Starting up Mathematica on a Macintosh Starting up Mathematica on a Macintosh 
to start it up.
The
Macintosh doesn't actually run Mathematica per se - it runs a "front
end" program that communicates with a superfast computer in the Mathematics
Computing Lab located in 102 McGregory Hall. The Macintosh only has to
process the displays and the user interface, so even if it's a slow machine
the computation will be quite fast. Graphics-intensive tasks will be slow
on these machines,
though.
In making a connection to the computers in McGregory Hall, Mathematica may at first be somewhat slow and display various messages. Don't worry about either of these issues; they will be sorted out when the connection is fully established.
http://math.colgate.edu/mathlab/howtoloadmax.html