Chapter 5 Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras IN THIS CHAPTER: I The other crud in your System Folder: Enablers, System Updates, and more I Details on the automatic System Folder subfolders I A few words about the System file I Apple Extras I The Installer nobody knows That handful of control panels, extensions, and DAs described in the preced- ing two chapters doesn’t completely explain why a System 7.5 System Folder can consume 30MB of your hard drive — 80MB or more if you have, for example, a Language Kit or most of System 7.6’s goodies installed. Your Mac comes with a lot of other fascinating software, too — and the flood doesn’t stop: Every few months, Apple releases some Updater or other, which you’re supposed to know about, get, and install. Your Mac even comes with some software the Installer doesn’t install; those additional programs get left behind on the original System software disks, or dumped into an unex- plained folder on your hard drive called Apple Extras. All of it is worth know- ing about. 181 182 Part I: System Software Revealed THE SYSTEM FOLDER FOLDERS System 7 greatly reduced the cluttered, no-nested-folders setup of System 6. System 7 introduced a set of standard folders within the System Folder (see Figure 5-1): one each for Extensions (INITs), Control Panels, Preferences, Fonts (in System 7.1 and later), Apple Menu Items, PrintMonitor Documents, Startup Items, Shutdown Items (System 7.5), and Launcher Items (System 7.5). Depending on your model and System version, you may also have folders that collect things such as Speakable Items and Control Strip Modules. Figure 5-1 The basic System Folder folders. As you probably know, you’re not expected to place each System Folder- bound icon into the appropriate subfolder manually. When you drop a font, sound, control panel, desk accessory, keyboard layout, or extension icon on top of the System Folder icon, the Mac automatically dumps it into the cor- rect subfolder (and it tells you so, as shown in Figure 5-2). And by the way — we’re sick of reading that this only works if you drop the incoming items onto a closed System Folder icon. It makes no difference whatsoever whether the System Folder icon is open or closed, just so you drop the stuff on the icon. In fact, you can even drop a whole group of System Folder items of mixed types — even a folder containing them — onto the System Folder. All of the items still get stashed where they belong. In any of the System Folder’s placement proposals, you’re welcome to decline the suggestion shown in Figure 5-2 by Figure 5-2 clicking Cancel. If you want to place the item The System 7 System Folder has some drag-and-drop brains. somewhere other than the proposed folder, however, you can’t do it by dropping it onto the System Folder icon. First, you must open the System Folder into a window and then drag the icon into place. Here, then, folder by folder, are the System Folder folders. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 183 Apple Menu Items folder TRUE FACT QUOTE FROM HISTORY Beginning in System 7, Apple programmers hit upon the clever idea of using a menu that’s been on your screen for “A fully loaded System Folder years — the Apple (Ú) menu — as an ever-present file can easily weigh in at 200K, launcher. You can put anything into this new, improved which doesn’t leave much room Ú menu — not just documents and programs, but fold- for application programs and ers, disks, the Trash . literally anything in the entire Mac documents on disk ...It is ironic that,for the time being,making universe that can be represented by an icon. the Mac an efficient computing To change what’s listed in the Ú menu, you simply add tool means eliminating portions icons to (or remove them from) the Apple Menu Items of the system that add folder. (More often, actually, you put an alias of the origi- convenience and appeal.” nal file there. And in System 7.5, you don’t even have to do Macworld magazine, April 1985 that — just highlight the original icon and choose Add Say ...would it help to throw Alias to Apple Menu from the Automated Tasks command out ISO 9660 File Access? in your Ú menu.) After you know about the relationship between this special folder and your Ú menu, you’ll discover that the System 7 Ú menu is one of the operating system’s most useful and well-designed features. See Chapter 3 for more on Apple Menu Items and desk accessories. Control Panels folder Today’s control panels, as noted in Chapter 4, are increasingly more like indi- vidual, double-clickable programs than mere tiles of a central control panel, as they were in the bygone days of System 6. Actually, as mentioned in Chapter 4, most control panels don’t even have to be on your computer — they can live perfectly comfortably on some backup disk, or in another folder of your choosing, until you want to change one of your settings. You can open a control panel just like a double-clickable program, no matter where it is. Chapter 4 contains more information about control panels than you’ll ever want to know. Control Panels (Disabled) See “Extensions (Disabled) folder.” Control Strip Modules folder This folder is required for the glorious Control Strip found on PowerBook laptops (beginning with the 500 series) and any Mac running System 7.5.3 or 184 Part I: System Software Revealed TRUE FACT later. (If you don’t have the Control Strip, as described THE FOLDER THAT WASN’T in the previous chapter, use your System 7.5.3-or-later Installer and use the Custom Install option.) Any “tile” System 7 was supposed to include one on the Control Strip has a corresponding icon in this more special System Folder subfolder: the Help folder.The Help folder was folder. designed to be another anti-clutter repository — it was supposed to be Desktop PrintMonitor documents where all your programs stored their Help files.A Help file contains all the on- See “PrintMonitor documents,”later in this chapter. screen information that appears when you use a program’s Balloon Help,Apple Guide,or any other online help Extensions folder mechanism. If you read Chapter 4, you know about all the different But as the release date of System 7 things — extensions and not — that go in the drew near,there was intense debate. Extensions folder. An extension also works fine loose Darin Adler,the head of Apple’s “Blue in the System Folder or even in the Control Panels Meanies”squad of System 7 bug-killers folder. and project overseers,thought that a Help folder would be superfluous.In the end,the Help folder was nixed. Extensions (Disabled) folder Of course,the Help folder wasn’t the In the very old days, if you didn’t want some extension only System 7 feature to get yanked out (INIT) to load when you turned on the Mac, you’d of the software at the last moment.We have to drag the extension’s icon out of the System can think of at least three other features that were promised but not Folder. Then came better days, in which programs like delivered in the original System 7 INIT Picker let you selectively turn extensions on and software:a rebuild-the-Desktop method off from one central window. Those programs worked that didn’t wipe out comments you by changing the extensions’ behind-the-scenes Type typed into the Get Info boxes of your codes from init to xnit. The Mac didn’t recognize them files (incorporated into System 7.5.3, as INITs anymore, and thus ignored them during the five years later); background sound startup process. playing (double-click a sound file,then Trouble would occur, however, if you found your- start word processing while the sound plays); and a new printing architecture, self without that INIT Picker-type program — you known today as QuickDraw GX. had no way of changing that extension back into a real In the absence of a Help folder,most extension! software companies store their That’s why all of today’s extension managers, programs’help files in their own including Extension Manager (included with System proprietary folders.A Claris program,for 7.5), Now Startup Manager, and Conflict Catcher example,creates a Claris folder inside (included with this book), use a much safer method of your System Folder to contain its Help turning extensions off. Instead of modifying the exten- (and spelling and translator) files. sions, they simply move the extensions — into a folder Aldus,Quark,Microsoft,and other companies use a similar tactic. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 185 they create themselves, called Extensions (Disabled). This method has two advantages: First, you can restore an extension simply by dragging it back into the Extensions folder yourself. Second, the file itself isn’t changed, so your virus-checker program won’t go shrieking bloody murder. You’ll also see Control Panels (Disabled) and, sometimes, System Folder (Disabled) folders. They’re created by those same extension-managing pro- grams, this time to handle control panels and items loose in the System Folder, respectively. Fonts folder This Fonts folder, introduced in System 7.1, is a sweet idea, too long in com- ing. In all previous versions of the System, you installed fonts into the System file itself (into the little suitcase icon inside the System folder).