In fairness, any post-ME version of Windows does this, too – processes not being used will be paged out by the virtual memory system. There’s no real reason to quit programs in Windows either, unless the particular program is ill-behaved and won’t let itself be paged out, or you don’t like the task bar clutter for some reason.
Well, not quite always. Multitasking was introduced in System 5, when MultiFinder was added to the OS. Multifinder wasn’t a default thing to use, so many Mac users didn’t begin to use multitasking until system 7. Up through Mac OS 9, Macs used cooperative multitasking, which had some less than desirable qualities. (I switched from an Amiga to a Mac in 1993, and the lack of preemptive multitasking drove me nuts.) Preemptive multitasking came to the Macintosh when the switched to OS X.
That’s right. It’s the UNIX-y goodness of OS X’s BSD foundation showing through.
Indeed. That, combined with the poor state of Linux on laptops c. 2003 is what made me a Mac user again.
Which IMHO, is incredibly irksome and ruins the entire experience for me. Windows’ way groups everything together and provides the visual cues I need to know that something is part of the app. Why would I want Photoshop, of all things, to run entirely transparent to the desktop, and have each toolbar floating freely in space? Seems to me that something like that would make it harder to find the tool you need quickly, and that the transparency to desktop ‘feature’ would be more distracting than anything. Or maybe I’m just weird.
I vote this. The “desktop MDI” app is basically useless once you’ve got multiple monitors – even Microsoft is abandoning it. If you really get distracted if your desktop isn’t uniform grey…then set your desktop to uniform grey.
Fundamentally, the “enclose everything in a window” is a constraint. Nothing prevents you from arranging that way without the enclosing window (and several of Photoshop’s Mac default workspace views do). But the enclosing window prevents you from arranging any other way, especially across multiple screens. Lots of artists use a Cintiq or other single-monitor as their full-screen “canvas,” and put all the palettes on a cheaper/out-of-the-way screen. These artists are all Mac users, since you just can’t do that on MDI.
The selection logic in macs is extremely screwed up.
If you have the following files in your finder:
A
B
C
D
E
with B selected and you do Shift+down, Shift+down, Shift+up, in Windows, it will look like this:
A
B
C
D
E
On a mac, it will look like this:
A
B
C
D
E
It’ll give you an example-- yesterday I had to copy chinese text from a spreadsheet into a photoshop doc, while referencing a pdf for placement, and do this like 50 times. I could set it up so I could be clicking between photoshop and exel, while keeping the PDF viewable beside both at all times (all thee windows viewable at all times). I use both Operating systems, and OSX is faster for any tasks involving multiple apps.
I just tried it - OS X does exactly what you say Windows does.
In OS X, Photoshop has a button to hide all other Application windows, if you really want to work that way.
But many people don’t want that. When I’m working in a specific application like Photoshop, I want it covering everything. I don’t want to be distracted by background nonsense sitting on my desktop. I could minimize everything to the dock but that’s a few extra steps if I’ve got a few windows open and now my dock is cluttered. Under an MDI model the parent window covers everything nicely, and now I’m completely free to focus only on Photoshop instead of having a busy background. Having grey wallpaper is a stupid non-option unless that’s your thing. I don’t want grey wallpaper. I want the app to cover it when I’m working in it and have that nice wallpaper still there when I close it.
Having an open layout looks and feels like clutter.
Lots of Windows programs let you move things out of the enclosing window, including Photoshop. I can have the palettes on my second monitor and the main Photoshop window in fullscreen on my primary.
Word.
Guilty of having two monitors, and my 2nd one is a Cintiq.
I agree that the MDI is a constraint more than it is a benefit. When I work, sometimes it’s convenient to put my Mail app below or to the side of my canvas with the client changes outlined, right there visible underneath PhotoShop. Or sometimes I just want to keep other documents open or visible from other apps for what ever reason, or just click on an icon on my desktop. It’s all just a click away. Not only that, but I can easily drag content from one app’s window right into the other I’m using on top. It’s all just a workflow/convenience thing. I don’t even notice this “visual noise”… it’s just what I grew up on.
