Macintosh startup

[6] In addition, a Sad Mac with either one or two lines of hexadecimal codes will be displayed on some Old World ROM machines to visually indicate a hardware issue during the boot process.

The sound indicates that diagnostic tests were run immediately at startup and have found no hardware or fundamental software problems.

For models built prior to the introduction of the Power Macintosh in 1994, the failure of initial self-diagnostic tests results in a Sad Mac icon, an error code, and (later) the distinctive Chimes of Death sounds.

The startup chime in the first three Macintosh models is a simple square-wave "beep" programmed by Andy Hertzfeld, utilizing the computers' onboard MOS 6522 VIA chip.

The first generation Power Macintosh computers also do not use the Reekes chime, instead using a chord strummed by jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan on an Ovation (sometimes incorrectly attributed as a Yamaha in some sources) steel-string acoustic guitar[12][16] using the finger tapping technique.

The 20th Anniversary Macintosh uses another unique chime, also generated from a Korg Wavestation as well using a modified version of a preset from one of its sound expansion cards.

The Mac startup chime has been a registered trademark in the United States since 2012,[17] and is also featured in the 2008 Pixar film WALL-E when the titular robot character is fully recharged by solar panels as well as in the 2007 Brad Paisley song "Online".

A similar-sounding variant of this startup chime can also be heard during the "Simplicity Shootout" commercial shown at the iMac G3's introduction in 1998.

Eventually, the new startup chime was brought over to all older supported Macs starting with the macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 beta.

[10] The logo also shares some similarities to the faces of the 1934 painting Deux personnages (Two Characters) by Pablo Picasso and to the Bauhaus emblem.

The Happy Mac icon will appear, followed by the "Welcome to Mac OS" splash screen (or the small "Welcome to Macintosh" window in System 7.5 and earlier), which underwent several stylistic changes, the other significant ones being the inclusion of extension icons appearing in the bottom left as well as a progress bar that was introduced in System 7.5.

On early Macs without an internal hard drive, the computer boots up to a point where it needs to load the operating system from a floppy disk.

In 2016 and later Macs (excluding the Early 2016 MacBook), the Apple logo appears as soon as the screen turns on rather than after the startup chime.

It was first used in the initial version of Classic Mac OS used in the original Macintosh in 1984,[27] displaying a reason for the crash alongside a corresponding error code.

This format was changed in System 7 to be a standard error message if it believed it could manage the recovery process, resulting in the forced termination of the application.

The Sad Mac icon is displayed, along with a set of hexadecimal codes that indicate the type of problem at startup.

Most models made prior to the Macintosh II crash silently and display the Sad Mac without playing any tone.

On some Macintoshes such as PowerBook 540c, if the user presses the command and power keys before the boot screen is displayed, only the Chimes of Death are played.

Old World ROM Power Macintosh and PowerBook models based on the PCI architecture do not use a Sad Mac icon and will instead only play the error/car-crash sound on a hardware failure (such as missing or bad memory, unusable CPU, or similar errors).

The PowerBook 5300, 190, and 1400 use the second half of the 8-note arpeggio as found on the Quadra and Centris models, or the entire death chime if the error occurs before the screen lights up.

With the introduction of the iMac in 1998, the Chimes of Death are no longer used in favor of a series of tones to indicate hardware errors.