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Comment by phsr | Hacker News Reader

Apple has been using the "left moving ripple" progress bar for a while, which makes it look like the progress bar is moving, even when it's not

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In contrast with Microsoft, which switched from standard progress bars to "right moving ripple" progress bars in Vista. Which, as the article states, makes it look like it's moving slower!

Both still look like they're still moving when they're stopped though, which is the real point of them. Tricking the user into believing the task will be completed before it really will be isn't the goal - otherwise they'd intentionally underestimate completion times when they're displayed.

I think that actually is what they are designed to do, make it look like it is going to be completed sooner. If you just underestimate completion times, the you'll have a 100% complete bar while still making the user wait - that will make it look broken and slow, the opposite effect. Better to overestimate, then the task will be completed "early" because it was so "fast".

This is exactly how people perceive execution time. If a progress bar goes to completion and then hangs users will perceive that operation as taking longer than if a progress bar goes to, say, 70% and then jumps to completion, even if the total time of the operation is the same.

It makes sense though, people are the most impatient when they've been waiting the longest so being surprised that the operation completed faster than they were led to think it would is more welcome than having to wait longer than they thought they'd have to.

Vista SP1 changed the file copy algorithm to cache files, so that it would appear faster than it is (and other reasons):

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/actual-performance-...

Also, the progress bar that they used to have for starting up OSX (removed in Leopard I think?) had no actual relation to anything the machine was doing, it was just timed to move across at a particular rate based on the average startup speed of your computer.

http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details#waiting...

A completely fake progress bar--it was just something for you to look at.

That progress bar may not be tied to actual events, but it does give you a reasonably accurate view of the time remaining until the login window will appear-- probably more accurate than if the programmer guesses how much each startup phase is worth and the bar ends up moving erratically.

Ehm, I beg to differ. Booting off a regular drive (non-SSD) can produce pretty variable times, depending on if you just installed something, fragmented the drive with some large files, etc. I remember many startups on my old PowerBook G4 running Tiger where the bar would reach the end and keep pulsing for another twenty seconds, much to my confusion/amusement.

I wonder if it's a coincidence, or Apple knew what they're doing.

I think it's safe to assume that they knew what they were doing. Apple sweats the details, like making a sleep indicator light that pulses to the speed of a heartbeat.

http://gigaom.com/apple/the-pursuit-of-perfection-hidden-gem...

That does not make the insanely bright white light any less annoying when you are trying to sleep, though. Quite the opposite, in my experience.

Bet yours is a couple years old. They really reduced the intensity when they switched to unibody enclosures.

Anecdote: My first MBP was a graduation present from my parents just before I graduated HS. For some unmemorable reason they “grounded” me from it for a day or two (during finals, maybe?) - but in its sleep state, it was keeping them from sleeping, themselves, with its bright, pulsing LED as it sat on Mom's dresser. I had to laugh just a little at what felt, to me, like Apple-sponsored karmic revenge :)

The current MacBook Air doesn't have a sleep light - the next round of MBPs might not have one either. The idea it to close the laptop when you are not using it. Sleep is the default state, so no need for a status indicator. Just like the iPhone/iPad/iPod.

There's a big difference between the MBP and the Air/iPhone/iPad/iPod though -- solid-state drives. The sleep indicator tells you when it's safe to pick your computer up.

I think it's pretty likely that the next round of MBPs will come with SSDs standard.

Sleep is the default state, so no need for a status indicator.

Wrong!

Sleep may be the default state but I definitely want to see whether it's really in that state - or in some other.

I hate this kind of wishful thinking from hardware designers.

It's the same mindset that removed the status LED from the Samsung Galaxy S. A status LED that exists on almost every other android handset and that is very useful for indicating missed calls, low battery and many other things (it's freely programmable).

Congrats Samsung and Apple, you saved on a $0.20 part - but in the wrong place.

Agreed. But, AMOLED gives some nice opportunity here. Try NoLED:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=730692

NoLED is a neat hack, but not a substitute for a built-in, reliable notification mechanism.

The pulse is much much slower than a heartbeat. More like breathing.

Yes, like breathing. http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/6658577.html

The moral of this story: Apple pays more attention to details than gigaom.com.

Ah yes, that's the patent I was looking for, upvotes all around :). I mistakenly googled for 'heartbeat' instead of 'breath', for which only the GigaOM article turned up.

"The average respiratory rate for adults is 12-20 breaths per minute, which is the rate that the sleep-indicator light fades in and out on most Apple laptops. Older models such as the Macintosh PowerBook, however, use a blinking LED indicator, with discrete pulses in one-second intervals.

The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise not very indicative of something in sleep-mode."

http://floodmagazine.com/2010/10/14/apples-attention-to-deta...

Nah, they're just doing it to be cool. Nothing in a quiescent, stable state (ie not requiring attention) should be animated. Animation - even a pulse - pulls your attention. Yes, you can /learn/ to ignore an animation, but you shouldn't have to do that in the first place.

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