[coopns]

Say I have Word, Safari and Dreamweaver open. I exit Word and the little triangle is still under Word in the dockbar.. Is that slowing the CPU down (at least noticable) and still in ram slowing things down?

[rickey939]

If the triangle is still showing up in Word, after you have closed (exited) the program, it didn't close properly. Are you just closing a window within Word?

[Tesseract]

Even if Word is still running, if you aren't using it, OS X should swap it back out to disk if necessary so memory consumption shouldn't be an issue.

[Randman]

Apple (Command) W closes an app's window. Apple Q quits the program.

[coopns]

I often just click the red x...top left, but as noted, the triangle is still there. I was just curious as to memory/cpu usage. (Still making my way over from Windows, but loving it)

[Boochie]

The behavior is different between Windows and OSX. In Windows Word, if you were to close your one and only document Word would exit outright. On the Mac, the application is still resident in memory. As another poster noted, the OS will swap to disk if necessary for your other running programs.

Unfortunately, this behavior isn't consistent across all apps in OSX. With some apps, closing the last window will exit the app, in others (like the Office suite) the app is still there but with no document loaded.

[Fusion]

coopns,

Explaining that you are coming from windows allows us to help you a little bit more.

In windows, the "close" button in the corner actually exits the application.

This is NOT the way it works in OS X. Using the red button in the upper left hand corner simply closes your windows. You can have multiple windows open of the same program, but only once instance of the actual app is running, unlike windows where each window is a separate instance. It's just a different way of thinking.

When the traingle is there, the app is still running. And yes, it does take up CPU and RAM. If you leave the app idle enough, OS X will shove it out off to disk and free up RAM, but it's still there. If you are working with a program that you keep open all the time and use all the time, then just closing a window when you are done with it and leave the app running is a good choice. However, if it is app that you actually want to "Exit", i.e. you won't need to use it again right away, you must use the "quit" command from the application menu or just "Apple+Q"

Apple+W and Apple+Q will become your friends.

[coopns]

Thanks, that clarifies it nicely.

[philm]

Originally Posted by Boochie

Unfortunately, this behavior isn't consistent across all apps in OSX. With some apps, closing the last window will exit the app, in others (like the Office suite) the app is still there but with no document loaded.

Bit unfair, this. There are very few programs in OSX in which exiting the last window will quit the application.

[Apfhex]

Originally Posted by philm

Bit unfair, this. There are very few programs in OSX in which exiting the last window will quit the application.

Except a number of them are made by Apple and even come with OS X. System Preferences, Dictionary, Calculator, iPhoto, etc. Of those only really iPhoto is annoying with that behavior, the only ones *kind of* make sense to be like that. I've seen a lot of crappy freeware that does this too.

[david_copperfield]

You need to select "quit" form the menu to exit the program.

Normally, when you have exited a program, it is still in memory, but will be replaced by other programs when needed.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally Posted by Apfhex

Except a number of them are made by Apple and even come with OS X. System Preferences, Dictionary, Calculator, iPhoto, etc. Of those only really iPhoto is annoying with that behavior, the only ones *kind of* make sense to be like that. I've seen a lot of crappy freeware that does this too.

The Aqua Human Interface Guidelines state that all applications that are not document-based (i.e. those without a file menu with new, open, close and save commands) should quit after the last window has been closed. This means that Calculator, Preferences, Dictionary and also iPhoto respect these guidelines.

There is one exception to this rule, though: If the application continues to do something useful after the last window has been closed, it should not quit. That's why iTunes behaves differently than iPhoto - even when all windows are closed, iTunes can still play music, so it does something useful and does not quit.

[Fusion]

Thanks for clarifying that david, I'm not sure he got it yet.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Pardon my french but the person who decided the Aqua HIG rules is a moronic wank. Why? Because he has decided to sacrifice consistency for arbitrary rules. An app is an app. Closing its window should never quit the app. Quitting the app should quit the app.

In the menu it says: Command-W = Close window, and yet it quits the app. E.g. System Preferences. SysPrefs also have a Command-Q = Quit.

Idiots.

Either have:

** only Command-Q and no way of closing the window - i.e. no traffic lights -
(thus quitting the app)
**and no Command-W in a menu

*or*

**Both Cmd-Q and Cmd-W
**and when clicking the red light in the window it just closes the window and doesn't quit the app.

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

cheers

W-Y

[tooki]

See, in Mac OS 9, there was a clear distinction: applications didn't quit when you closed the last window, while Desk Accessories (e.g. Calculator) quit when you closed its last window (since most desk accessories only had one window, this meant that closing its window quit it). In Mac OS X, everything that was once a Desk Accessory is now an application (insofar as that it's not given a unique file type), but they behave like desk accessories.

I dunno, I think it's OK, since it's pretty clear that for the most part, document-centric apps tend to not quit upon closing the last window, while "utility" apps (i.e. the window IS the only thing you manipulate) do.

tooki

[CharlesS]

I dunno, it's not really that much different than OS 9 when you think about it.

Look at the given examples - System Preferences, Dictionary, Calculator, iPhoto... with the exception of iPhoto, these are all things that would have been desk accessories in the Apple Menu under OS 9. And as we remember, most of the DAs used to quit when you closed their last open window, since they typically had no menu bar. Interestingly enough, iPhoto, the exception to this, is the one that Apfhex found annoying. Hmm...

edit: d'oh! Beaten by tooki.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Yeah when there is a distinction between an app and a DA, a different behavior is ok. However when an app is clearly an app, with a Cmd-W and Cmd-Q commands then it is not ok. Cmd-Q and Cmd-W do not do the same thing, I hope we can agree on this. When they do they add inconsistency. In a UI that is bad IMHO.

Sigh, this isn't the worst inconsistency in OS X though and it's not making me lose sleep, but it is an inconsistency and it is annoying that Apple disregards attention to detail as they do in the UI.

Whatever, I don't expect this to be changed and I've said my piece. The Apple UI QA and consistency department (if it even exists) is surely run by monkeys.

cheers

W-Y

[tooki]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

edit: d'oh! Beaten by tooki.

Naw, not beaten! Just a simple case of GMTA!

tooki

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by tooki

Naw, not beaten! Just a simple case of GMTA!

tooki

Nice. Complement another while complementing one self. Got to remember that one!

cheers

W-Y

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Yeah when there is a distinction between an app and a DA, a different behavior is ok. However when an app is clearly an app, with a Cmd-W and Cmd-Q commands then it is not ok. Cmd-Q and Cmd-W do not do the same thing, I hope we can agree on this. When they do they add inconsistency. In a UI that is bad IMHO.

Thing is, in System 7.0 and later, what really was the distinction between an app and a DA?