Macs: Where Everything Costs Money.

[the evn show]

Umm.. I said that in my post. My question is do mac people fully close their programs? Or do they keep them running in the background?

That sort of depends on the program. Some things it makes a lot of sense to leave running?applications that you use very often or that do something useful even when they don't have a window open (iTunes, iChat, iCal, Safari, Terminal, etc) If you use something more than once a day there's a good chance you'll want to leave it open, especially if you have plenty of RAM. It saves you from start-up time, allows you to cmd+tab to the program, and may provide additional functionality even when you're not actually doing anything (for example, iPhoto will share your picture library to other users on your LAN if you leave it running).

Other programs people quit because they're truely done with everything it does (IDEs, Photoshop, games, etc).

[hifive]

Ahh, thanks. Guess I'll be keeping adium, itunes, and camino running. I'm just so used to the windows, clos everything mentality.

[Liquid]

Umm.. I said that in my post. My question is do mac people fully close their programs? Or do they keep them running in the background?

Technically, the way Macs manage memory, they always stay "running" until other programs need more memory.

[QuarterSwede]

Yeah, keeping programs open in OS X is nothing like in Windows because OS X doesn't slow down when several apps are open at once (especially if you have plenty of RAM). Just think of it running the way the systray does.

Also, I use Sizzling Keys as my iTunes Controller because it uses hotkeys (you can map play/pause to command+alt+space or whatever isn't being used). Its always running and can even start iTunes by pressing a hotkey (I have mine mapped to F8). And yes, you get a floater that shows song info and the album art. In my opinion it is the best that's out there as do many others. Just read its reviews on VersionTracker.

Edited June 19, 2006 by QuarterSwede