Datasheet

a first-time Macintosh user, please, please read this section of the book

carefully — it could save your life. Okay, okay, perhaps I’m being overly

dramatic. What I mean to say is that reading this section could save your

Mac. Even if you’re an experienced Mac user, you might want to read this sec-

tion anyway. Chances are good that you’ll see at least a few things you might

have forgotten that might come in handy.

Turning the dang thing on

Okay. This is the big moment — turning on your Mac! Gaze at it longingly first

and say something cheesy, such as “You’re the most awesome computer I’ve

ever known.” If that doesn’t turn on your Mac (and it probably won’t), keep

reading.

Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has manufactured Macs with power switches

and buttons on every conceivable surface: on the front, side, and back of the

computer itself, and even on the keyboard or monitor.

So if you don’t know how to turn on your Mac, don’t feel bad — just look in

the manual or booklet that came with your Mac. It’s at least one thing that

the documentation always covers.

These days, most Macs have a power-on button on the keyboard. It usually

looks like the little circle thingie you see in the margin.

Don’t bother choosing Help➪Mac Help, which opens the Help Viewer pro-

gram, because it can’t tell you where the switch is. Although the Help pro-

gram is good for finding out a lot of things, the location of the power switch

isn’t among them. Of course, if you haven’t found the switch and turned on

the Mac, you can’t access Help anyway. (D’oh!)

What you should see on startup

When you finally do turn on your Macintosh, you set in motion a sophisti-

cated and complex series of events that culminates in the loading of Mac OS

X and the appearance of the Mac OS X Desktop. After a small bit of whirring,

buzzing, and flashing (meaning that the operating system is loading), OS X

first tests all your hardware — slots, ports, disks, random-access memory

(RAM), and so on. If everything passes, you hear a pleasing musical tone and

see the tasteful gray Apple logo in the middle of your screen, along with a

small spinning-pinwheel cursor somewhere on the screen. Both are shown in

Figure 1-1.

Part I: Introducing Mac OS X Leopard: The Basics

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