Mac clicking close does not quit application

[Techicolors]

i'm curious why Mac does not quit/close the application when you click 'close'? i know there is the hotkey Cmd+Q to quit the app but i was wondering why the red X behaves differently 

[kb5zue]

It's Apple, and they do it because they can.

[Mira Yurizaki]

It's likely a quirk with its POSIX roots. I recall back in college we had to log into a server to use an app that launched a GUI. But we're told to go to the menu to close the app rather than close the window, because otherwise the app wouldn't really terminate and a license was eaten up.

 

I could make some guesses why but I'm not certain what the reason is.

[79wjd]

I'd guess it was to improve perceived performance -- opening a program that is still open but has no open windows is faster than opening a completely closed program, but has now remained since it was be more annoying to change it at this point.

[Mira Yurizaki]

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3826532

 

That might provide some insight but the theory is to leave the app running in the background after the last window was closed so it appears the app launches faster.

 

Though some people think it makes more sense to "dismiss windows not needed". If they happen to close the last one by mistake, they got annoyed they have to relaunch the app.

[DrMacintosh]

That is just the way the system behaves. The idea is to keep apps ready to go for a quick launch the next time. 

 

You can change this with many utilities on the App Store like better snap tool. 

 

The apps being "open" while closed do not really effect performance. 

 

[wasab]

6 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That is just the way the system behaves. The idea is to keep apps ready to go for a quick launch the next time. 

 

You can change this with many utilities on the App Store like better snap tool. 

 

The apps being "open" while closed do not really affect performance. 

 

What are you talking about? Apps running in the backgrounds eats battery and cpu cycles.

[79wjd]

Just now, wasab said:

What are you talking about? Apps running in the backgrounds eats battery and cpu cycles.

Barely. I've left chrome running in the background and noticed no battery or performance drain.

[wasab]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Barely. I've left chrome running in the background and noticed no battery or performance drain.

You wanna test it out? Open up a game like shadow of Mordor on Mac and then minimize it. Tell me later how much the battery drains and what the cpu usuage is during that time.

[79wjd]

Just now, wasab said:

You wanna test it out? Open up a game like shadow of Mordor on Mac and then minimize it. Tell me later how much the battery drains and what the cpu usuage is during that time.

Ah yes, Chrome is just like a game. And there's a difference between minimizing something and closing the window....

[DrMacintosh]

7 minutes ago, wasab said:

You wanna test it out? Open up a game like shadow of Mordor on Mac and then minimize it. Tell me later how much the battery drains and what the cpu usuage is during that time.

Closing an app on a Mac is not the same as minimizing. 

 

Those are two vary different things. 

 

[wasab]

15 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Barely. I've left chrome running in the background and noticed no battery or performance drain.

Yeah? Let me know what your battery life is after running this in your chrome browser. 

https://web.basemark.com/

 

if it is not fully closed and can just jump straight back on when relaunched then it is just minimized, what else would it be?

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, wasab said:

if it is not fully closed and can just jump straight back on when relaunched then it is just minimized, what else would it be?

You are thinking like a Windows user. 

 

Macs don’t need an application to have a window to be “open” or store data in compressed memeory. Which is really what is happening. 

[wasab]

6 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Closing an app on a Mac is not the same as minimizing. 

 

Those are two vary different things. 

 

From what I can tell, that guy said close means getting rid of an application “windows” and that is it. It is synonymous to minimizing. And he also said your system will get slower because of all the resources these back ground apps eats up.

[79wjd]

8 minutes ago, wasab said:

From what I can tell, that guy said close means getting rid of an application “windows” and that is it. It is synonymous to minimizing. And he also said your system will get slower because of all the resources these back ground apps eats up.

 

14 minutes ago, wasab said:

Yeah? Let me know what your battery life is after running this in your chrome browser. 

https://web.basemark.com/

 

if it is not fully closed and can just jump straight back on when relaunched then it is just minimized, what else would it be?

The window is gone, any tabs that were open are gone. When you go to open chrome it opens a new blank window.

 

And let's not forget that most people have no idea how things work; people are still adamant that quitting apps on Android/iOS improves battery life/performance.

[wasab]

4 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

 

The window is gone, any tabs that were open are gone. When you go to open chrome it opens a new blank window.

So what is the benefits of “closing” over “quitting” again?

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, wasab said:

So what is the benefits of “closing” over “quitting” again?

At this point in time there isn't much of a benefit, it's just a carry over from a time when slow hard drives were common. But changing the way it works now would be more irritating to users.

[wasab]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

At this point in time there isn't much of a benefit, it's just a carry over from a time when slow hard drives were common. But changing the way it works now would be more irritating to users.

Manually command q-ing all the apps are more irritating.

[79wjd]

Just now, wasab said:

Manually command q-ing all the apps are more irritating.

