Mac OS® X Leopard™ Bible

Glossary

absolute pathname

A pathname that specifies the exact location of a single directory. An absolute pathname begins at the root directory, a slash (/), and traverses through the Unix file system, ending at the desired directory or file, and naming each directory that is passed through. Each directory that is passed through is named and separated by a slash. /Users/warren/Documents is the absolute pathname of my Documents folder. This contrasts to the relative pathname.

active application

The application visible in the foreground. If iTunes is the active application, its name is visible in bold in the menu bar, directly to the right of the Apple menu.

admin

See administrator account..

administrator account

Admin is one type of Mac OS X user account in which the user has access to system–wide resources, including abilities to modify the System Preferences, create and edit other user accounts, and install applications. When OS X is initially set up, the first user created is an admin.

adopted ownership

When a Mac OS X user account is deleted, its contents can be transferred to an existing admin account. The admin user is said to be adopting ownership of the previous user's files.

Advanced Memory Management

Automatically and dynamically assigns and handles the allocation of both physical RAM and virtual memory to applications and processes as needed.

AirPort

Apple's name for its implementation of the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless networking. This includes AirPort (802.11b) at speeds of ...