In my house today, all of the computers are Macs. This is a long way away from three and a half year ago, when I said that Jaguar could not replace my PC. We're chugging along happily running Tiger, just as productive as before, and enjoying every bit of eye candy. But OS X isn't always cherry pie, it's got its own set of faults, and some can be downright annoying. UPDATED
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Member since:2005-07-06
That's quite an odd view. Just because she's used to something else it means she's wrong? No.
There are only certain apps I want to remain open when I close the last window. On Windows, those apps generally have an option to do so. This is how OS X should do it as well. Or even a system-wide preference for people like you would be fine.
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Adam, I wish you luck in the bitching that is to follow because you criticized OS X.
Member since:2005-07-06
There are only certain apps I want to remain open when I close the last window. On Windows, those apps generally have an option to do so. This is how OS X should do it as well. Or even a system-wide preference for people like you would be fine.
Yup, for those apps, hit cmd-w. Here's your option right there. However, you will note that OS X didn't also take away your ability to quit with cmd-q. Instead of arbitrarily defaulting to either hiding or quitting depending on the application (bad for consistency), you have to *choose* what you want to do. I'd rather choose than have the app as me "Are you sure you want to quit?" or "I have been minimised to the notification area. To quit, right click on my icon and select quit".
I prefer consistency. In OS X, I know that clicking on the "x" will *always* close but not quit the application. In windows, clicking the "x" on the contact list of an IM application will generally hide the application, but not quit it. However, clicking the "x" on a "normal" applicaiton will quit it.
However, the inconsistency doesn't really bother me in Windows. One learns after a while which application insists of going to the notification area and which one will actually quit. I am just pointing out that OS X was in fact more consistent in this regard.
Member since:2005-07-08
If I understand it correctly, there are two reasons why this behaviour could be called desirable:
1) Restarting the application is slow, so you might want to keep it around in memory. This is an entirely technical reason and could be called a compromise at best. Taking care of issues like this is what computers are made for.
2) Since the menubar is detached from the actual desktop objects on OS X, you might want to close the last object but still be able to access the menu. I'm not entirely sure why you might want to do that. I assume that the use case you mentioned (opening the next image) would be the most or only common one.
I personally stopped using File->Open menus long ago in favour of accessing objects directly from a file manager or search interface. I believe that's a superiour workflow, so that reason does not appear convincing to me either.
Generally I'm of the opinion that the user should never be exposed to implementation details, and applications are arguably an implementation detail which often means something different to a user than to a developer (the developer will think "process", while the common user will think "object on my desktop").
Member since:2005-07-06
2) Since the menubar is detached from the actual desktop objects on OS X, you might want to close the last object but still be able to access the menu. I'm not entirely sure why you might want to do that. I assume that the use case you mentioned (opening the next image) would be the most or only common one.
This is the big reason. If I'm working on a bunch of Excel files in Excel, I want to be able to keep accessing Excel whether or not I have any particular document open.
For better or worse, OS X is *not* a window-oriented or document-oriented OS. It's an application oriented OS. Personally, I like that, because it adds structure to what would otherwise be a massive explosion of windows, but YMMV. I know that in my case, I can have tons more stuff going in OS X, and with Expose and the Dock still find my way around, than I can in Windows.
Member since:2006-03-16
Member since:2005-07-06
I have to concur with those one. In fact, what pisses me off about OS X are the apps that close when the last document is closed. I can understand this for say Preferences, where keeping it around doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but lots of third-party document-oriented programs do this too.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Only because your girlfriend comes from sub-par GUI operating systems and expects an application to quit when you close "the last window" doesn't mean that the superior interface has to emulate the behaviour. I'd go CRAZY if Photoshop would be quit everytime I close the last open image only so I'd have to restart it for my next image... (?!)