Apple menu
From Mac Guides
The Apple Menu lists frequently accessed files, applications, and functions in Mac OS X, for example, System Preferences, Sleep, Restart, and Logout.
It is customizable via the Appearance preference pane in System Preferences, where the number of recent documents and applications displayed can be specified.
History
The Apple menu was a feature of the original Macintosh Operating System and has lasted through every release of the Mac OS/System Software in the upper-left corner of the screen, usually the leftmost item on the menu bar. It was originally designed primarily as a way to access Desk Accessories such as the original Control Panel and Calculator. On machines using color screens, the Apple menu appeared to be a miniaturized rainbow Apple logo. On systems without color, it appeared as a silhouette.
Starting in System 7, other things were added to the menu, such as a "Shut Down" item and the ability to add one's own, non-Desk Accessory items. This was done by adding a file or an alias to the Apple Menu Items folder in the System Folder. In Mac OS 8, the menu icon was made to look somewhat 3-dimensional, with a shadow. This appearance persisted through Mac OS 9. Around the time of OS 9, one very popular trick with the Apple menu was to add an alias of one's hard drive to the Apple menu, and this allowed menu-based hierarchical navigation of the file system.
Apple officially removed all customizability of the Apple menu in Mac OS X, and also changed the color to what can best be described as "shiny blue" (or graphite, depending on Appearance settings). In fact, for a time during OS X's initial beta phase, the blue Apple was centered in the menu bar and was not a menu at all — purely decoration. It was back to a menu, though, by the time OS X 10.0 was released. As a result of the Apple Menu changes from OS 9 to OS X, several haxies appeared with the aim of restoring the original functionality. As a replacement for the ability to put one's hard drive in a menu for navigation, people started putting their hard drives, or, just as common, their Applications folder in the Dock. This provided some of the lost functionality, but at cost; the Dock menus at the time could only go 5 levels deep (which could be a real problem trying to get to something inside a user's Home folder), and submenus typically had to open to the left, due to a lack of screen space on the right.
In Tiger, Apple changed the look of the menu, making it look "flatter," though the shade of blue is not uniform, becoming substantially lighter, in keeping with the Apple Human Interface Guidelines which specify that one should consider a light source emanating from the upper left.
Since the introduction of Mac OS X, the contents of the Apple menu have remained almost entirely unchanged; it currently contains About This Mac, Software Update, "Mac OS X Software..." (a link to a web page at [apple.com]), System Preferences, Dock (which contains quick preference settings for the Dock), "Location" (which allows one to quickly switch network Locations), "Recent Items", Force Quit, Sleep, Restart..., Shut Down..., and "Log out <current user>..."
