- Happy Mac
A Happy Mac is the normal bootup (startup) icon of an
Apple Macintosh computer running older versions of theMac OS operating system . It was designed bySusan Kare in the early 1980s. The icon remained unchanged untilMac OS 9 , when it was updated to 8-bit color.On later
New World ROM hardware it was modified into a folder icon bearing the Mac OS logo (itself based on the original Happy Mac); it was removed with the introduction ofMac OS X v10.2 , which replaced it with a large grey Apple logo.When a Macintosh boots into OS 9 or lower, it makes a startup chime and the screen turns gray. After a few seconds, a Happy Mac icon will appear, followed by the Mac OS
splash screen , which underwent several stylistic changes. Mac OS versions after 8.5 also included the version number in this splash screen. The Happy Mac indicates that booting has successfully begun, whereas aSad Mac (along with the "Chimes of Death " melody) indicates a hardware problem.On early Macs that had no internal
hard drive , the computer would boot up to a point where it would need to load theoperating system from afloppy disk . Until the user inserted the correct disk, the Mac would display a floppy icon with a blinking question mark. In later Macs, a folder icon with a question mark that repeatedly changes to the Finder icon is shown if a valid System Folder cannot be found.External links
* [http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/happymacandfriends.html Happy Mac and Friends] is a freeware OS X widget from Kelari Communications.
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