Section 3 - Operating System Overview

The operating system is an application managing other applications and devices. The diagram below depicts an operating system managing a printer, a mouse, an application, a disk drive, a monitor and a keyboard. The interaction with the monitor is probably the one we appreciate and think about the most.

The operating system translates the computer language (refer to the hardware lesson for a review) into information. One method of presenting this information is via a graphical user interface (GUI). Elements of a GUI include such things as windows, menus, buttons, scroll bars, icons and the desktop. The desktop is the primary GUI generated by the Macintosh operating system, and you will learn about the Desktop in the next section.