Programs Stay Open, Even After You X Them Out?

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Vetteman

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I'm a new Mac user and I'm in heaven.

The only problem I have with mac's is the way that programs stay open even after you x them out.

The only way to fully close a program is to go to ex: Safari- Quit Safari or Command Q. Either way this requires an extra step compared to simply clicking on the red close button. Plus, it makes it harder to work with one hand. Its so much less efficient.

Why do they do this??!!! :(

Is there a 3rd party program which rectifies this? I'm not a programmer, but this shouldn't be too hard to do. Come on UNIX-heads!!!!
 
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dstyrk

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Vetteman said:
I'm a new Mac user and I'm in heaven.

The only problem I have with mac's is the way that programs stay open even after you x them out.

The only way to fully close a program is to go to ex: Safari- Quit Safari or Command Q. Either way this requires an extra step compared to simply clicking on the red close button. Plus, it makes it harder to work with one hand. Its so much less efficient.

Why do they do this??!!! :(

Is there a 3rd party program which rectifies this? I'm not a programmer, but this shouldn't be too hard to do. Come on UNIX-heads!!!!


Just click and hold on it's icon in the dock. Then choose quit. It's just as fast as clicking on the "x" or the red dot.
 
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sonofapplepm

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You can always just put your arrow on the app in the dock and click and hold. If you do this it will give you the option to quit at the app itself. I hope this is what you were hoping for!!!

Josh

Sorry for answering with the same answer. Someone answered while i was typing the reply.
 
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Plus, it makes it harder to work with one hand. Its so much less efficient.

This really bothered me at first as well, but after a while you start learning the keyboard shortcuts and for me it's really helped speed up my work on the computer...

I'd try to live with command+q - after a while it becomes second nature!

Or just leave the apps open? Most cpu-hogging applications close on the x anyway (iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband...) and those that don't are used fairly often (Safari, Mail, iTunes...)
 

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I'm addicted to this one shortcut that I use, but I can't remember where I heard it from. It's kind of like combining two shortcuts into one. Let's say you have a whole bunch of apps open, and you want to shutdown selected particular apps. First I use "Command + Tab", which bring up the current apps running. While still holding down the "Commend Key", press the "Tab Key" to select the desired app to close. Once, you have the app selected, while still holding down the "Command Key", press "Q" to quit out of the app.
 
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i love command+q
 
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The idea is this: why should you have to reload the entire application from disk just because you closed the last window?

On Windows, if I'm working on a document (in most Windows applications) and I close it, the program goes *poof.* When I open a new document, I have to wait for the whole application to load again.

Linux is worse: sometimes apps behave the Mac way, sometimes they behave the Windows way.

Is one better than the other? Nope. Just different.
 
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I like it the way it is personally. Being able to completely get rid of the iTunes and Mail interfaces is something I always use, in Windows you would have to minimise them taking up space in the task bar. It's something you'll definitely get used to at least, if you keep the single button mouse you'll always have one hand over the keyboard so the command + Q isn't that hard.
 
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i have no clue what that is, but i tried it in Terminal with safari open and it replied "no such pid". And yeah, i just switched and found that quite irritating the first day, but then i got used to it and started to like it because its faster reopening apps because it keeps the program open, just closes the application windows.
 
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Thud

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technologist said:
The idea is this: why should you have to reload the entire application from disk just because you closed the last window?

Why should the program stay running after you close the last window? When you close the last window, doesn't that mean you're done?

On Windows, if I'm working on a document (in most Windows applications) and I close it, the program goes *poof.* When I open a new document, I have to wait for the whole application to load again.

It takes an extra couple of seconds to completely exit a program (if you use the mouse method) whereas it takes about 0.5 seconds to reload the entire application from disk. On my computer at least.


Linux is worse: sometimes apps behave the Mac way, sometimes they behave the Windows way.

Heck, on a Mac, sometimes apps behave the Mac way and sometimes they don't.
 
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shaun89 said:
i have no clue what that is, but i tried it in Terminal with safari open and it replied "no such pid". And yeah, i just switched and found that quite irritating the first day, but then i got used to it and started to like it because its faster reopening apps because it keeps the program open, just closes the application windows.

