Newby question: How to terminate a program?

Use Force Quit under the Apple menu

Can kill a process from ActivityMonitor.app

 

Force Quit - The easiest way (although it doesn't always work) is right clicking the dock icon of the app, and clicking force quit. There is a force quit menu option when you press the Apple logo in the top left, where you can choose which app to close. If you want to go even further, open up Activity Monitor, and press 'Stop' on the app

It gets easier, and when you've got used to the OS, its amazing...

 

If you have a crashed app and its beachballing on you, you cant select the apple menu.

But, if you have another app, probably the finder, open, you may click it to make it the active app, and use the apple menu> force quit.

If you cant see the desktop to switch apps, because the crashed app is fullscreen, Expose would help too.

It happens sometimes.

 

[CMD]-Tab until you get to an app that isn't beachballing (which, as you note, will usually include the Finder) and then [CMD]-[ALT]-Esc to bring up the Force Quit menu.

From there you can kill any non-responding app (including the Finder, if necessary).

Knee jerk reaction on my part (probably a hangover of many, many years in OS9) is to take the opportunity to save everything that needs saving in the remaining apps and then re-boot. I'll freely admit that this is probably just superstition on my part, but there y'go ...

Cheers!

Jim

 

Then there is always ssh'ing in from another machine and using kill.

/Unix ftw

 

I never really use those methods if i need to kill a program...way i always do it is to use the short cut key combo alt-command-esc. even if you can't get to an active program (happens sometimes with fullscreen programs you can't alt-tab out of) this will bring up the same menu you get from the apple menu > force quit.

 

if the front app has crashed, this usually wont work.

so you need to swith apps first before the key combo.