What would happen if you simultaneously opened every single app on your Mac at once? Would it crash? Would it hang? Would it explode?
Someone named jeffseb tried it on a Macbook Pro that had a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 3gb of DDR2 SDRAM by doing a Command-A on his Applications folder. It took 12 whole minutes (it took a bit long because some of the apps were trying to update from the web on startup), but the Macbook Pro managed it, and this it what it looked like:

I think of my IBM Thinkpad on Windows XP and the excruciating, molasses-slow agony it goes through just opening two apps. If you want a high-res version so you can peruse the screen in detail, click here. (Check out how many yellow triangles there are in the dock!)




