Anyone ever figure this out? I would also like to know how to fix this as it would reduce the number of clicks required in order to get going in a TextEdit document. Restoring defaults did not work.
I think what's happening is this: you're in another application and decide you want to create a new TextEdit document. You right click on the TextEdit icon in the dock and select 'new document'. It creates the document but it doesn't make it active because it doesn't assume you want to switch to the textedit application. Whatever application that was active when you created the new document is the application that continues to be active. Yet, that's not the case vice versa. If you're in the TextEdit application and you right click on another application's dock icon to create a new document (whether it be a quicktime recording, new web browser window, etc.), it switches to that application, putting the application window in front, which is what is expected. So this looks to me like a programming oversight. I can't imagine why it would be intentionally designed this way.