BootX (Apple)

BootX

The BootX booting screen used on Macintoshes with Mac OS X 10.2 or later
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Initial release	August 24, 2002 (with Mac OS X 10.2)
Development status	Active
Operating system	Darwin & Mac OS X
Platform	PowerPC
Type	Boot loader
License	Apple Public Source License

BootX is a software-based bootloader designed and developed by Apple Inc. for use on the company's Macintosh computer range. BootX is used to prepare the computer for use by loading all required device drivers and then starting-up Mac OS X by booting the kernel on all PowerPC Macintoshes running the Mac OS X 10.2 operating system or later versions. Using BootROM, a read-only memory (ROM) computer chip containing OpenFirmware, a graphical bootsplash is shown briefly on all compatible Macintosh computers as a grey Apple logo with a spinning cursor that appears during the startup sequence. The program is freely available as part of the Darwin operating system under the open source Apple Public Source License. BootX was superseded by another nearly identical bootloader named boot.efi and an Extensible Firmware Interface ROM on the release of the Intel-based Mac.

Older Macintoshes dating from 1983 until 1998 utilized a basic bootloader; the bootloader was solely a ROM chip varying in sizes up to 4 megabytes (MB), which contained both the computer code to boot the computer and to run the Mac OS operating system. This was known as the Macintosh Toolbox, or the Old World ROM, and differs greatly from design the modern Macintosh which generally use a hard drive of large capacity to store the operating system. This bootloader was used in all Macintosh computers until mid-1998.