Reader Gordon Jacoby would like the big ol’ cursor offered by Tiger. He writes:
I am using OSX 10.3.9 on a PowerBook G4 and want to increase the size of the cursor. Following the directions on page 104 of the February 06 Macworld, there is no cursor size slider in Universal Access in System Preferences. What now??
You’re correct, this is a feature that was added to the Universal Access system preference in Mac OS X 10.4 (you’ll find it in the Mouse area of Universal Access). That doesn’t mean those who haven’t upgraded to Tiger must suffer with a Lilliputian cursor, however.
The free Cursor Zoom is a preference pane that allows those using OS 10.2 or higher to magnify their cursor up to 4X (you could also cut the cursor size in half, but I’m not sure why you’d want to). The size of the cursor will be returned to the system default when you log out or restart your Mac.
I might also mention that if the reason you want a larger cursor is to find the darned thing on a big screen, take a look at 2Point5Fish.com’s free Mouse Locater. As its name implies, it’s a utility that draws a large green target around the cursor when your mouse is idle for a user-configurable period of time or when you invoke a user-defined hotkey.