I was working on a presentation the other day using a screenshot from the 3D view of Apple Maps.   This involved falling back to my Macbook Pro, something I’ve tried to do as little as possible since jumping to Windows as my primary work machine a few months back.

My co-worker, who is a die-hard Android user, said he preferred the 3D view in Google Maps.  He claimed it was better than the Apple Maps.app rendering I was using.   I’d looked in Google Maps before and I hadn’t even seen a 3D option.  But I had my Macbook Pro out, so I went to http://maps.google.com/  

I was shocked- there was a 3D button- I hadn’t even seen a 3D version of Google Maps outside of the old Google Earth standalone app.

Anyways I went to re-create this on my Thinkpad, and as I started clicking through I realized why I didn’t use Google Maps initially- there was no 3D button on my interface.

Unsure what could have caused that, I did a little googling, and a little thinking, and remembered my old disappearing mouse pointer problem from earlier this year.

Lo and behold, going back into chrome://settings  -> Advanced -> System -> Use hardware acceleration when available, followed by a re-launch, fixed it.

Hopefully my mouse pointer hangs around this time!