I love Progress Bars and Apple

Progress bars is one of the best features of a using a computer. It is a quick win for any app for communication and usability.

I also LOVE Apple products. They have been focused on Usability from the beginning. My only gripe is that success with usability has lead to elitism. They use usability to create a dogma of how technology should be. If they created it and it works, then it is the only way to do it. If they created it and it doesn't work, their is no one else did it better - move on. They will NOT build on someone other than Apple even if it is successful.

Even Issac Newton said his work was based on Standing on the shoulders of giants. Progress bars on PC and Macs are very different. Even though the beach ball method is horrible for usability and the Window method is fantastic. Apple will not change their ways for a Windows feature. This is a mistake. The only reason I see is because of Apple's ego and elitism.