One day while using my Mac (OS X Lion), I noticed something weird: the Apple Logo in the menu bar actually turned red.
I was still able to use the machine just fine, but at first it made me question if my eyes had gone bad and second my monitor. Â Turns out it was neither. A screen capture showed it really that way.
Apparently I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, see this Apple Forum on the logo changing color. Speculation there runs from an Apple Easter Egg to color depth issues.
It isn’t.
When I went to the Console application, I noticed a lot of “weird” messages appearing that gave the indication that Finder was having repeated issues doing one of its many background things. Activity Monitor confirmed that things, while still working, weren’t working smoothly. Â Forcing Finder to restart, instantly resolved the problem in the logs and the logo went back to jet black.
My take is that this is a subtle and non-intrusive indicator to Apple developers that something is either locked, blocked, or spiraling out of control.