It's really not, and changing the entire way something has been done for almost two decades is just going to annoy far more people than are currently annoyed by having to hit cmd + q instead of being able to click the red x. Plus, you don't need to quit an app. It's not going to impact the battery life or performance any meaningful amount.

[Nicnac]

53 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

people are still adamant that quitting apps on Android/iOS improves battery life/performance.

so it doesn't make a difference anymore, right? I was right!! 

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, wasab said:

What are you talking about? Apps running in the backgrounds eats battery and cpu cycles.

Only if they're actually being used or they have something to do and are waiting to be run. The OS doesn't schedule applications, or rather its threads, to run if it's not in a state where it can run. Assuming of course, the application yielded its time.

 

2 hours ago, wasab said:

You wanna test it out? Open up a game like shadow of Mordor on Mac and then minimize it. Tell me later how much the battery drains and what the cpu usuage is during that time.

I've done two CineBench R15 runs, one with the window up, the other minimized. There's virtually no statistical significant difference in the score.

 

2 hours ago, wasab said:

Yeah? Let me know what your battery life is after running this in your chrome browser. 

https://web.basemark.com/

 

if it is not fully closed and can just jump straight back on when relaunched then it is just minimized, what else would it be?

"Minimize" is a windowing semantic. It has nothing to do with the app actually running or not on the system. For instance in Linux, you can send CLI applications to the background (though it actually stops them from processing). But you can bring them back by calling the "fg" command and it'll resume running. But you were working in a CLI. "Minimize" doesn't exist in CLIs.

 

1 hour ago, wasab said:

From what I can tell, that guy said close means getting rid of an application “windows” and that is it. It is synonymous to minimizing.

No, it's not.

 

It's helpful to understand that the windowing management paradigm of macOS apps is the multiple document interface (MDI), meaning each window is a document within the app rather than a separate instance of the app itself. Windows uses a single document interface as its windowing management, with the apps choosing whether or not to have their own MDI. macOS's usage of MDI is likely a carryover from how Classic Mac OS did things, which was mostly driven by its cooperative multitasking nature.

 

Also minimizing an application window means that the window's state is retained. When you restore the window, you can pick up where you left off. If you close a window in an MDI system, it's no different than if you closed a picture in say Photoshop or PaintShopPro or a tab in a web browser. You basically lose the state of that document (even though browsers have an "undo close tab" feature, you usually don't get the actual state the tab was left off in)

 

1 hour ago, wasab said:

And he also said your system will get slower because of all the resources these back ground apps eats up.

If the background applications are not actually using the CPU, they're not using up resources per se. The only resource they're using up is an entry in the process table and whatever space they need in RAM. And if background processes are causing an issue with that regard, you need more RAM.

 

Also, if a background application is doing it's job, then reducing the number you have has no appreciable impact on performance. I ran a test where I reduced the number of total process from something around 56 to 37 and trimmed the RAM usage after a fresh boot from 1.5 GB give or take to 940MB. The most it improved performance was 1-2%. There was an outlier that improved by 5% on the minimum FPS.

 

Also note that "background application" has a different meaning than "minimized" application. A background application is something that the user almost never has any interaction with. So if your context of "background apps" means "minimized apps", then sure, having more apps minimized can potentially slow your system down. Having CineBench or Prime95 running but minimized will certainly slow things down.

 

1 hour ago, wasab said:

So what is the benefits of “closing” over “quitting” again?

Quitting an app means you terminate it. If you really want the app to have a fresh state, you quit it. Closing it likely will suspend the process (akin to sending an app to the background in a CLI) and it's not going to do anything until the person wants to open another window of it.

[kirashi]

3 hours ago, wasab said:

So what is the benefits of “closing” over “quitting” again?

3 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

At this point in time there isn't much of a benefit, it's just a carry over from a time when slow hard drives were common.

Um, not quite. As someone who does IT Consulting for small businesses and residential users, I can say with 100% certainty that quitting Mac Mail, for example, allows email server settings to actually save so it works upon next launch. If I simply close all the Mail windows but don't quit the Mail app, most of the time it keeps trying to use the old server settings prior to my changes, even though I've already hit save on the dialogue that slides down from the top in Mail's Preferences window.

 

To be fair, this wouldn't be an issue with having to completely quit Mail if it actually respected the changed settings it displays in the Preferences window after I save them, but alas, there's been nothing but questionable development and UI/UX experience since Jobs died. Full Disclosure: I use both MacOS and Windows for work purposes, but do prefer Windows simply because that's what I grew up with. My stance is that the best OS is the one that works best for your individual workflow.

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Windows simply because that's what I grew up with. My stance is that the best OS is the one that works best for your individual workflow.

What sucks is when your OS that works best for your workflow only works for like 99% of it so you have to DualBoot Windows on your MacBook