There's a place for spinners, but I agree in the sense that the average user shouldn't be waiting for a spinner in an average session. A green path should be a good experience.
An edge-case user should expect it for expected waits of up to 10 seconds (progress bars for 10sec+ expected waits), because their edge case shouldn't inflict preloading on average users. But ghost loading will make it less annoying in any event, and there should be reasonable timeout error handling.
I don't universally dislike the Throbber, if that's what it's really called.
I have incredibly negative memories of the Netflix one, on cheap TVs with poor WiFi, which had a percentage which meant nothing.
It's used a lot in Android apps and it stresses me out on occasion when I'm in a rush.
Chromium on Android seems to use it well enough when reloading a page.
Often it feels like a jagged interruption in the application and like something is broken or out of place.
No more relentless hourglass, no more endless toilet flush, no more spinning beach ball. May they all suffer endless guru meditation.
The throbber was the beginning of developers gaslighting users.
It began as an indicator during long loads that your system hadn't frozen (because whatever process was running had to update it), and became a useless animation that communicated nothing.
Yes, it tells you nothing. It has no relationship to what's going on at the other end, which may well also be nothing.
There’s at least one distinction I didn’t see in the article.
If a throbber is advanced by signals of progress or at least action, then it’s not useless and is arguably better than a progress bar that moves with unpredictable and uneven speed.
If a throbber is an animated gif displayed until something makes it go away, then it’s useless.