Some versions of the Apple Installer used an animated 'counting hand' cursor. Wait cursors are activated by applications performing lengthy operations. The cursors could be advanced by repeated HyperTalk invocations of 'set cursor to busy'. The beach-ball cursor was also adopted to indicate running script code in the HyperTalk-like AppleScript. Apple's HyperCard first popularized animated cursors, including a black-and-white spinning quartered circle resembling a beach ball. 3 Guidelines, tools and methods for developersĪ wristwatch was the first wait cursor in early versions of the classic Mac OS.
