Basic Computer Terminology- M
Macintosh, Mac: A personal computer from Apple Computers. From McIntosh, a popular type of apple, Jef Raskin, a computer scientist, is
credited with this naming.
Mac OS: The operating system used in a Macintosh computer. From "Mac", a shortened form of Macintosh and a commonly used name for the
Macintosh computer system (see elsewhere on this page), and "OS", the common abbreviation for "operating system".
Memoization: The process of automatically modifying functions to include caching behavior. Coined by Donald Michie in his 1968 paper Memo Functions and Machine Learning. Macintosh, the brand name of a family of personal computers (hardware) and an operating system (software) from Apple, introduced in 1984.
Megabytes (Mb): Mega = million so Mb is 1,000,000 bytes. It's enough information for the computer to store one character (e.g. "h"), so 1mb text file = 1,000,000 keystrokes in that file. Just to confound the masses, although RAM and Disk Space do something completely different we measure both in megabytes. This leads to confusion.
MegaHertz (Mhz): A hertz is an electronics term. 1 hz = one cycle (or wavelength) per second. 1 megahertz = 1,000,000 cycles per second. In computer jargon, Mhz measures how fast your CPU chip runs. Although it's
more important to know the chip than the speed, if you're comparing the same kind of CPU chip then a higher / faster CPU speed (measured in MHz) is better than a slower speed.
Menu: Displays a list of commands, some with images next to them.
Modifier Keys: Keys that change the meaning of what you type.
Measurements (summary):
A bit = one binary digit (1 or 0)
"bit" is derived from the contraction b'it (binary digit) - 8 bits = one byte
1024 bytes = one kilobyte
K = kilobyte
Kb = kilobit
MB = megabyte
Mb = megabit
MB/s = megabytes per second
Mb/s = megabits per second
bps = bits per second
i.e., 155 Mb/s = 19.38 MB/s
Memory: The temporary holding area where data is stored while it is being used or changed; the amount of RAM a computer has installed.
Menu bar: The horizontal bar across the top of the Mac¹s screen that lists the menus.
Multi finder: A component of System 6 that allows the Mac to multi task.
Multi tasking: Running more than one application in memory at the same time.
Mouse: Pointing device that allows you to tell the computer what to do.
Mozilla: A web browser and successor to Netscape Communicator.
When Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla). When Netscape's Navigator source code was made open source, Mozilla was the internal name for the open source version.
