Why clicking red X does not close program???

In Windows you have two buttons, a yellow 'minimize' and a red 'exit'. In mac, these buttons also exist. Yellow button with the same minimize symbol, red button with an 'X' for 'Exit' one would assume.

But in Mac, both of these buttons perform the same 'minimize' function. So the red button with an 'X' is completely superfluous.

At least Microsoft was intelligent enough to give this red button it's own unique function, instead of just copying the button directly next to it.

No, there's no way. Just use Command-Q

Actually the red button does not minimize the window by most definitions. It typically closes the window (I realize some programs treat this function differently than others and differently than "normal"). If you reopen a window closed with the red button it does not open a window that is as it was when you closed it (unless it was already at the program's initial page), it opens as if the program had just been started anew. A minimized program window will reopen just as you left it with work and actions still intact.

P.S. As usual, whatever one is used to is what one considers "natural".

But, personally, I am always annoyed in Windows (or when using an application which has Windows-like behavior) when, while working in a big application that takes some time to launch, I dismiss a window I don't need, not realizing it is the last one and now I have to relaunch the application. Grrrr.

What you need to do is write your dislike to the app developer.

What ever happens when you click the red close button is an option

that is selected by the app developer. He/she can in fact chose to close

the app (there are several that do this) or simply close the document

window.

Therefore, Apple is providing the option to the developer and it is their

choice as to what happens.

As a matter of fact, for many apps that action would be quite undesirable,

i.e web browsers!

blwilli68025 wrote:

That is a typical Unix behavior, and last I checked, macOS was Unix based.

There is no typical Unix behavior. Having worked on 8 different flavors of Unix/Linux, I can say for sure that each of those versions had wildly different behaviors in one way or another.

With respect the the GUI Red Window button, on many Unix platforms that has been a function of the X11 Display Server package, originally from MIT's Project Athena.

macOS does NOT use X11 as its GUI, and Mac OS Classic pre-dates WIndows, and it pre-dates X11, which is where the Mac GUI interface started, along with it Red window button behavior.

Linux is not Unix, nor is it Unix certified like MacOS. I’ll try to remember that this isn’t a typical Unix behavior next time I work on our multiple Sun boxes, running straight up SunOS (Unix) but hey, what do I kow... Unix is only about 80% of my job.

My current mix is AIX, Solaris SPARC, Solaris X86, and a flavor of Linux that starts life as RedHat Linux. But these are only the most recent. My first Unix was AT&T System V running on a PDP-11/44 with 64K code, 56K data and an 8K stack. They're have been other flavors of Unix in between.

Trying to write code that works on all 3 of those platforms is a challenge, and very quickly points out that they have lots of differences.

And none of them run the breath of apps the Mac can run.

mac 101

Hello:

That is the way the software is designed. There is no setting to change that..... Different from Windoze, but that is the way it works.

Barry

From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2512

Note: Closing all application windows in Mac OS X does not always quit the application as it does in Windows. In Mac OS X every application menu has a Quit option that can also be invoked by using the Command-Q key combination.

The red close button just closes the window. It is up to the application whether it quits or not - typically if the application uses documents or it has other windows that can be opened it will not quit. Applications with a single window (System Preferences, for example), will usually quit when the window is closed, since there isn't anything else it does.

Macs have always behaved that way, at least since Multi-Finder first came out (OS 6, as I recall).

Among other reasons, on those old, slow machines (slow processors, slow drives, slow buses) by keeping a program running in the background even after all its windows were closed meant the program was available much faster when next needed, as opposed to having to load it from disk again.

That behavior has been retained as "Mac normal" ever since.

Ok so now with solid state drives this behavior is no longer necessary as the launching of an application does not take a long time, however the limited RAM on a system, combined with the way software has been hogging up resources, sounds like a good thing to change.

This is definitely not the case with large applications like logic or maya for example