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Dock indicator lights too far down

Garoolgan

Garoolgan

macrumors member
Original poster
May 24, 2012
42
0
In France, 25th on UN's HDI list of countries
Hello,

Since upgrading to Mavericks (10.9.2) the indicator lights of the dock are just a little too far down. My eyesight isn't the best and I think that about 1/4 to 1/6 of the diameter of the white indicator is visible, if that.

I've tried changing the various options of "Scaled" in "System preferences"/"Display" with no change.

This doesn't stop the World turning and habit is a terrible disease but......

Thanks for any ideas

Garoolgan

Mac Book Pro, late 2011
Model Identifier: MacBookPro 8,2
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
 
Hi,

not a solution, but you might try moving the Dock to the left side of the display.

I prefer having the Dock on the left on laptop (small) displays.

The indicator lights are more visible that way.
 
Thanks fhall1 but this isn't possible on a MacBook.

It is as if the black "border" of the screen, under which the mouse pointer can almost be hidden is too wide for Mavericks.

Strange that this should happen after upgrading to Mavericks, I would have thought that the "bugs" had been ironed out by now.

Garoolgan
 
Sorry....didn't read far enough down (or it didn't register) to see you're using a Macbook. What you could try is hooking up an external monitor to your MB and see if the lights appear higher on the external screen.....maybe your MB screen in misadjusted somehow.
 
Check Universal Access > Seeing (or whatever it's called in Mavericks). Is Zoom on?

If not, I'm not sure how the display could seem to be out of adjustment on a laptop display. Here's a quick test: Cmd-Shift-3 to take a snapshot of what the OS thinks is on your screen. Compare the snapshot to what you actually see on the Desktop. Do they differ?
 
Thanks mns579 for your input.

I have no idea where/what Universal Access is.

In Mavericks I tried "System Preferences/Accessibility" but there is virtually nothing under that icon to fiddle with.

As you suggested I also think that it seems strange that the OS X desktop doesn't "fit" onto a Mac Book Pro screen but strange or not it is starting to look as if I'll have to wear it!

Garoolgan
 
Yes, Mavericks Accessibility is the old (Snow Leopard) Universal Access. I guess Apple's "Universal" was too grand a claim! I'm looking at a Mavericks screen now. The settings would be under Sys Prefs > Accessibility > Zoom, though the solution to your problem will not be found in Zoom.

Looking at Mavericks, I see what you mean about the change in the indicator dots. If I had to use Mavericks every day, I'd be making the kinds of core changes xylitol suggests to make the indicators more emphatic.
 
Thanks everyone for your input and to xylitol for his suggestion which I will look at when I have a minute.

I'm retired and over here we say, often quite rightly, that the busiest people are retirees and those on holidays !

I wasn't game to go the Yosemite route with all the problems people are writing about so I asked my techie son for a copy of Mavericks. The rest you know !

Garoolgan
 
Thanks Ctone,

With one thing and another I'm starting to get used to the little "stripe" of light, half hidden by the screen frame.

I now get my eyes right up against the screen and squint down to see what is open.

Having said this I can't understand why Apple does this sort of thing, the old round "dots" were clear. I would put this change of indicators in the same category as their having literally wiped notes in Mail without warning. I have the feeling Apple is letting us know that they have to put up with us rather than treating us like clients? I did however manage somehow to save my notes and I've now created a "Group" in Contacts called "Notes" so that they are synced with my iPhone.

Thanks again for your input

Garoolgan
 
If you have some apps running and capture a screen shot what do the lights look like? Do they look the same as when you look at the screen or are they larger? I have attached a screenshot of a capture of my dock (what the computer thinks it is displaying) - when I look at my monitor, the lights look just like that.
 

Attachments

  • dock_SS.jpg
    dock_SS.jpg
    40.7 KB · Views: 156
fhall1,

When I do a screen shot I get the same thing as your attachment but what I see is less of the little bars of light that are the indicators.

As previously said I am starting to learn to live with the new indicators by approaching myself to the screen and squinting down. It is probably as much a problem of old eyes as the change of indicators but again, why change something that works well? Is a bar more advanced and modern than a dot?


Garoolgan
 
So it sounds like the graphics chip is outputting the indicators properly based on the screenshot. So, it's something to do with the placement of the LCD display behind the bezel, or the mac is displaying the screen image offset in the vertical direction. Probably been that way since the laptop was new, but Mavericks exacerbated the problem with the new indicators.
 
OS X is currently designed so that you're not supposed to care whether an app is "running" or not. That's why the dock indicators are so small. The operating system manages the apps as necessary so they get the resources they need.

If you really care to know which apps are running, another way to check is by typing cmd-tab.
 
The dock lights are merely a symptom of a larger problem...it sounds like the OP's screen is misaligned somehow so he's missing a few rows of pixels along the bottom. This would cut off the bottom of any app that uses the full screen.

Obviously, he's lived with it this long, so it's not earth-shattering.
 
Thanks chabig for the Cde+Tab and as for the rest I suppose there is a slight alignment problem with the screen and the black border on my MacBook Pro as when I took a screen shot the indicators were far more visible.

I still think that this change was an unnecessary one as was the "retina magnetic power plug" slightly bigger (?) than the "previous standard one" and the sudden and unexplained loss of my mail/notes which I used a lot.

.... and don't forget that us older ones like what we know. Years ago I always wanted to know the whys and wherefores of a problem but now "as long as the bloody thing works" I'm happy!! ... and thank heavens my son to whom I taught DOS 3 (back in 1987?) when he was 8 now knows much much more than I do!

Garoolgan
 
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