Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Bible

Glossary

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)

A standard for creating digital music files, it is the default format for iTunes music and is higher in quality than the more commonly used MP3 format.

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/galen/Documents is the absolute pathname of the user Galen's Documents folder. Compare to relative path.

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

ActiveSync

Microsoft's technology to keep e-mail, contacts, and calendars continuously synchronized between its Exchange servers and computers by using its Outlook and Entourage applications. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (as well as the iPhone OS) includes ActiveSync, allowing Apple's Mail, iCal, and Address Book to synchronize automatically to Exchange servers as well.

adapter

A device that lets devices with different connector standards connect to each other.

admin

See administrator account.

administrator account

This type of Mac OS X user account gives the user access to system-wide ...