Yes, spinners are horrible. A countdown is better, but not all tasks can be subdivided easily to allow for monitoring. In such cases, I like to use a pop-up w

Yes, spinners are horrible. A countdown is better, but not all tasks can be subdivided easily to allow for monitoring. In such cases, I like to use a pop-up window that says something like "Doing X. This may take a minute or so". This tells the user that they shouldn't bother staring at the app, and can do something else for a while. Usually that sort of information is all that's needed. "an hour" means time to work on something else. "a day" means write a postit note to check tomorrow afternoon. Etc.