Although the many and pernicious inconsistencies of light and cast shadows within Mac OS X remain mostly uncommented upon, let me draw your attention to iCal’s “current time of day” indicator with its own curious contribution.

When the timespan shown within the Day or Week view includes the current day and time, you see a horizontal line running the width of the calendar with a colored bulb on the left side.

Here’s a magnified view of the indicator:

Now, look at the cast shadow, whose distance from the bulb casting the shadow implies that the bulb itself hovers above the calendar’s surface by an appreciable distance. Because the horizontal line to which the bulb is attached has no shadow, an incongruity results making it difficult to believe that the bulb is attached to the horizontal line at all.

And note the direction of the cast shadow, which by its position to the left and below the bulb—7:30 on a clock were the bulb in the center—implies a light source to the right and above the bulb, at 1:30 on the same clock. However, the specular highlighting on the bulb indicates a light source directly above the bulb, at 12:00. Quite confusing, and inconsistent with other light sources within Mac OS X.

Lastly, why does this indicator cast a shadow at all? Such 3D styling is often a cue that an onscreen element is manipulable, which this indicator is not. Many users have probably attempted to click on this indicator, believing it to be a control.

Oddities like this exist throughout the OS. A catalog of them would make for a good read…

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Added: Reader Jordan Kay mentioned fixing the image in Photoshop, a great idea. Here’s a version of that image without cast shadow or red:

You probably already know these, but at least one was new to me:

• To type a period and space, double-tap the Spacebar. (Settings > General > Keyboard)

• To toggle Caps Lock, double-tap the Shift key. (Settings > General > Keyboard)

• To see accented forms of a letter, press and hold the letter.

• To jump to the top of a web page in Safari, tap the status bar.

• To zoom out in Maps, tap with two fingers.

• To save an image in Safari or Mail, tap and hold the image.

• To access the scientific calculator, turn Calculator sideways.

• To take a screenshot, Press the Power and Home buttons simultaneously.

You know the review counts you see on the App Store?

Regard them with suspicion because they’re wildly inconsistent. In this random example, the app i-map-u is shown as having 158 reviews:

Tap it to see more info, and you’ll see it has only 8 reviews:

But tap the link to read the reviews, and you’ll see there are 10 reviews!

A quick look at a number of other apps showed similar inconsistencies, many of them differing by thousands of reviews. These screenshots are from the App Store app on the iPhone, but viewing the App Store via iTunes shows similarly wacky results.

Is this evidence of the Please Rate This App feature added in iPhone Update 2.2? Perhaps users who submit a rating like this are counted in the total, but not listed in the reviews list?