Apple Macintosh
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Apple Macintosh is a type of computer that has been around since January 1984. The people who designed the Macintosh and its operating system wanted computers to be easier to use, and were inspired by an experimental computer some of them saw at a Xerox laboratory.
The Macintosh was the first mass-produced computer to use what engineers call a graphical user interface, or "GUI." The computer you are using right now may not be a Macintosh, but it probably uses a GUI. This means that every item stored in the boot device or any other disk on the system can be seen somewhere as a little picture, or icon.
- Double clicking a disk will open a window showing you its folders represented as file folders.
- Double clicking a folder will show you the files in the folder. Files and folders can be moved into other folders, or to the desktop. In most cases, the icon of a document looks like a little piece of paper.
- Double clicking a file will open the file if an application that can run the file is on the system, and so on. The icons for many applications look like pencils or machines of some kind.
Macintoshes introduced before the end of 2005 had processors built by Motorola or IBM. The Macintoshes introduced in 2006 have processors made by Intel. The Macintosh cannot run Windows programs unless special software is installed that allows it to understand the Windows operating system, such as, for Intel ones, Boot Camp. In fact, the latest version of Mac OS is based on Unix. OS X will only run on a G3 or later chipset, unless special software is used.
Besides Mac OS, a modern Macintosh can run other operating systems, such as: