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Apple menu logo changing color

This is weird, and I haven't found any topic about it...

In my new MacBook sometimes the apple menu logo on the upper left changes color randomly, with weird combinations!

I took a screenshot (and zoomed 200%) if you want to see:
http://www.webalice.it/rubecube/applemenu.jpg

It doesn't cause any problem, and it doesn't even happen so often, but I wonder "What the..."

Any idea?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.3), 2.2 GHz, 2 MB Ram

Posted on Jun 5, 2008 1:52 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 16, 2008 6:36 AM

Mine does the same thing since upgrading to Leopard. This morning it's red fading to lighter on the bottom of the apple. Just last night I pointed it out to my girlfriend who thought I was crazy.

It seems to be somehow a daily cycle. I use the "Graphite" appearance theme, so usually the apple menu logo is dark gray, but with one side faded to a lighter gray - sometimes the bottom, sometimes the left or right... rarely that I can recall the top. I wonder if it's an Easter egg from some Apple dev showing a north-pole view of the Earth's dark/light side as it rotates... Or maybe it's a lunar thing... (red moon rising?) Last night it was sorta blue-tinted, but mostly it's just black/dark-gray fading to lighter gray - when it's not just solid black like you'd expect.

Anyway it's a difficult topic to search on (I've tried several times) so kudos to Rubik for posting and Google for getting this post near the top of the search results.

Also, this post probably belongs in the "Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard" category... I can't imagine this just affects MacBooks.
5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 16, 2008 6:36 AM in response to Rubik

Mine does the same thing since upgrading to Leopard. This morning it's red fading to lighter on the bottom of the apple. Just last night I pointed it out to my girlfriend who thought I was crazy.

It seems to be somehow a daily cycle. I use the "Graphite" appearance theme, so usually the apple menu logo is dark gray, but with one side faded to a lighter gray - sometimes the bottom, sometimes the left or right... rarely that I can recall the top. I wonder if it's an Easter egg from some Apple dev showing a north-pole view of the Earth's dark/light side as it rotates... Or maybe it's a lunar thing... (red moon rising?) Last night it was sorta blue-tinted, but mostly it's just black/dark-gray fading to lighter gray - when it's not just solid black like you'd expect.

Anyway it's a difficult topic to search on (I've tried several times) so kudos to Rubik for posting and Google for getting this post near the top of the search results.

Also, this post probably belongs in the "Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard" category... I can't imagine this just affects MacBooks.

Jun 17, 2008 5:52 AM in response to mphilips

Thanks for your reply, mphilips... it feels better not being alone 🙂

On the other hand, I think this curious "bug" affects the MacBook only: I own a MacPro too, with the same system installed (10.5.3) and I never noticed any color changes in the Apple menu logo.

I also don't see any connection to lunar phases or other weird events: it looks totally random to me.

The quest for an answer continues...

Jun 17, 2008 4:26 PM in response to arunphoto

Hi,

How do you have your display's number of colors set? If you are running with a low number of colors, the color pallette with be re-mapped to make the maximum number of colors availabe to applications. Normally, I don't think you'd encounter the poblem if you have, "thousands," or, "millions," selected for the color depth.

If that's not it, the it must be a bug in 10.5.3.


Bill

Jun 18, 2008 2:22 AM in response to impulse_telecom

Hello again

The number of colors is set to millions. In any case, if it was not, I don't see why it should affect he Apple menu logo only.
If you check the link I posted, you'll see how weird the combinations can get!

One thing that I forgot to add: it did the same both in 10.5.1 and 10.5.2. So if it's a bug, they didn't discover/fixed it for quite a few months.

Apple menu logo changing color

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