Here’s an interesting startup behavior I’ve noticed on my June 2009 15” Macbook Pro (more model information available on request) since upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard):
1) Holding down the Option key on startup, as always, offers choices of bootable drives to boot from. What is new is that the icon representing the computer’s main internal hard drive is given the name “EFI Boot”, in a non-anti-aliased (pixilated) font. That is, until AFTER the process listed below is complete, upon which time its name and font anti-aliasing of that name are restored.
2) Holding down the D key upon startup under Mac OS X 10.5.7 and 10.5.8 (unknown for previous versions, as this MBP doesn’t run them) boots the computer into Hardware Diagnostic mode. But under Mac OS X 10.6, it spends a long time with a grey screen (while the case gets hot and the fans run as if there is high processor load) for several seconds, until dumping to a grey Apple logo and progress spinner, then starting up “normally” (but not as selected).
Interestingly, if I connect an external bootable drive with 10.5.8 on it, select that external boot drive from the Startup Disk preference pane in System Preferences, and then hold down the D key upon startup, it then properly enters Hardware Diagnostic mode.
So it works, it just takes a work-around. Noteably, however, this is a work-around which may or may not effectively function if the internal drive actually has a problem booting up (when the user would actually need it, among other utilities). Perhaps Apple should consider addressing it for 10.6.1, as I know they’re already circulating developer releases.
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