I almost gasped at the thought of not being able to pull the palettes out of the MDI to another monitor, until I read gladtobeblazed’s post.
ETA: I believe the latest verision of Photoshop now lets Mac users choose to work in a MDI environment. Madness!
I got my first Mac with OS 8, and I definitely just left things open then without problem. Of course, I don’t think I had any major memory hog programs except games.
One thing I really miss from classic, is the window shade feature. Just double clicking the top of the window closed to to the top border without putting it down in the dock. Also, the apple in the top right that listed the programs I had open. The four finger swipe seems to be a good replacement for that though.
Windowshade for OSX/ Same company produces FruitMenu which lets you edit the Apple Menu to your liking just as you could under OS 9.
Having to navigate to the edges is awful and very slow. They are thin and therefore poor targets. This is much better handled in various other window managing systems. For instance, I just need to hold Alt while pressing the left mouse button anywhere in the window to move it, and Alt+middle button to resize. Not having to move the cursor exactly to an edge allows for much faster window handling and rearrangement. I don’t know if macs can do something of that kind though.
I just tried it in my finder (OSX 10.5) and it did it the OSX way. Are you sure you were doing the same thing I was?
It’s a Leopard vs. Snow Leopard thing. My G5 (run Leopard) does it the dain bramaged way.
Bottom line: the operating systems are different. If you’re used to one, the other feels odd. It drives me bonkers that I can’t grab the lower-left corner of a window to resize it on a Mac, and I’m constantly annoyed that I can’t just slide my cursor up to the corner of the screen on Windows to see all open windows reduced and neatly arranged for me to choose between.
If you really need a list of Mac tips for Windows users, I Highly recommend David Pogue’s book, Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual. Especially the section at the end that says “if you did this on Windows, you’ll do that on Mac.”
As others have implied, the question is backwards. Why should the OS close down an application that you may need again soon just because you’ve closed a window? There’s basically no penalty for leaving the app open, and if you really want to close it, just press Cmd-Q and it’s closed.
But they do. I’m using an iMac right now, and it has both a Delete key and a Backspace key. What you probably meant is that the built-in keyboard on Macbooks doesn’t have a Delete key. When I’m using my Macbook Pro, I almost always plug in an external keyboard just to have the numeric keypad and the associated navigation keys.
I use Photoshop pretty much every day. I have a 27" iMac with an external 24" monitor. When I’m working on the newspaper, I will have Photoshop, Word, inDesign, Finder, Excel, Firefox, Mail, iPhoto, and often several other apps open at once. When I’m working on a picture in Photoshop, I’ll be constantly glancing behind and around it at emails, planner spreadsheets, layouts in inDesign, and other windows while I work. It would drive me NUTS if I could only see one application at a time!
So in one post, here’s the good and the bad. I bought a new iMac and a printer yesterday. My wife and I unpacked the iMac while the kids had their baths. We had it up and running, and the wireless printer configured to both computers before bedtime reading. About 45 minutes from out of the box to running. It would have been faster, except for having to search for the 28 character WEP key for the wireless modem.
The bad - I walked into the Apple Store at the Eaton Centre and the first available salesperson was some pretty 20-something who drank the kool-aid hourly. I knew exactly what I wanted, but I had to endure all the “Have you had a Mac before? Isn’t it great? Do you know about One to One? Funny, I haven’t seen you in before. Do you have a Mobile Me account? Would you like one? Why not?” questions. It felt like she was offering me flowers in the airport. Just sell me the f@$*&ng computer and get me out of here!
It was all reminding me of when I worked at Pizza Hut - one of our managers kept going off for these training sessions and he’d come back spouting all this nonsense about ‘reducing post-product dissonance’ by ‘enthusiastically endorsing and reinforcing customer good-feeling’. I understand it’s part of their ‘business model’ to have a greater level of customer support, it’s just the phoniness of it that feels like chewing tinfoil to me.