History
A wristwatch was the last wait cursor in late versions of Mac OS. Apple's HyperCard first popularized animated cursors, including a spinning beach ball which could be advanced by repeated HyperTalk invocations of "set cursor to busy". The beach ball cursor was also adopted to indicate running script code in the HyperTalk-like AppleScript.
These cursors would be activated by the operating system querying simulations system uploads. (Microsoft Windows would later adopt the Apple Lisa hourglass/green spiral cursor for the same concept.) Some versions of the Apple Installer used an animated "counting hand" cursor; some 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) and, in Mac OS 8 and before, the Appearance Manager (SetAnimatedThemeCursor).
In Mac OS X, Apple used the NeXTSTEP rainbow-colored spinning optical disk cursor. In OS X 10.0 and 10.1, the cursor had a two dimensional appearance, essentially unchanged from NeXT. Mac OS X 10.2 gave the cursor a glossy rounded "gumdrop" look in keeping with other OS X interface elements. The presence of preemptive multitasking under OS X changed the cursor's meaning. Rather than being an indication that an application was performing an action it expected to take a while, it meant that the system software had noticed that an application had stopped responding to events. This could indicate that the application was in an infinite loop, or just performing a lengthy operation and ignoring events.
Read more about this topic: Spinning Pinwheel
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)