Understanding the Hourglass Pointer In Windows and the Spinning Beach Ball on a Mac
What Frank is talking about here is the mouse pointer (which is often called a cursor, but Frank is using the correct term here) will sometimes change from an arrow into a little hourglass.
What this means, generally speaking, is that the computer is “pausing to think” for a moment. Mac computers do the same thing, except that they show this with a spinning “beach ball” or multi-colored pinwheel.
This is normal if it happens occasionally, but it should always go back to a regular arrow-shaped pointer after a few moments, except maybe when the computer is doing something very hard on the computer like making changes to a large photo or saving a home movie you’ve been editing, or something like that.
And even in those cases, it should still go back to normal after a few minutes or so, depending on exactly what you’re doing.
So in other words, something simple like replying to an email shouldn’t cause the hourglass (or beachball osx) to appear at all, or definitely not for more than a moment or two.
Filed under: Apple, Computers, General, Miscellaneous, Software
