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OSX - Closing applications

M

MacBookDan

macrumors member
Original poster
Hi everyone, my first topic on here 🙂, I've just purchased a Mac from my friends friend (via eBay) and it's an awesome machine. It's not the latest MacBook and cost me £466, the OS is Version 10.6.3, 2GHz, 2GB 667MHz DDR2 and an Intel graphics accelerator.

I was just wondering, when I load up for example Firefox and close it using the X at the top left, it appears to be closed, but upon right clicking Firefox icon I get the menu and it says 'Quit', I thought once you close an application using the X (like Windows) it closes the instance of that application.

What is the quickest way of closing an application and making sure it's quit correctly, instead of right clicking and having to 'Quit' the application.

Also any keyboard shortcuts wouldn't go a miss either.

Thank you guys.
 
mobilehaathi said:
Command-Q

😎
Click to expand...

🙂, thanks man lol, I don't know why I didn't check that.

Also I had a scare with the booting, I need Windows on here for programming so installed Windows and couldn't boot back into Mac OS, the key was to hold 'ALT' during bootup, so if you got anymore of boot macro's/key presses or whatever?🙂
 
In addition to Command-Q & the App menu, control-click the app's icon on the Dock to find a Quit option.
 
Turn on two finger tap for right clicks (secondary tap), it will make life easier (type: “two finger” into the system preferences search and hit return to find the pane).

In (Microsoft) Windows if you have two Word windows open (for example) and you press the X you only close that instance of Microsoft Word, the other remains running.

There is no concept of Quiting an application in Windows. This is why background applications that can run without a Window (such as Spotify) need a tray icon to control them.

Also, Mac OS X, like other modern operating systems is smart about memory usage. If you close Windows but don't quit applications then you won't see much (if any) of a performance hit.
 


Also have a look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in your future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to your system or your files.


Mac OS X Basics

Switch 101 - guide with articles made by Apple on how to accustom yourself, after you switched to Mac OS X from Windows​

Mac 101 - How to get started with Mac OS X​

Find out how - tutorial videos made by Apple on how to do certain thing in Mac OS X​

Pro tips - tips made available by Apple for easier ways of doing certain tasks​

Mac OS X Beginner's Guide by MacRumors - learn about software, media players, shortcuts and some useful tips, tricks and hints​

Mac Guides - tutorials, product guides and more​

MRoogle - a very effective tool to search these fora using Google and made available by edesignuk, introductory threads: 1, 2 and 3​
 
MacBookDan said:
🙂, thanks man lol, I don't know why I didn't check that.

Also I had a scare with the booting, I need Windows on here for programming so installed Windows and couldn't boot back into Mac OS, the key was to hold 'ALT' during bootup, so if you got anymore of boot macro's/key presses or whatever?🙂
Click to expand...

I'd suggest you look around (including on Apple's site) for info-for-switchers guides.

Meanwhile, your new(ish) MacBook is plenty powerful enough to run Windows in a virtual machine. I use and recommend VMWare Fusion. 2GB is enough RAM, if barely-- my first MacBook Pro (a 1st-edition Core Duo version, significantly less capable than your Core 2 Duo) had only 2GB and that was fine. But if your model can support more RAM, you'd be well advised to upgrade that.

Running Windows in a virtual machine has many charms, especially the ability to switch back and forth between Mac and Windows environments without rebooting. Sweet.

Enjoy!
 
mobilehaathi said:
Command-Q

😎
Click to expand...

+1

Yes, generally the Mac closes windows whereas Windows closes applications. It's one of the many small differences between the architectures. (There are also some big ones, of course!)

So, get used to explicitly quitting apps with Cmd-Q.
 
spinnerlys said:


Also have a look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in your future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to your system or your files.


