Clicking the red X doesn't quit a programme, just closes it...

MacOS is not Windows. Your Mac is operating as designed. This is a feature of MacOS, intended to make re-launching an Application later much faster.

When you close all the windows of an Application under MacOS, it closes all its windows. That is all. The Application remains running in the background in anticipation of your opening a new Window. If memory or CPU pressure gets too intense, it may quit later.

There is no need for hokey third-party add-ons to get the behavior you desire. If you want to Quit an Application in Mac OS, choose Quit from the Application's menu, or type Command-Q when that Application's window is active.

This is the way the mac has always worked due to the application interface not being linked to each document like it is with windows. Both OS's took different paths back in the 80's on WIMP interface would work. The red X is designed to close a document and not the application as it's attached to the document and not the application.

I can see why this may be annoying if your are from the windows world. There are many times I have an application open but with no active documents open, I find this useful, for starters you do not need to constantly reopen a large application just because you want to close one document.

At the end of the day it's just what we are used to.

Just be cautious, the app has not been updated since 2011 and mac os 10.6 (we are now on 10.12), so even though it may work fine now a future OS update may kill it or it may do something odd to the OS itself.

Just something to remember if something odd starts happening down the line.

If it's working fine at the moment, carry on. Just something to keep in the back of your mind if the OS starts acting odd after an update... it would be the first app I'd go to when trouble shooting.

Not sure if there is an alternative, first time I have heard of such a hack, in 24 years. But you never know someone else may have written something similar.

You can quit an app by pressing Command-Q.

This completely quits the application and is generally faster than moving the mouse up to the red X.

Also, apps will "resume" where you left off next time they are opened unless you disable it manually. So things like Safari will reload the same webpages you had open when you quit the app.

You can change this in  > System Preferences > General > Check the box, "Close windows when quitting an app"

But it won't close the Application if you use that method.

You can also click the app's name in the top left, then go to Quit (application name).

It's one more click but if you are more comfortable with using the mouse that is also an option.

Quitting the Application when you close its window is limited in that it assumes an Application has exactly one window -- the document window -- and no others.

Deliberately quitting the Application rather than closing all its windows supports the idea that Applications that may have many windows (and different kinds of windows) open at the same time. If your Mac is used with multiple displays, those additional windows may not even be on the main display.