This document is based on Chapter 4 of Macworld Mac & Power Mac SECRETS, 3rd Edition, by Macworld columnists David Pogue and Joseph Schorr. It includes descriptions, and secrets, of the hundreds of control panels and extensions in System 7 through System 7.5.3.

You can read it on the screen (use the scroll bar below, or the Contents menu above, to change “pages”). Or you can print the whole thing out (but it’s 65 pages!).

Actually, our trying to write this chapter was something of an exercise in futility. Apple may churn out Macintosh models faster than anyone can track, but that’s nothing compared to the control panels and extensions they write! All we can hope to accomplish is to review what’s in the typical System Folder at the time of this writing.

Even that exercise, however, is enlightening. The modern-day System Folder is a mishmash of added-on features, bug fixes, and system updates. Patches patch patches; new extensions swallow functions previously performed by others. Some control panels are actually extensions — that is, they contain program code that runs when you turn on the Mac — that have a front end for humans. And some extensions (or at least some icons in the Extensions folder) aren’t actually extensions at all. It’s about time somebody tried to make sense of it all.

Incidentally, while we became exhausted preparing this list, we have a sinking feeling the list isn’t exhaustive. There’s probably some patch or extension floating around that we haven’t snagged, tagged, and cataloged. If so, we hope you’ll let us know by e-mail (Pogue@aol.com and Schorr@aol.com; we’ll continue to expand the chapter in subsequent printings of the book. 

If you’ve already purchased the book, you can find our free update documents — each time the book gets reprinted (every few months) — in the Product Forum of Macworld Online (keyword: Macworld on America Online) and on the Web at http://www.idgbooks.com.


                                                                                              — the authors