Abusing the term "critical"

It's no secret that I love apple products. One of the great things about them is that using them is pure joy. If you laid your hands on an iPod, iPhone ar a Mac, you know what I mean. Steve Jobs defines Apple as a software company. It's true that they sell hardware, but only to support their great software.

However, even the best has its' worse moments. I have an Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse. I find it to be a good mouse. I know that many people don't agree, but I enjoy using it. There is one annoyance, though. Once the mouse batteries reach 30% two things happen: the blue-tooth icon in the menu bar starts blinking and I start getting the following frightening messages every time the machine wakes up (and even more often).

The blinking icon is the worse. It is incredibly distracting. Everybody knows that blinking text and icons is a big no-no in user interface design. I would prefer a different color, perhaps. You can remove it, but it will come back to haunt me after a short while. Now, just to make it clear: 30% batteries means you have about 2 weeks of usage left with the simple batteries that I use. Get better batteries, and you'll be using it for a month with that blinking icon. Besides, look at the message above: "please replaces the batteries as soon as possible". Why?  You still have 30% left. It's not a very "green" thing to do. Just a waste of energy and money.

Come on. There's nothing critical here. I have a stock of spare batteries at my disposal. Besides, even if I don't, I can still use the track-pad. Just for comparison, when the laptop battery is at critical level, there's nothing blinking, the battery icon in the menu-bar just changes color. You get one dialog box, 10 minutes before it dies.

I'm still using Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and I hope this has changed in Leopard. I should be migrating soon.