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Also, the progress bar that they used to have for starting up OSX (removed in Leopard I think?) had no actual relation to anything the machine was doing, it was just timed to move across at a particular rate based on the average startup speed of your computer.

http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details#waiting...

A completely fake progress bar--it was just something for you to look at.

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That progress bar may not be tied to actual events, but it does give you a reasonably accurate view of the time remaining until the login window will appear-- probably more accurate than if the programmer guesses how much each startup phase is worth and the bar ends up moving erratically.

Ehm, I beg to differ. Booting off a regular drive (non-SSD) can produce pretty variable times, depending on if you just installed something, fragmented the drive with some large files, etc. I remember many startups on my old PowerBook G4 running Tiger where the bar would reach the end and keep pulsing for another twenty seconds, much to my confusion/amusement.

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