“Black Hole” Bug in OS X Mountain Lion – Screenshot

This is an obscure one, but I’ve noticed this graphical glitch enough times lately to prompt me to write about it. Mountain Lion suffers from a visual bug that puts a black hole underneath app icons in the Dock.

It’s more of a visual annoyance (or a treat, depending on your take) than a bug per se. But it is a flaw, nonetheless. And it might not be inherent to OS X, but to other apps (such as X11). Check out the screenshot above.

Ignore the text editor and other elements on the screen and focus your attention on the TextEdit icon. What do you see? It looks as if TextEdit is going to be sucked into another dimension.

As a Star Trek TNG fan, it takes me to that episode where an alien creature made of tar eats a member of the crew. Hope that doesn’t happen to TextEdit while I’m writing something important.

But whatever it is, it’s a glitch that Apple might need to take care of in a future OS X update. The company is currently testing the eleventh beta of OS X 10.8.3 internally.