Modding Mac OS X

Changing the Boot Panel

TOOLS YOU NEED

For working through the examples in this section, you’ll need the following application:

• Finder

• Safari (or any other web browser)

• Terminal (/Applications/Utilities)

• Photoshop, Illustrator, or FreeHand (if you want to design your own Boot Panel)

Whenever you start your Mac, a light gray screen greets you. This screen has a slightly darker gray Apple logo superimposed on it. As your system moves past the firmware check, an application called BootX kicks into action. BootX changes the gray Apple startup display to a blue background with a Mac OS X startup screen, which is known as the Boot Panel (shown in Figure 1-26).

The Boot Panel is nothing more than a PDF image file, named BootPanel.pdf, that is stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemStarter/QuartzDisplay.bundle/Resources on your Mac.

Figure 1-26 shows the area in which the system displays a progress bar and some text messages as your Mac is starting up. If you want to design your own Boot Panel image, use a 480-pixel-wide by 360-pixel-high image. The blue lines in Figure 1-26 show where to place the guides in your illustration program (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, or FreeHand) so you can keep that space open to properly display the startup messages.

As your Mac starts up, a series of messages appears beneath a blue progress bar. These messages display as BootX starts up various system services that get your Mac going. And while the Boot Panel that Apple provides as part of Mac OS X Panther ...