The Process Manager provides the cooperative multitasking environment on versions of the Mac OS that preceded Mac OS X. The Process Manager controls access to shared resources and manages the scheduling and execution of applications. The Finder uses the Process Manager to launch an application when the user opens either the application or a document created by the application.
You can use the Process Manager to control the execution of processes and to get information about processes, including your own. You can use the Process Manager routines to
control the execution of your application
get information about processes
launch other applications