That was just a guess at the name of the application. Perhaps a ps -Al will give you a complete list of processes and that the name is obvious.
 
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Sometimes Firefox doesn't completely close and remains hanging around and I just kill it in the Task Manager on Windows. I prefer a process to go away when I kill it. If I want to keep it around, then I'll keep it around. It's a real pain doing development where you have to start and stop a program all the time to have to kill the process so that you can try running a new version of your software.
 
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i personally love the fact that nothing closes when you just close the window....when im doing work one hand stays on the mouse...the other hand stays on the command w/q/tab keys....i like being able to x out of (or command + w) every window and have the program still running....when i want to exit the application....i just quickly hit command + q and its gone....it seriously takes about an eighth of a second to close out an application once you get used to it....you have to remember your on a different os, and i think this one is 100% better than others
 
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I find the Mac efficient enough that I can keep stuff running in the background without any noticeable performance penalties. This makes the whole thing nice and quick to use. Photoshop, for example, takes a while to load on my machine, so having it open already makes sense.

If you tried this on a Windows machine, it would behave like a dog in no time, so it makes sense only to have this feature on a real computer :)

I questioned the Mac way at first, now I think it's the best way of doing it, given the computer is up to the job.
 
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I don't use Photoshop but my main applications are Tarantella, email, Firefox, command shell and sometimes Microsoft Office. Most applications come up in about a second (Office is a slug, Thunderbird takes a few seconds).

Note that I use custom versions of Firefox and Thunderbird that are a lot faster than the regular versions. How long does IE or Safari take to start up on the Mac? If it takes a second or less, what's the problem with just starting them up again?
 
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Thud

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I just don't like the idea of applications running and using up memory when they're not being used.... so I always quit an app completely on my mac after I'm done with it.

Firefox in particular has a memory leak and it'll use up more and more memory over time just by sitting there.

Since the apps don't require much if any CPU time when they are in the background/minimized, the system will still run pretty quick as long as there's still enough free memory available to other programs.

This holds true for both OSX and Windows... there's really no difference in the "efficiency" between those two OS's when it comes to having idle applications in the background. The only thing that matters is the memory footprint of the apps that you have open.

If you leave apps open like that on a base mac with 256MB, it will absolutely KILL your system performance.
 
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On Windows, I don't run with a page file so if the system's out of physical memory, something will die. When I do performance testing,
I need to get the system as quiet as possible as applications or the OS
coming in a flushing the cache or causing too many context switches
can affect results. So I typically go into the Task Manager and shoot
everything that isn't need to run the test. I assume that I will do
the same with OSX.

Firefox running in the background does use up some CPU time. When you run your cursor over the window in the background, quite a bit of math takes place.

I don't think that I'm seeing your memory leak on Firefox but lots of people use Firefox in different ways and I may not be touching the code that's causing the leak.
 
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Thud said:
I just don't like the idea of applications running and using up memory when they're not being used.... so I always quit an app completely on my mac after I'm done with it.

Firefox in particular has a memory leak and it'll use up more and more memory over time just by sitting there.

Since the apps don't require much if any CPU time when they are in the background/minimized, the system will still run pretty quick as long as there's still enough free memory available to other programs.

This holds true for both OSX and Windows... there's really no difference in the "efficiency" between those two OS's when it comes to having idle applications in the background. The only thing that matters is the memory footprint of the apps that you have open.

If you leave apps open like that on a base mac with 256MB, it will absolutely KILL your system performance.

More generally still...if you have a base mac with 256MB, your Mac will be memory-starved at bootup. Your system performance will be DOA.

On the other hand, assuming you have enough memory to start with, leaving an app open will result in only a minor decrease. If an active app needs more memory, the inactive app will be paged out. That pageout will account for a one-time hit; but after that program's out, it won't have any effect on performance until it's made active again.

Having multiple apps open with limited memory only hurts when you're repeatedly switching between them, triggereing repeated pageins/outs.
 

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