Datasheet

Chapter 1: Mac OS X Lion 101 (Prerequisites: None)

This app shows you much more information, including bus speed,

number of processors, caches, installed memory, networking, storage

devices, and much more. You can find more about this useful program

in Chapter 19.

Figure 1-4: See which version of Mac OS X

you’re running.

The legend of boot

Boot this. Boot that. “I booted my Mac and. . . .”

or “Did it boot?” and so on. Talking about com-

puters for long without hearing the boot word is

nearly impossible.

But why boot? Why not shoe or shirt or even

shazam?

Back in the very olden days — say, 1958 or a

little earlier — starting a computer required

you to toggle little manual switches on the

front panel, which began an internal process

that loaded the operating system. The process

became known as bootstrapping because if you

toggled the right switches, the computer would

“pull itself up by its bootstraps.” This phrase

didn’t take long to transmogrify into booting and

finally to boot.

Over the years, booting has come to mean turn-

ing on almost any computer or even a periph-

eral device, such as a printer. Some people

also use it to refer to launching an application

(“I booted Excel”).

So the next time one of your gearhead friends

says the b-word, ask whether he knows where

the term comes from. Then dazzle him with the

depth and breadth of your (not-quite-useful)

knowledge!

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