The Macintosh was given the famous tagline "the computer for the rest of us"; a concept which ran system-wide, as the designers tried to make a truly special, unique, and most of all friendly computer. Instead of displaying a bare command line, the Mac's operating system used a graphical interface. (The merits of this choice are left to the readers to discuss among themselves.) All elements the user could interact with were depicted with icons mimicking their real-world counterparts.

This is all very well and good for when the computer is fully operational. But, as with anything, problems can occur, as Sod's Law will attest. The very same user the Mac was designed for would not feel quite as comfortable with a string of error messages akin to a UNIX kernel panic. The fledgling Mac needed something fitting with its ethos. This would be especially true of when the computer is booting: the user typically does not want to sift through lines and lines of text just to work out why their computer will not start up.

The solution to this problem was to create a small series of specific icons that could be displayed at boot time, to quickly convey what state the Mac was in. Susan Kare, who was responsible for virtually all icons used in the original Mac OS (some of which survive into today's Mac OS X), was entrusted with this task, creating small icons pixel-by-pixel using the Icon Editor, a program written by Andy Hertzfeld (who in turn based this on Fat Bits by Bill Atkinson). Icons would greet the Mac user every time they started their machine, a little friendly way of letting them know everything's working (or not).

The most famous of these is undoubtedly Happy Mac. A simple drawing of an original Macintosh 128k, with a happy smile on his face, he would come to be associated with the Mac platform itself as different from the rest. Seeing Happy Mac means that the computer has found the system software and is booting. Happy Mac will be displayed from the moment the Mac OS is found to the splash screen ("Welcome to Macintosh").

The slightly less well-loved icon is Sad Mac. Sad Mac appears if an error has occured when attempting to start the system, ranging from corrupt system software to a hardware fault, and will appear with a hexadecimal code which can be referenced to determine the fault. The third icon is a floppy disc, displaying a flashing question mark. This means that the Macintosh cannot find the system software. (This icon may appear, then be replaced by Happy Mac once the system has found it).

Happy Mac lasted from the very first Macs released in 1984, through to 2002. He even found himself colourised. Sadly, with the release of Mac OS X 10.2, "Jaguar", he finally vanished from our screens, replaced with a grey Apple logo. However, his memory lives on: he still appears when starting the Classic environment on a PowerPC-based Mac running Mac OS X; and should an iPod be unable to boot, it will display a Sad iPod, with the same crosses-for-eyes expression as our less optimistic friend.

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