Is it possible to disable the auto quit of preview and other apps?

But you see, long time Mac users haven't come from Windows. We have been using apps where you actually launch and quit them yourself for up to oh, about 27 years.

Even if you have only been using it since OS X, that's 12 years of reinforced behaviour.

It's like driving a car. You start it yourself. You turn it off yourself.

Apple should at least have a system wide preference before it screws with decades of user experiences.

If you had an app open for the explicit purpose of using its GUI to open files, this removes that functionality.

And, the bad bart of it is that the app is still running, (check the Activity Monitor). You're simply prevented from using the GUI if the app has no documents and you've moved another app frontmost.

So Shootist, Apple's GUI has this "functionality" people sometimes use. The Open window lists your recently accessed folders and even has a search function in it. You can command tab to a running app and actually (god forbid) use that functionality to open files in recently used folders. That's a great reason to use an app open and an app like TextEdit or Preview use 9 MB when open with no docs.

9 MB. That's it under Snow Leopard.

15.4 MB in Lion.

And when you click on the Finder when TextEdit has no docs open, it appears the app quits, but it is still running and it STILL takes up 15.4 MB. No memory is being saved. If any memory is saved at all, only up to 300 K is saved. That's the most I've seen in my tests in the differenve between TextEdit running in Lion with no docs and clicking in the Finder to fake quit TextEdit.

It's not even a real quit where your Mac gets all the memory back. It's still being used.

So, Lion keeps the app running in the process monitor but disables the GUI, all so that it will "launch faster" the next time you launch it. And you still have to locate and double click on the app and wait a few bounces before the app launches. This is another delay I don't want to deal with. I'm a big boy. I'm all grown up now. I know how to quit an app. It's called command Q and it gives me all the app's 15 MB back.

See, I didn't tell the Mac I didn't want to use the app's GUI any more and that Apple should disable it but keep the app running.

This issue would be EASILY solved with a system level preference to have apps auto quit upon closing the last doc and bringing another app front most, or not to fake quit the app.

It's not a quit. It's a fake quit. The only thing disabled is the GUI. The memory the app uses is still used.

If Apple offered an OPTION as to whether people wanted to use this option in System Prefs, this wouldn't be an issue, because I could turn it OFF and you could turn it ON.

This is not that hard to do correctly and keep both sides happy. It's kind of very NON Apple that they don't seem to care about preferences of the their own long term customers who actually used the OS the way they fostered over the past two plus dacades.

Look, you decided that you wanted to start up the app yourself, didn't you? You can also make the decision to stop it yourself, just like how you put your computer to sleep and just like you tell your computer to shut down or restart.

But at least give the users who had the previous preference a choice in a system preference.

Poorly designed features are worse than bugs in that they were explicitly introduced into the product on purpose in their defective state.

That means that people need to gripe more then normal to get the defective feature fixed.

Because I am a registered developer and I read the docs. Also, if it were not supported, then every app that is compiled for Lion would automaticaly quit when the last doc is closed and the app becomes sonething other than the frontmost app.

Automatic and Sudden Termination are documented in the NSProcessInfo_Class.pdf document and control is given to the developer.

However, it appears that the system overrides the developer settings for certain apps (TextEdit and Preview, I believe) and no matter what you've set in the application's preference pList or in the code of the application, the system sets these on, overriding the user or developer's control.

Apple's gone overboard to make this much more difficult than one would expect.

If I have time tonight, I'm going to take the TextEdit source, change some application identifiers and see if I can get the build to obey my wishes. But really, we should not have to go to such extreme efforts to get the apps to behave as we have always expected if we wish this to be the case.

Maybe you're not using a magic mouse. Maybe you don't have a workflow that Apple's changes have affected.

I've talked to people who are not you who say that Lion's changes have caused a fair amount of problems for many people.

So, I think you are making a generalization saying that the vast majority of people are using Lion (or Lion Server) with no problems.

Lion Server didn't ship with the basic utilities that Snow Leopard Server did.

In Lion, turn off gestures. Using a magic mouse or or trackpad around the edges of Safari causes the screen view to wobble - even if Gestures is off - if the trackpad or magic mouse thinks it detects a pinch. Even if Gestures is off.

