 Inside your System Folder (the one with the smiley Mac logo) is a folder called  extensions.Not suprisingly this is where extensions live and as you will find, Multiply! Have a look, go on. Extensions are little pieces of information that the system loads into its memory at startup. They provide your system with the ability to do things other than opening and closing windows, such as printing, networking, even accessing the CD drive on your Mac. I'll use their names only here so you can find them easily if you set the window view to "By Name". Apple Guide This is used by your Mac to help you explain things to you when you need help, usually indicated by a little Question Mark button in some applications. If you use Apple Guide make sure you leave this one in the Extensions folder. About Apple Guide This is used to tell you how to use Apple Guide. If you use Apple Guide you might like to leave this one in the Extensions folder. Apple CD-ROM This is used by your Mac to talk to the CD drive and tells in how to mount Apple format CD's. If you have a CD Drive on/in your Mac, leave it be. AppleScript AppleScript is a scripting language to let you control your mac by a basic form of programming. Its not that hard to learn and can automate all sort of things on your Mac. It's also used by the AppleGuide so if you use A.G. keep it. AppleShare This allows your computer to talk to another computer on an AppleTalk network. If you don't have a network (2 or more Macs connected) then you don't need it. A/ROSE Only needed if your computer has an additional Ethernet NuBus card installed. Assistant Toolbox If you use a PowerBook, this extension allows your Mac to hold print jobs until you get back to a printer. It's also used to keep your RAM Disk when you shut down. CapsLock Used by PowerBooks so you can tell if the Caps Lock key is on (the buttons don't stay down like with regular keyboards) Clipping Extension Lets you create clipping files and Drag & Drop data between applications i.e. you can select some text from one document and drag it into another (if the applications support Drag & Drop) Color Picker Extends the colour wheel that you use to choose colours. This wheel is often used in graphics applications such as Photshop, or Colour It. You should keep this one. ColorSync Used by QuickDraw GX. Keep it if you use any QuickDraw GX things. If your not sure, keep it. EM Extension This little doodad is for the Extensions Manager. What it's there for is so that when you start up your Mac you can interup the startup sequence to change extension sets by pressing [space]. Not essential, but without it the Extensions Manager won't interupt at startup which kinda defeats the point in having the EM installed. EtherTalk Phase 2 Used by Mr or Mrs Mac to talk to Ethernet cards. No network? Junk it. EtherTalk Prep Another EtherTalk network file. See above. Find File Extension Starts up Apples Find File programme. If you need to find things, keep it. Finder Help This is where the finder gets its shortcuts from. I think Balloon Help also uses this, so if you use either of these features, keep it. Finder Scripting Extension This is what lets you Drag-And-Drop things which I guess is one of the reasons Macs are... well Macs. It is also used by AppleScript to control things you might want to do in the Finder. File Sharing When/if you set up two or more Macs to make a network, this extension is what lets you access files on another machine. No network? Bin it. Foreign File Access This one lets your Mac read CD's in all sorts of wonderful formats such as High Sierra (which I think is a PC format [ don't quote me]) and others such as Audio CD's. If you have a CD-ROM drive (sob, sob), keep it. Macintosh Guide Used by Apple Guide to guide you around the System. If you use Apple Guide, keep it. Print Monitor A little Application which for some reason must live in the Extensions Folder if you use Background Printing. Lets you see what is in the print queue. QuickTime This is used by your Mac to access Quicktime compatible files such as movies, sounds etc. The applications used to run/view these files use this extension, so to harness Mac Multimedia, keep it. QuickTime PowerPlug Used by above to create Power PC native compression etc. Scripting Additions (folder) Used by AppleScript to do particular things. If you use AppleScript, keep it. |
On to Control Panels