrag.
For the purposes of this article though, I downloaded iDefrag and ran a test. It showed that I had 0.1% fragmentation. 835 out of 735,789 files on my computer were fragmented. That’s nothing to worry about, and most likely those files will be automatically defragmented the next time my Mac is idle.
#3 – Close Unresponsive or Crashed Applications
One of Apple’s slogans is “It just works”. Yeah… that’s not always the case.
It doesn’t necessarily happen often but sometimes applications just crash or freeze.
If you come across such a situation you can either right-click the application in the dock and select “Force Quit”. If the “Force Quit” option isn’t shown, hold down the “options” key and then right-click the application.
Alternatively if you are looking for something more like the Windows version of Ctrl – Alt -Delete, all you have to do is press Command – Options – Esc. This will bring up a small utility called “Force Quit Applications”. Just select the application you need to close and click the “Force Quit” button.
One more Tip:
- If an application that used to work perfectly fine starts acting up, try repairing the disk permission. Instructions here: How to Format & Repair a Drive with Disk Utility
#4 – Minimized or Closed?
Close, Min and Max Buttons
For any new Mac user switching from Windows this may be somewhat confusing at first. In Windows, the buttons are located on the right hand side and the right button means close (quits app), middle button maximizes and the left most button minimizes. It works a little bit differently on a Mac.
The red button on a Mac doesn’t quit the app, it just hides it. The middle yellow button minimizes the open application to the dock and the green button maximizes the window.
To fully close an application, right-click it on the Dock and select “Quit”. Alternatively quit it from the menu bar or press “command – q” while viewing the app you want to quit.
A Couple More Tips:
- Included in a few applications (such as Safari) on Mac OS X is the feature to make an app full-screen. The feature is located on the upper right of an application.
- When an application is hidden and not actually closed you can tell by the indicator light under the application in the Dock.
- Enable the indicator light if it isn’t already enabled by going to System Preferences -> Dock -> Enable “Show indicator lights for open applications”.
#5 – Find out everything about your Mac
System information is an app you can find in the Applications folder or by searching for it in Launchpad.
It stores all the information about your Mac. You can see how much memory you have, how many cores, hardware UUID, serial numbers and so much more.
If there is something you need to know about your Mac, down to what of applications are installed and even further down to see what versions of those apps have been updated then check System Information.
There is seriously a ton of information here.
#6 – The “fn” Key
“fn” Key is Awesome!
The “fn” key is useful and if you’re new to Mac you should definitely check it out.
For one it’s the default key used to activate Dictation & Speech on your Mac.
Secondly it’s used as a modifier key. Here’s a quick example of some of my favorites:
- fn – delete: Deletes to the right instead of to the left.
- fn – control – F2: Navigate the menu bar without the use of a mouse. Use arrow keys to maneuver and return key to select.
- fn – F11: Moves all open applications and windows to the far side of the screen. This reveals the desktop and gives quick access to all the desktop icons and files.
- The Shift, Control, Options and Command keys are also modifier keys.
Here are a whole bunch more awesome keyboard shortcuts you should definitely check out: Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
#7 – Manage Login Items
When installing new applications they sometimes like to register themselves to startup automatically every time you restart your Mac. The more items you have load up on start the longer your start up will take.
Because of this it’s important to manually manage this list. I like to keep it to its bear minimum as I like to have my computer always functioning at full speed.
If there is an app that you want to have automatically loaded on startup, click the “+” button and navigate to the app (usually stored in your Applications folder). To remove an app from the startup list, select it and then click the “-” button.
#8 – Quick View
How to Quick View
Quick view is probably one of my top 5 favorite features on Mac OS X, I use it constantly.
Here’s how it works, you select a file and press the space bar. Simple, easy and fast.
This works for every file, and every folder. If it’s a picture it will show a large preview of the picture. If it’s a video it will play the video. If it’s a folder it will tell you the file size and number of files inside of it. If it’s a document it will preview the document.
In the above I mentioned it will preview the video, this however only works for supported video formats… which brings me to my next tip.
#9 – Enable Support for all Video Formats
Perian is this awesome little app that enables video support for pretty much every video format that you’d ever really use. Once installed it resides in the System Preferences.
The great thing about Perian is, you install it, it works, and then you never have to see it or worry about it again. It’s a really simple and clean application, I can’t recommend it enough.
One More Tip: Are you using Quicktime to play your downloaded videos? If you are, be sure to check out MPlayerX, it’s a far superior video player, and it’s free.
#10 – Enable Right Click on Magic Mouse and Trackpad
I can’t imaging having to use a computer without the ability to right-click things. By default in order to emulate right-clicking you have to hold down the Control key while clicking on an item. I’m actually surprised this isn’t enabled by default. If you want to enable right-click like any sane person would want to, go to System Preferences -> Mouse -> Point & Click -> “Enable Secondary click”.
It’s the same process for a Trackpad. Go to System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Point & Click -> “Enable Secondary click”.
One More Tip: Remember this location in System Preferences, it’s a great way to check on the battery life of your Magic Mouse and Trackpad and even your Keyboard (System Preferences -> Keyboard).
Oh, and if you’re interested in learning more about your Mac then you should definitely subscribe to new posts from AppDucate. This website is called “AppDucate – Educating the Mac and iOS user”, it’s kind of what we do here.
I’d love to hear from you guys, what’s some of your favorite and absolutely must know tips that you use on your Mac?