Section 9 - How to Boot Up a Mac

Now you are ready to learn how to boot up the Macintosh computer, which means to load an operating system into the computer's RAM (random access memory).

To boot up a Macintosh computer you will need to press the power button located on the CPU. The power button for these Macintosh computers will look like the following symbol, a circle with a vertical line through the top of it:

On some Macintosh computer keyboards there is a Power button located in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard which will also allow you to boot up one's computer. In general the power button will be square with a triangle centered on the left edge of the button .

Pushing the power button initiates the loading of the operating system into RAM. After the operating system is loaded, the computer performs a check to make sure that all peripheral devices (input, output, and storage devices) are properly attached to the computer. As soon as all devices are verified, the computer is ready to accept input from the user.