Ever wonder why those things you put into /System/Library/StartupItems and /Library/StartupItems start automatically? SystemStarter. System starter automatically starts up items stored in /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems. As Mac OS X continues to transition much of the previous functionality of other facilities such as the cron daemon into launchd, development has also reduced the reliance on SystemStarter since Mac OS X 10.3. However, many third-party applications do still use StartupItems, Apple development prefers the launchd facility and will continue to rely more heavily on it in 10.6 and beyond.
