What's up with Mac OS X mouse cursor?

Almost everyone who owns a Mac believes it's not only the most advanced operating system, it's also graphically superior. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines indeed lay out a comprehensive set of rules to follow. True indeed, I've seen the same program for windows and Mac, and the Mac version looks far superior.

"We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

Despite its aesthetic graphic appeal, there is one weak area which Apple remains to work upon.

Let's face it, all Mac users: It's the OS X mouse pointer.

It's primitive, way too small, and looks like a destitute orphan when compared to other parts of OS X interface. In other words, the default pointer in Mac OS X is ugggggggly.

Windows --- |---Ubuntu--- | ---Mac OS X

Not only the graphic appearance is ugly and not user-friendly, also the display is buggy at times. When typing my documents in NeoOffice, sometimes the cursor just vanishes, only to come back after I scribble on the trackpad frantically. Sometimes the cursor is just there, but it's so beautifully camoflauged in its black color that I'm not able to see it at all!

There are ways to make it look bigger, and I tried one of them. I thought that a bigger pointer will be easier to see. But the result was disappointing, it now looks ugggggglier.

What the heck? Reminds me of a 80's arcade blip-blop game.

In my opinion, the default mouse cursor in Mac OS X needs some work - at least make it look like the default one in Windows. That will save my eyes some diopters (- and some money to my pocket because I won't be forced to buy that $10 software to change my default mouse pointer).

For those who do want to spend money to customize the pointer, check these out:

1. Pinpoint

2. Mightymouse

Also see iCursor

Mac OS X: "Airport" process using more than 99% CPU

I don't remember when it started, but I noticed my MacBook is running hotter these days, and the fan switches on to full speed after few minutes of login. iStat Pro, the dashboard widget, tells me that the process "airport" has very high CPU (about 99-100%). There is no application named airport in my system, so it's a child process of some other application.

After much tinkering around, I found the solution. The culprit was Vine Server, a VNC server application. I had deleted the application from my applications folder earlier, but apparently it left something behind. What did it leave? Spotlight didn't show any results for "VNC", but Quicksilver showed this:

So I deleted this app from my hard drive (I had to enter password), rebooted, and now everything works fine.

Lesson for Mac Users: If "airport" shows very high CPU usage, remove everything related to VNC.
Lesson for Apple: Please include a clean uninstaller with OS X.

How to easily switch between different language input methods in OS X

I'm a trilingual person, and need to change frequently between different input methods. Sometimes I use all the three languages in the same email message.

OS X provides a tool to change language input methods in International preference pane. But it's a pain to evoke that each time I want to change the input method. So I have come up with a shortcut to accomplish the same task, but in a more convenient way.

Follow these steps to create a convenient keyboard shortcut for changing input language in OS X:

1. Open System Preferences and go to "International".

2. Go to "Input Menu" tab and make sure the languages you want are checked.

3. Click the "keyboard shortcuts" button at the buttom of Input Menu tab of International.

4. Search for "Input Menu" in the list of applications registered with Keyboard Shortcuts.

5. Check the "Select Previous input menu", click the "Shortcut" box next to it, and press Command and [ key at the same time.

6. Check the "Select Next input menu", click the "Shortcut" box next to it, and press Command and ] key at the same time.

7. Close the keyboard shortcuts preferences pane.

Start any application (e.g. TextEdit) and type a sentence. Now press command and [ and type another sentence. If all goes well, congratulations! You are now able to switch between different language input methods using a simple keyboard shortcut!

Quicksilver for slow typists

Quicksilver is a great tool for all Mac users. I use it all the times.

The problem arises when one of my friends wants to use quicksilver, and she's a damn slow typist. She presses one key per second. And Quicksilver resets the search being typed after a short interval (less than a second). A quick fix to this is the following:

1. Invoke quicksilver by pressing ctrl+space or whatever key you have set it up to.
2. Open Quicksilver preferences by pressing command+, while Quicksilver search interface is still open.
3. Go to the Preferences tab, if it's not already selected.
4. Click on Command in the left side pane.
5. In the bottom, there is a little slider named "Reset search after". Make sure it's checked, and slide it towards right and make it 2.00 seconds.




6. Now close the preferences, and try Quicksilver again, but type real slow. It'll now work for slow typists! :)

Google adds graphical usage indicator in Gmail

I signed in to my Gmail account today, and noticed that in addition to text-based usage notification ("You are currently using 1726 MB (60%) of your 2852 MB"), there is a graphic bar to indicate that too:



Interestingly enough, I could make this show up only on Firefox! IE doesn't display this as yet!