Mavericks-Missing Time Machine animation in Menu Bar

No. It's deliberately done that way - I assume the reason is to save energy, like so many other things in Mavericks.

 

When it's backing up, there's an extra arrowhead at about 8:00 position:

 

In the sidebar of a Finder window you can still see a circular arrow moving counterclockwise next to the device you're using with Time Machine as long as the box is checked in the Sidebar pane of Finder Preferences to show that kind of device in the sidebar.

 

To save energy? Seriously??? Come on. It doesn't take much energy to spin an icon clockwise.

 

It was more likely done for aesthetic reasons. I like the change. It always seemed a little bit goofy to have this clock icon spinning around in my menu bar.

 

It was nice having a visual notification that Time Machine was doing its thing. The extra arrowhead doesn't seem like it would be that noticeable to me.

 

Yes but you're missing the big picture: every little bit counts. They've ditched all unnecessary screen updates. That's the same philosophy not to update hidden regions eg in Safari. Not to act on every timer tick, but to coalesce them into groups and run in packs.
Taken together all these little changes account towards better battery life under Mavericks.

 

Right, but did you notice it has to spin counter-clockwise, much more difficult.

 

I liked the spinner because I like to know what's going on all the time. But now that I think about it, the double arrow is much better. Who cares when time machine is backing up, it's a useless notification. It's not like I need to know when it backs up (way too often anyway) and that prompts me to take a different action. If my usage doesn't change when something is happening then why would I want to be notified?

Nevertheless, there should be an option for that so people with ocd can enable the clockwise animation

 

To each his own..... using my MBP I'd like to know when time machine is doing a backup. I've had a few times where I closed the lid while and the next time machine backup failed b/c of a corrupted sparse bundle.

 

Probably you missed the fact, that the spinning of arrow was reduced already in 10.8.
Up to 10.7 it started spinning immediately at the start of backup preparation. In 10.8 it remained stationary for the whole preparation and cleanup period and spinned only during the actual backup.

 

I was pretty used to the spinning icon too but have adjusted just fine to the difference between backing up and not backing up. It is a subtle icon change but not that hard to pick out once you get used to it.

 

Close, but no cigar; but then you probably don't smoke anyway. As you can see by iOS 7, and the changes they've threatened us with in the next version of OS X, they are ditching all unnecessary beauty.

 

I've had my Time Machine archive corrupted too many times by putting the computer to sleep while it was being backed up. For me, the spinning icon is a useful way to know when it's safe to sleep.

 

In the tech past, most computers had LEDs that blinked every time the hard drive was accessed. I think Apple led the industry in getting rid of these. It's of no importance to the user. I view the TM icon in the same light. Just let it do its thing. You don't have to babysit it.

 

No need to babysit it, but it is nice to know at a glance that a backup is in progress. I recently shut off by MacBook Pro while a TM backup of 1.3 GB was 99% complete. After restarting my computer, I restarted the backup and it had to start copying the entire 1.3 GB over again. As a result the time and CPU cycles spend backing up the 1.2 GB was completely wasted.

At the least, the TM icon could be changed to a static RED version of the normally black icon when backing up.

 

There are other menu bar icons (e.g. OmniFocus) that have red icons in non-error conditions. Hell, the iPhone and iPad are full of icons with red badges on them that do not indicate an error. Nonetheless, Apple could add a preference setting to allow the user to pick his/her preferred color for the active TM icon.

 

Apple hasn't for umpteen years!

"Apple could add a preference setting to allow the user to pick his/her preferred color for the active TM icon."

dalesmith - I've been waiting for that since Leopard if not before. Even Windoze 2000 (if not before) allowed the border of a window to be modified. X-windows (Unix) was even better. It is so hard to tell the difference between the active OSX window and the other in-active ones (the ones without focus) due to the light grey versus slightly darker grey.

I too liked the movement in the bar, but I can live with the "triangle" at 8:00. Making the icon color selectable would be great, even if it's just the triangle.

As far as saving on battery/CPU time, etc, why then have the spinning icon in Finder, which I often have open? It doesn't even reflect the icon in the menu bar.

(Even worse, I don't like the grey dock.)

Oh well. My Mac is a hand-down from my son. There are advantages and disadvantages to all "tools". I'm not really into computers for "the experience", to me they're tools.

 

Missing the big picture?

BIG PICTURE??? It's a very small picture, actually - one that didn't need changing. If Apple was concerned about Energy, they could stop pushing those annoying multiple-times-a-day pop-ups announcing there is new software available and do we want to install it now, be reminded later, in an hour or tomorrow.

And when you hit your mid-forties, you won't notice the change in battery life, but you'll be asking Apple for an on screen alert or some kind of beep to let you know when Time Machine or whatever it morphs into is running because you'll have a harder time seeing that little arrow than you do now.

Wonder why so many people missed it? They must have been distracted by the thrill of extra battery life....

 

You're not supposed to need to know when Time Machine is working. No user intervention is required.

 

I agree. Doesn't bother me either. And if TM fails to back up, I can see it immediately from a different status bar icon. Then it's time to intervene.