Mac OS X Basics

Switch 101 - guide with articles made by Apple on how to accustom yourself, after you switched to Mac OS X from Windows​

Mac 101 - How to get started with Mac OS X​

Find out how - tutorial videos made by Apple on how to do certain thing in Mac OS X​

Pro tips - tips made available by Apple for easier ways of doing certain tasks​

Mac OS X Beginner's Guide by MacRumors - learn about software, media players, shortcuts and some useful tips, tricks and hints​

Mac Guides - tutorials, product guides and more​

MRoogle - a very effective tool to search these fora using Google and made available by edesignuk, introductory threads: 1, 2 and 3​
Click to expand...

+1! Thank you, Spinnerly!
 
First of all thank you to everyone who've replied to me in this topic. The information and links you've given me will be of great value

Also just figured out if you hold fn+press delete it acts as the delete on an ordinary keyboard, pressing delete by itself acts as backspace.

sjinsjca said:
I'd suggest you look around (including on Apple's site) for info-for-switchers guides.

Meanwhile, your new(ish) MacBook is plenty powerful enough to run Windows in a virtual machine. I use and recommend VMWare Fusion. 2GB is enough RAM, if barely-- my first MacBook Pro (a 1st-edition Core Duo version, significantly less capable than your Core 2 Duo) had only 2GB and that was fine. But if your model can support more RAM, you'd be well advised to upgrade that.

Running Windows in a virtual machine has many charms, especially the ability to switch back and forth between Mac and Windows environments without rebooting. Sweet.

Enjoy!
Click to expand...

I've already looked at this software and managed to boot up into Windows Vista and XP, the problem was that using the VMware Fusion it seemed rather slow, the mouse had some lag (for lack of a better word). Also when working inside Visual Studio applying items to a form was laggy and the item would not appear until I released the mouse button (which isn't good since I need size etc...)

The software is good and I have the trial version at the moment, but will purchase a license so I can use Ubuntu (if it supports it)

I like virtual machines, they're very convenient and slick, but this just didn't work as well on Vista.

Thank you once again.
 
I noted no perceptible lag in running Fusion virtual machines on my ancient, 1st-edition MacBook Pro, which was a less capable machine than yours. But sure, Windows will run faster if it owns the whole machine, which is what booting into Boot Camp will do. Still, I've found the virtual-machine performance hit to be very tolerable.

Some tips:

o Give the VM 1Gig of RAM. More, if and only if you can stuff more RAM into your Mac. Which you should do, if it can take more than the 2G it currently possesses. (My old MacBook Pro could only accept 2G... my new one is plumped-out with 8G, and what a difference!)

o You may have a slow hard disk, and/or you're setting things so the Mac is having to swap virtual memory a lot. See the first tip above.

o You might want to try setting up your VM on (or just copying it over to) an external USB drive, like one of the fast and wonderful Western Digital Passports. That's how I run mine, usually. It has the advantage that the machine's internal hard disk doesn't have to slap around as much or deal with contentions. For best performance, format the drive using Disk Utility (in your Applications folder) as a Mac OS Extended (journaled) drive.

o Try setting your VM to emulate one CPU core.

o Be sure to install VMWare Tools into your virtual machine.

o Be sure your system disk has lots of room on it.


One thing to keep in mind: Time Machine, your Mac's built-in backup utility (which I think your version of OS X has-- might be wrong), will not back up your Boot Camp partition. That's Windows' job, and good luck with that. Time Machine will, however, back up your virtual machines.

Enjoy!
 
More Keyboard Shortcuts

Check out this page that I made as a reference of Mac keystrokes:
http://www.danrodney.com/mac

It contains lots of keyboard shortcuts and explains the weird symbols you see in the menus. I never understood why Apple doesn't just put the names of the keys in the menu, or put the icons on the actual keys.

Best wishes and have fun learning!
Dan
 
Just to point out the obvious, in case it's not so obvious to a new user...
Many menu commands show the keyboard shortcut on the right. 🙂

You'll need to know some symbols, such as these:
⌘ = command
⌃ = control
⌥ = option
⇧ = shift
⇪ = caps lock
⇥ = Tab Key
⎋ = Escape Key
⏏ = Eject Key
⌫ = delete (the one above the return key)
⌦ = forward delete (the one in the page up/down/home/end cluster)
⌧ = clear
⏎ = return
 
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