If Gestures is on it's all too easy to mistakenly have your Safari text to get larger and smaller through a mis detection of a pinch. I never had this problem before. I almost NEVER change the size of my text in Safari. Who would think that anyone would want to do this in Safari on a reoccurring basis? Terrible, terrible feature.

Why can we not turn off gestures on a per app basis?

In Safari, I keep the downloads window open and select my downloads from that. Apple's removed the window capability and you can't press command option L unless there has been a download in the queue. The menu item has moved from Window to View and it is missing if nothing has been downloaded or the queue is empty. This is inconsistant functionality.

Can't turn off the bouncing scroll bars (elastic views). This is terribly annoying when scolling with inertia. I'm not on an iOS device. Stop animating the screen when I could be interacting with it. Is thre a switch to turn it off? No.

The desaturated icons in the Finder make it harder to tell if a GUI element is enabled or disabled.

I like my blue scroll bars over the gray ones. What, do I have to hack that to turn tham back too?

Animated EVERYTHING. I realy hate email messages zooming up off the screen on my 27 inch screen. It's startling, distracting and unpleasant. Can I turn it off? Not without finding some hack.

Alerts and dialogs popping open in my face. Annoying. A setting to turn it off? Nope. Gotta find some hack.

Code signing of some apps prevents you from opening and changing ANYTHING in the app. If I change 1 byte in TextEdit, even if I built and codesigned the app with my dev license, it crashes on launch.

Safari windows popping open in my face. Again, distracting and annoying on a 27 inch screen. Can I turn this off without resorting to a hack? Nope.

Bounce is something I've used in Email for years to bounce political emails back to my friends and family members who forget I don't want that. It's gone. Screw you Apple. You remove something I use every day. Why should I pay to have functionality I use removed?

At this point, this is not an enjoyable OS to use, if every window open is startling and annoying and you can't easily turn it off AND you paid for this.

Xcode 4.3 on Lion removes distributed builds. W T F? I am not amused.

Ugly Address Book and Calendar.

Automated quitting of some apps.

Downloading something in Safari throws something across my screen. OMG, stop this.

No simple friendly Apple setting to TURN OFF ALL THE GRATUITOUS ANIMATION. I want a fast OS so I can zip through my tasks. Just display it as fast as you can, or give me the ability to disable it.

In the Finder, lots of the command control 1, 2, 3 shortcuts that I use many times every day to sort the Finder List Window contents were broken as of the first two releases of Lion.

Air Drop was non functional when using Lion and Lion Server in the initial release.

At this point, it's simply foolish to move to the OS if it is this annoying and it makes it an issue to set the specifics back to what worked for you.

That and the previously selected window in Safari would scroll when scrolling by the middle button on the magic mouse.

This is all what I encountered when using Lion and many of these irritations still exist today.

At this point, what's the point of spending more time with the OS if I value my time and if I value how I feel when I use the computer? I use a Mac because I LIKE IT, because it helps me get my job done fast with a reinforcing and pleasing OS, not because I want it to annoy and irritate me.

So, you're telling me that spending 30 bucks to then WASTE TIME to try and turn all these settings back since Apple doesn't offer simple switches to do so actually makes sense? Lion isn't worth the time if I have to spend 1/3 of an hour (20 minutes) doing so. I've lost money if I have to spend any more then 20 minutes messing with the OS. See, the only reason we buy the upgrade is because it is supposed to HELP US so what we do better.

If the OS gets in the way of our using the computer then it's not really helpful, now is it?

Yes, Apple knows about my issues. Again, I'm trying to see if I can disable this auto app quitting in case we forget the point of this thread. If you have any input on how to do that, then please let me know. Saying that "the vast majority of users don't have any problem with Lion" simply shows that you're not paying attention to users who are used to the Mac OS and/or are light weight users who don't have an established workflow. It also shows that you know how to make passive/aggressive belittling generalizations and enjoy going that. I don't care. I'm trying to restore familiar, predictable and standard functionality that I've been using in the OS since 2000. If you can help on that front, then great. If not, we've discussed this enough.