The elusive power button
Written by: Scott Haneda on Sunday January 06th 2008, 12:50 pm
Filed under: Hardware
Since the introduction of Macintosh hardware, there have been several ways to turn your computer on and off. In the old days there were real mechanical switches. Today’s modern hardware has illuminated, touch-sensitive power buttons that at times can confuse new users. Especially those coming from a non-Macintosh environment.
The easy part… turning your computer on.
If everything is hooked up correct, press the power button once. You will hear what is collectively known as the “startup bong” or “startup tone”. While this button has been placed in some less than ideal locations on certain Macintosh models, most people figure out how to turn on their computer with little hassle.
The harder part…turning off your computer.
A logical person would think pressing the power button once more would turn the computer off. This is not always the case. There are two things this button can do. First is turn off your computer, the other is restart it. You can further bypass the button entirely and use your mouse to tell the computer to restart, shut down, or even sleep.
Let’s go through all the options.
Software based restart, shut down, and sleep.
If you move your mouse to the upper left corner of the screen to the apple logo, click and hold, or click once and release, you will see three options. Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down. Selecting “sleep” will put your computer to sleep.
Sleep means your computer is on, but in a very low power mode. Your hard drives will “spin down”, meaning they are drawing very little power. Your open applications and unsaved data will be relatively safe, waiting for your return. Depending on your model and configuration, you wake your computer my moving the mouse, clicking the mouse, pressing a keystroke, or pressing the power button.
You can always tell if your computer is asleep, as the power button will have a gentle pulsing light glow to it.
Shut down will remove power to your computer. You can safely chose this option at any point in time. You need not worry about unsaved data, as you will be prompted to save your data in any open applications.
Restart is just like shut down, with the exception that the computer will automatically boot back up again. Restart will run through all the same steps that shut down does, with the only difference being the computer comes back to a clean state. This can be a great first troubleshooting step if something is misbehaving.
Hardware based power control
You can also control these options with the actual power button. Pressing it once will pop up a dialogue on your screen where you can select to restart, sleep, shutdown, or cancel the operation. These methods will behave in the exact same ways as mentioned above.
Your power button can do one thing you can not do any other way. The power button, when held down for more than five seconds, is a somewhat more graceful method of yanking the power cord out of the back of your computer.
As much as we would like to think computers never get stuck, at times, they can get cranky. Poorly written software can take your computer down, lock it up to the point where you can not do anything. At other times, failing hardware inside your computer can wreak havoc on its performance.
About the last thing you want to do is abruptly rip the power chord out of your computer. Simply hold the power button down for a few seconds, and it will shut your computer down. Sounds harsh, but at times, it can be necessary.
I would say more than 3/4 of the tech support calls I take the customer states they pulled the power plug. Given this, I have to assume not too many new users know about holding the power button for a few seconds.
At any rate, it sure beats crawling around under your desk, or digging around the back of your computer.
A final note, if you are a laptop user. Simply closing the display of your laptop will drop it into sleep mode. Laptops take special efforts to manage power as efficiently as possible, so there are a few different types of sleep your laptop can go into. At this time, just know, it is more than safe to simply close the lid on your laptop.
I’ve lost my Mac start-up tone and zapping the PRAM doesn’t work. Suggestions?
Comment by Mike 01.07.08 @ 9:50 am@Mike
Interesting, If you have external speakers, try unplugging those. I would like to rule out it being an issue with your computer, or your speakers.
I assume your computer can make other sounds?
You did not happen to install some 3rd party tool to change the start up tone volume level?
Comment by hexley 01.07.08 @ 9:58 amNope, everything else works fine and there is no 3rd-party stuff involved. This is a known Mac problem (others have it and posted numerous suggestions on other help sites, but none of the proposed fixes worked for me. I’m just amazed that Apple is simply ignoring this problem!! One good thing, however, is that it does not appear to have any adverse effect on anything else. Mike
Comment by Mike 01.07.08 @ 12:27 pmIf you have a spare moment, I would love a link to some data on others having this issue so I can research it further.
