closing a window

Command+Q

i don't know how to change the button, but the key command is rather quick

 

This is a common question former windows users have. The thing is that you are thinking of it in a windows way. In windows, the windows are the application. On a mac, the application opens separately, and you can open and close windows as needed. If you do not quit the program (command Q or going to the menu bar and selecting quit), the application is there, running in the background, ready for you to use. This is just the mac way, and I personally much prefer it to the windows way of doing thing (which as a computing metaphor doesn't make much sense to me)

It takes a little getting used to, but try not to wish for thigns working the way windows do. Learn the mac way and you will ont only get used to it, but hopefully prefer it.

 

Of course it does, but with no windows open it will consume very little RAM, since it doesn't need to allocate space for any GUI components, excluding the menus.

That said, Mac OS X is smart about managing memory, and will gladly give up inactive memory used for caching, if it is needed for an application. I doubt you'll run into problems unless you have many things open at once. One or two other applications open shouldn't cause problems.

 

Command + Q is the fastest way to completely quit an application.

Another quick way that I do it is to simply right-click the icon on the dock and hit 'Quit' from there.


But wrldwzrd89 nailed it. OS X manages memory much, much better than Windows does. If the application isn't active with the user, it typically won't be using enough RAM to worry about.

 

If you're about to do something where you want to get rid of active applications you can hit command+tab and as you cycle through the apps, keep holding command but hit Q on each apps icon on the app switcher window. This will quit every application that you have open as you cycle through.