Q: Mouse cursor in Word 14.3.5 turns light grey on MacBook Air

Strategerizer01 , the answer is YES to your question:

Marian33 - to clarify, how did you verify the issue on the MacBook Airs in the store - do they have Office/Word installed?

Hey all, the new MacBook Air has this problem on several applications. Mine has it on Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Word and a few other. When using a cross-hair or even a text edit the cross-hair cursor truns into very light (invisible) grey in stead of black. This is a OSX problem and should be solved by Apple. Installing the applications again, doesn't solve anything. The only thing that helps is going on system prefs > accessibility > display and make your cursor size bigger. Its doesn't make the contrast better, but then you can see your cursor. I hope Apple comes out with a update very soon!

Yeah i'm having the same problems here too. Quark 9 and Adobe illustrator CS5 both affected and can not see the cursor when its a cross hair. Its very fine, grey and practically dissapears making it near on impossible to use the programs! So reading all the other similar complaints nothing can be done until they update the OS?

How long do we need to wait for that? I really need to use my Macbook for my job and this kind of makes it quite hard. If the issue can't be resolved perhaps i should return it? Do people know if there is the same issue with the Macbook Pro?

We tested a MacBook Pro in the Apple Store with the same OS as the new MacBook Airs and it did NOT have the same problem. We only tested in Word.

I have both macbook air and macbook pro with the same OS. The problem only exists on the MBA. It is perhaps the graphics card driver.

Some good news... Apple acknowledges the issue... they confirm it is not hardware issue (so replacing your MacBook Air will not solve the problem). More importantly, they are working on a fix.

Here is the response I received from Dennis Flannigan regarding my case #469028440:

At this time Apple Engineering has received multiple reports of this symptom and are investigating. Further updates, if any, may come by way of a software update, knowledge base article or software release. At this time though, however, it is not a hardware issue. We are working on a solution for it and will be releasing it as soon as we can.

Yey... I guess?

Just got my new MBA in, same problem w/ italicized text in Word 2011. I am also running Word 2013 w/ VMware Fusion and can report that the cursor is nearly invisible for the entire document, not just over italicized text. Makes using Word '13 impossible.

Exact same problem -- cursor becomes very, very faint.  It happens for me also in Adobe Acrobat Porfessional. Very annoying. Two people at the genius bar today had no idea what to do about it.

Someone at Apple just recommended that I make the cursor large through the accessibility option in settings. This helps me at least see the cursor a little better. Still a problem though. They say it is a Microsoft problem since the cursor works elsewhere.

Of course MS is responsible for all bugs. Except they don't own Adobe.

Apple needs to communicate better with its geniuses. The problem is with Apple Engineering. II've returned my new MBA and when more of us do the same, perhaps it will move up on Apple's priority list.

I put a post on here on Aug 11, 2013 10:06 AM about this as i use Quark all the time and with this problem its driving me mad.

If Apple are not doing anything about it surely they would listen if everyone on here with the same problem contacted all the Mac magazines! it might make the Apple engineers wake up and resolve this problem before the new MBA starts getting some bad publicity.

Food for thought for everyone out there with the same problem...

Exact same problem in Adobe Acrobat Porfessional and Microsoft Word 2011. Very disappointing. I am going to return my new MBA.

Same problem with Adobe Acrobat Porfessional and Microsoft Word 2011. Apparently the problem started yesterday (I bought the laptop a couple of weeks ago).

I upgraded to the most recent version of Adobe Acrobat Professional and now I can see the cursor in that porgram. Even with the most recent updates from Microsoft, I can't see it in Word. So, if the other software developers have figured out how to let you see the cursor, Microsoft should be able to figure it out too.