Comment by hexley 01.07.08 @ 7:16 pmSorry, but the other people with this problem (IDs only) were on another help forum several months ago, so I really have no way to direct you to those; I wish I could. /Mike
Comment by Mike 01.08.08 @ 1:27 pmMay I suggest a clarification. When you “… move your mouse to the upper left corner…” you should be aiming for the Apple logo. If I was a new user, I might interpret the instructions to mean anywhere in the vicinity of the upper left corner. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the OS X Help, and learning a few tips. Hope you don’t mind the occasional suggestion.
Thank for putting this together. If I’ve posted this in the wrong area, please let me know.
Seth
Comment by Seth 02.02.08 @ 9:10 am@ Seth
Thanks for the comment, we appreciate the feedback, you suggestion is a good one, and we will make a small editing change.
Ah, this is good to know!!! As a Windows switcher I have pulled the plug out from behind my iMac when it froze. I had no clue what to do since the Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn’t work on Mac. So I unplugged it. (It’s using the Second Life software that freezes it. I will most likely be uninstalling it.)
A light press of the power button puts it to sleep. I like that feature. Now I know to hold it longer to shut it down.
Also, I was using Word from MacOffice2004 and it froze in the middle of selecting a font. I waited and waited to no avail. So I experimented and held down the ESC key to see what would happen. It terminated Word. I’m hoping that was the correct thing to do. I opened Word back up and everything went smoothly after that.
Comment by Donna 02.08.08 @ 1:06 pmYou might mention that holding Command-Ctrl-and hitting the power button will perform the same function as Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC.
Comment by Josh 02.08.08 @ 3:17 pm@Josh
I have tried your method on 2 Macs that I have access to now. All it does for me is put the machine to sleep. I have found that some of these methods only work on specific hardware. This is why we try to keep the tutorials focused on things that work across the board.
There was a time many years ago where you could use your keyboard to start up your computer, and you could hit a 4 key combo and force an immediate reboot.
Those days are gone with USB taking over. Thanks for posting your comment, it could be handy for those who have the correct hardware combination.
Comment by Scott Haneda 02.08.08 @ 4:30 pm@Scott, @Josh:
Command-Control-Eject works across the board as a shortcut to restart. Control-Eject will bring up the Shut Down menu, and Control-Option-Command-Eject will Shut Down. If your keyboard doesn’t have Eject, F12 will work.
One annoying thing with leopard I’ve found is that if you are running time machine and put it in “sleep” that time machine will wake up mac…is there a fix for this~I’ve not found any options other than shutting off time machine before sleep mode…then remembering to turn it back on.
Comment by JimB 02.14.08 @ 2:30 pm@JimB, power management is very strange on every Apple product out there. I have a laptop, and a desktop, and both behave different in how they sleep and what can wake them up.
I personally have not had Time Machine wake a machine up, and had to take steps to keep the machine awake at times to get a full backup.
I would suggest you try telling your machine to “Put the hard drive to sleep when possible” in the Energy Saver prefs. Generally, a spun down drive is pretty hard to have spun back up again unless you wake the machine up.
Rather than shutting off time machine, which you may forget to turn back on, you could unmount your second backup drive, that would make time machine ignore it as well.
Comment by Scott Haneda 02.15.08 @ 6:11 amMike:
I’ve noticed on my eMac (3rd Rev.) that if I have the volume all the way down in the OS, then reboot, I won’t have a startup “bong” but if I have the volume at any setting above zero I will have the startup sound. I’m not sure if this applies in your situation but I just thought it was worth mentioning.
Comment by Morgan 02.25.08 @ 4:50 pmI’ve been wondering whether I should be turning my iMac (desktop) off when I’m done with it or putting it to sleep? The manual says to leave it in sleep if using it every few days (which I use almost daily since it wakes up so quickly) but I’m just wondering if that’s ok for the machine?
Comment by akc 03.20.08 @ 2:31 pm@akc, there are two schools of thought on this one. I generally leave my machine on all the time, and just let it sleep.
OS X has a few maintenance routines that run on a schedule. If you always shut your machine down, those may not get a chance to run.
On the other hand, sometimes, a clean restart will make your computer work better, as over time it can have applications clog up memory and do other bad things.
In general, it is up to you, you are not going to hurt anything by leaving it running, or shutting it down.
Comment by Scott Haneda 03.20.08 @ 5:01 pm
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