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Comment by hiccuphippo | Hacker News Reader

Does MacOS really have that finesse they try to emulate? First thing I noticed when I started using a mac is that double clicking the Finder titlebar only expands it vertically while every other app expands both vertically and horizontally. Second thing, when I close a window and then press Cmd+tab, the icon is still there, and if I select it nothing shows up. There's more of these everyday things that work sloppy so I wonder why does the mac have that image of finesse when I don't really see it.

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> double clicking the Finder titlebar only expands it vertically while every other app expands both vertically and horizontally

For me it fits-to-content both vertically and horizontally. I just tested in both list- and icon-view. Mac OS 12.

> When I close a window and then press Cmd+tab, the icon is still there

This is because the Mac UI application/document conceptual model, which has been consistent since at least the 1980s. An application is either open or not. If you have multiple documents open, they are open within a single instance of the application. You can also have zero documents open. The application doesn't quit automatically when you close the last document.

Other operating systems flatten these two concepts into one, such that each new document appears as a new instance of the application.

I'm not suggesting one is better than the other. Just that I don't consider this a lack-of-finesse since it's been my mental model for 25+ years.

I'm also not disagreeing with your overall point. I can think of plenty of inconsistencies and lack-of-finesse in modern Mac OS UI, to be sure!

Just a note, if you are in the context of a particular application command+`/~ will cycle you through the applications windows.

It's not "sloppy" it is just a different approach.

It drives me nuts on Windows that when I close FireFox the entire APPLICATION closes! I just wanted to close the window. Now when I start it again / open a new window, I have to enter my LastPass credentials. And pay the boot penalty.

IMHO, a multi-window app should not exit when I close the last window.

Linux Desktops and Windows both do this, macOS does not.

> IMHO, a multi-window app should not exit when I close the last window. Linux Desktops and Windows both do this, macOS does not.

On Linux' Firefox, this does not seem to be the case. I just confirmed by closing a window with a few dozen tabs, and my other windows were perfectly fine. Same goes for VS Code, IDEA, Ghidra, Tilix, etc. This might be Wayland-specific behavior, but closing one window does not appear to take the rest of the apps with it (unless they were a child process).

You are correct, with a subtle modification: there are a "Close Window" and "Exit Application" mode in some popular X-based windowed apps (see: VSCode). Some apps, like Eclipse, solve this by hosting the child windows in a parent container. But then you lose screen real estate.

But you always need ONE child window open or it will exit entirely.

MacOS has a different approach, where the application top level process keeps running, even if it has no windows, but this requires some sort of GUI element to communicate with application.

When you close all open firefox windows is firefox still running? On MacOS it is. On windows and Linux it isn't. It has nothing to do with "other apps"

How can you make it behave like Linux and Windows? I don't want my applications to persist when their visual presence is gone, it's disingenuous to the user.

it's disingenuous to the user

That is nonsense. It is just a different model and the model Mac users have been used to since the 80ies. When I close a window/document, I often want to another document with the same application, so why close it? If I want to close an applications, I can use Cmd-q. Moreover, their visual presence is not gone, such an application is still in the Dock and in the app switcher.

And why do I care if an application continues running? If it hasn't been used for some time, macOS compresses its pages. And inactive native applications will be put in App Nap, which freezes the application, so that it doesn't use system resources until it is activated again.

Uh oh: Haven't you ever typed "ps aux"? :)

There is a third space on mac, different from a menubar, called "dock". In the old days it was integrated into the main persistent menu bar, but was removed maybe in the early 2000's. Personally I prefer one menubar, but at least I can hide the dock.

EDIT: "dock" not "launchpad". Duh.

I'm the complete other way. First thing I did when setting up MacOS was to install RedQuits. I think it stopped working sometime after an update. I never liked my dock crowding up with things.

And with Firefox, it would make the "Restore all tabs on open" not work, since clicking X didn't close the app, and thus pressing Firefox again would just create a new empty window. For it to work, I had to not use the red button, but cmd + q or the menu bar.

Double click on the titlebar on MacOS means "expand as much as possible to fit all content". Not "maximise".

Of course, I'd argue that maximise is the intuitive thing to expect, but the behaviour is not strictly broken, just... odd.

Strictly speaking it’s just different.

The behavior is inherited from the classic Mac OS which initially predates and was developed contemporaneously with Windows. Apple assigned one behavior and Microsoft assigned another. To the extent that one is “more intuitive” it’s because your expectations as to what should happen is different, and “maximize” is a lot easier to behaviorally define, describe and program than “zoom” so GUI programmers preferred it, or knew it better because the behavior and conventions they mimicked in X window managers were taken from what Microsoft was doing at the time.

When screen resolutions are 640x480 or 800x600 or even 1024x768, maybe you just want maximize all the time; but maximize is an anti-feature to me on anything bigger.

That's where window snapping comes into play. Maximize + Snapping is a much better system that "a hundred arbitrarily sized and arbitrarily overlapping windows". It's very much the opposite of finesse.

I disagree, but I respect your opinion. Overlapping arranged windows is exactly what I’ve become accustomed to and like using. Side-by-side or “snapped” windows are not my cup of tea.

Agreed.

> […] double-clicking the Finder titlebar only expands it vertically […]

This behavior is called “Zoom”, and it’s defined per-application by that application. You could change that system-wide to minimize.

> […] when I close a window and then press Cmd+tab, the icon is still there, and if I select it nothing shows up.

Yes, the application hasn’t quit. You’ve only closed its last window.

> Yes, the application hasn’t quit. You’ve only closed its last window.

To further expand on this, this is also application-defined behaviour. The application can choose whether it wants to stay open or close. This is no different from Windows (e.g. closing a Spotify window will just minimize it to taskbar), it's just that Cmd+Tab by default shows all running applications, whereas Win+Tab/Alt+Tab on Windows by default shows open windows.

Unlike Windows, there's a separation of concepts between "application" and "windows" on Mac. Closing all the windows of an app doesn't imply closing the app. I actually think the Windows way is sloppy (and I came from Windows). I want that kind of granular control. So many times back in the day, I'd accidentally close all my Internet Explorer windows, and have to pay the time-cost of reopening the app from scratch. It's less annoying now with SSDs, but reopening an app is still more expensive than opening a new window for an already running process.

If I want the app closed, cmd+q / alt+f4. Repeated cmd+w / ctrl+w shouldn't also close the app (IMO).

Windows has a similar distinction between applications that have one window per open document (SDI for Single Document Interface) and applications that have one window with tiny windows inside for each document (MDI for multiple document interference).

On the contrary, leaving so many apps open can make my machine feel like it's "dragging" when I really push it, mostly because I have software open that I'm not using. Especially on Macs, where memory comes at an extreme premium, I find myself frequently frustrated by the number of applications I have open. This also happens on Windows with tray-minimized apps, but to a much lesser extent.

In either case, I find both implementations sloppy. Apple's solution is complete but redundant, and Windows' solution is simple but lacking. I have to give it to KDE and GNOME, both desktops manage to 'fix' this problem by encouraging people to minimize apps they aren't using. Your (X) icon still has the magic power to kill processes, and you get to keep your precious applications when you're done using them. Boom, no need for ultra-complex Application/Window/Form/Dialog hierarchy for the user to wrap their mind around. Simple solution to a simple problem.

I've seen this on Linux too, specifically with this VPN application https://github.com/yuezk/GlobalProtect-openconnect

Closing it via the "x" will minimize to tray and hide (which is the behavior I want, but an example nonetheless)

Your second point is by design. macOS lets apps run without windows. Hold Option while once you select the app via Cmd+tab and it’ll open a new window.

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