Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 11.2 shows the Activity Monitor window. The bulk of the window is taken up by a list of running pro-
grams, which Activity Monitor calls processes. A process is a running instance of an executable program. All
the applications you have running are processes, but so are all the behind- the-scenes programs that MacBook
Air and your applications require to function properly.
11.2 You can use Activity Monitor to keep an eye on MacBook Air's CPU usage.
In Activity Monitor, processes appear alphabetically by name, but you can change that order by clicking any column
header. For example, to sort the processes by CPU usage, click the CPU column header. This gives you an ascending
sort; click the header again to get a more useful descending sort.
By default, Activity Monitor shows the processes associated with your user account: the applications you've
launched, your user account's login items, and other programs that MacBook Air started when you logged in.
However, this is by no means a complete list of the running processes. You can use the Show list to display a
different set of processes. Here are the most important items in the Show list:
All Processes. Displays a complete list of all the running processes.
All Processes, Hierarchically. Displays a complete list of all the running processes, as well as the subpro-
cesses that each one has started. This is useful if you suspect (or want to find out if) a particular application is
spawning lots of subapplications that are eating up CPU time.
My Processes. Displays the list of processes that are running under your username, as shown earlier in Fig-
ure 11.2.
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