points by flenserboy 4 days ago | 0 comments
(many) apps keep running without windows — all you closed was the last open window. cmd-~ switches between windows within a running app. this has been the case since the classic Mac days, & while it seems to drive those who come from Windows bonkers, long-term Mac users (at least all I've known) appreciate this small aspect of macOS as it makes a clear distinction between apps & windows. newer apps (some from Apple) which break this model are still maddening to use.
[–] mschuetz 4 days ago
[–] fodkodrasz 4 days ago
1. do this on a non-us layout
2. do this with Firefox / Chrome and its in-private window. Those are not reachable with neither shortcut for me.
Mac is the most culturally colonialist minded thing in my experience, its i18n support is terrible for smaller languages.
The "windows bonkers" model is strangely copied by most third party windowsin systems, as it makes sense, with having the recency based tab order, and being a global list. For us who work with more than a single software and often have to work between two different software, maybe an editor and a terminal... it is usually pretty handy.
[–] skeletal88 4 days ago
That is fucking annoying on mac. If i close the window, why is it useful to still have the application running without any windows. For example Finder? It still appears when alt tabbing, but when selecting it i get nothing. How is this a good design or good ux?
[–] solyin 4 days ago
Back in the olden days, when macintoshes were new, it took literal minutes to load the program off the disk. This was an improvement upon programs taking hours to load off cassette tape. So when you closed the last document, you didn't want to have to wait to load the program again if you were just going to start a new document in the same program. It just kind of persisted from there.
[–] mschuetz 4 days ago
It's fine to keep them active in the background, but the annoying thing is that Mac still shows them when tabbing, even though I closed them on purpose. I closed them because I do not want them to show up on my workspace.
That's fine, but I do not want to tab into an app whose last windows I have purposely closed. I closed it so I have a cleaner slate of apps to work with. If chrome is closed, it should not show up until I open it again. Not just windows but also linux make much more sense in that regard.
It's annoying because the x button on the windows is now a completely useless widget to me, and I have to close apps via cmd+q instead. It's even more annoying that I can't actually close Finder, even though I'm using a different filebrowser.