Datasheet

Leopard’s revised DVD Player requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved de-interlacing.

As for third-party hardware, Apple states that OS X natively supports many third-party hardware

devices, although some devices may require additional driver updates from their respective manu-

facturers to utilize a product’s full feature set.

Preparing for the installation of OS X

After you’ve deemed that the target hardware meets OS X’s minimum hardware requirements, you

need to verify that the target computer’s firmware is up to date.

Firmware is programming that tells

a computer’s hardware how to behave. Starting with the original iMac, Macintosh computers have

used a firmware-upgradeable hardware design. This design element on PowerPC Macs is a compo-

nent of what is referred to as NewWorld Architecture. Intel Macs have an equivalent known as

Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). The Mac’s firmware is contained in a programmable (flash-

able) read-only memory (PROM). This programmable firmware approach enables Apple to fix

technical issues via patches and upgrades like any other software. As a result, this innovation

allows Apple to achieve greater hardware stability and overall improved system performance via

firmware updates. Using a utility referred to as a Flash-ROM updater, firmware can be upgraded

(sometimes referred to as

revved). The Mac OS 10.5 installer alerts you if your system’s firmware

is out of date. You can also determine your system’s firmware by running Apple System Profiler.

Apple’s latest firmware may be included on the Mac OS X Install DVD. It can also be obtained

either through Mac OS X’s built-in Software Update mechanism or from

www.info.apple.

com/support/downloads.html

All PowerPC system firmware updaters released to date by Apple prior to the G5

are available via Mac OS 9 applications only. Updating a system’s firmware using the

Classic application environment in lieu of booting directly from Mac OS 9 is not recommended and

Classic is no longer officially supported within Leopard.

Volume preparation for OS X

A Mac OS X startup volume can be formatted as an Extended (HFS+) or a Unix File System (UFS)

volume. An HFS+-formatted volume’s single biggest advantage is that it can be prepared as either

case preserving or case sensitive. All Macintosh desktop operating systems to date have used file sys-

tems that have been dependent on case-preserving formatted volumes (this includes the old HFS

format as well).

The opposite of the case-preserving format is the case-sensitive format. With the case-sensitive

format, it is possible to have multiple files named identically in the same location/folder/directory.

The only thing that would differentiate the files to the naked eye is the varied use of uppercase and

lowercase characters. For example, you may have individual files named DOG, DoG, Dog, dOg,

doG, dOG, and dog located in the same folder.

As mentioned previously, OS X also supports another format referred to as the Unix File System

(UFS), although it isn’t the preferred volume format because it doesn’t support AirPort networking

and is case sensitive. In addition, UFS volumes are not recognized by Mac OS 9 and their volume

NOTE

Introduction and Installation of Mac OS X

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