Interrupt Driven

So, I have an iBook G4 that I'm getting used to (I loved my Pismo G3/900, but it failed to go to sleep properly when the cover was closed on one occasion several months ago and all the magic smoke got out). Anyway, I'm a big fan of OS X, but like everything else I use, I have to tweak it to suit my needs.

Among other tweaks (such as MenuMeters, DragThing, TransparentDock, Saft, PithHelmet, etc.) I have a battery icon I made myself.

I was inspired by SlimBatteryMenu, which I used when I had my Pismo, as it had two batteries, but the iBook only has one (another reason to hate my iBook). And it tends to go through its juice rather quickly towards the end, so I'm seeing shutdown warnings at around 12% battery life remaining, which in the default battery menu icon is a matter of a few black pixels.

So, I added color (also inspired by various other folks who'd hacked color into their menu icons; I grabbed a copy of a color Airport.menu as well, but I forget where I found it). And then when I realized that the battery was draining fast towards the end, I took the last four (red) pixels and spaced them out evenly halfway across the image, then the last three, then two. This gives a much more useful visual indicator for how many minutes I have left on the charge.

Anyway, if this is useful to you, feel free to download the images.tif file for my OS X Battery menu icon. Just copy the file to
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Battery.menu/Contents/Resources/; you may wish to back up the file "images.tif" that's already there before you copy over it, though, so you can revert if you don't like my version.