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Getting rid of quit/close requires the user to learn entirely new metaphors every time they use a program in order to know how to get a program to stop taking u

Getting rid of quit/close requires the user to learn entirely new metaphors every time they use a program in order to know how to get a program to stop taking up resources. In a system with effectively limitless resources this is fine, but in lower specced systems, not so much. Also "effectively limitless" means equivalent to the specs of the worst system the designers use, which will likely skew things. Where I'm sitting we share 384K down / 128K up between about 40 people. Updaters that refuse to stop downloading when you close them really bog down the network. Now, you could try and put in some custom menu to control that sort of thing, but that's going to be a mess of configuration and hard choices, and developers will have to do that for every single app. Quit/Close are two well-defined commands that give the user a well defined way to say when they want something to go away vs. when they want something to go away and quit doing anything. Re-implementing "go away and quit working" on a case-by-case basis is going to end up with every app either having a nonstandard interface for doing so, or no way to do so at all (like most update managers.) Personally, I think "some apps don't quit properly" is a description of a problem with the apps, not with the "quit" command. Comparing to mobile is a red herring, because you can in fact quit background services on most mobile platforms, and it's a necessary thing to do. It's only programs that by design, always gracefully suspend, full stop, and resume later that make sense to not have a quit command.

shareme 16y ago
ahem, in mobile we do not have quit..nothing broke not even the mobile users :)
- michaelcampbell 16y ago
  Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I had to learn the metaphor of "no quit option", and I welcome the quit button/option on apps that have them. I have seen many, many users; particularly new Android users; that wonder where the quit button is, and what happens when they just "leave" the current application. So, no, it may not have "broken" anything, but it has caused significantly wide, if not deep, cognitive dissonance.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Actually, on my Android phone I'm constantly using a third party task killer to stop services and apps running in the background that I thought I 'quit' by backing out of them. I also use the quit option on apps that have it. I don't entirely trust Android to manage battery life as efficiently as possible yet, especially when iPhone still does it so much better, and when every time I check the services running on the phone, there seem to be tons I had never even started in the first place. I consider that at least partly a UI/UX issue. (On a side note, that's my only complaint about Android so far, using 2.3, otherwise it's great.)
  - cdawzrd 16y ago
    Your task killer might be hurting your battery life rather than helping it. In any case, in recent versions (2.1+ I think), Android is better at managing tasks than a third-party app, and overzealous background task killing doesn't help anything. http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-wi...
    - SkyMarshal 16y ago
      Thanks for that article, very informative, but not necessarily conclusive. There are also a ton of comments that resonate with my concerns, about how random apps I haven't touched seem to constantly start themselves and run in the background doing who knows what - using CPU (battery), bandwidth, whatever. At least one comment mentioned a significant battery life improvement after installing Advanced Task Killer and turning on its autokill feature, which I've been using a few months. I think I'll experiment a little and turn it off, and see if there's any noticeable difference in battery life.
    - smokinn 16y ago
      I heard this as well so when I got my android I didn't install one. But the battery life was horrible. Often, if I used the phone regularly during the day the battery would be dead by 9-10pm. I installed a task killer and killed everything when it booted up and killed a couple times a day. After that I suddenly have ~1.5 days worth of battery available. I'm not sure which app was being such a hog (I suspect it's an app that was refusing to let the phone go into sleep mode) but the task killer was most definitely necessary.
- liedra 16y ago
  ... to its detriment, at times. I have a very good app on my iPhone that plots out bike paths around London for me. Sadly, when I have reached my destination, and "close" the window, it continues to use the GPS and other battery sucking things to the point where I have to manually go and kill it via the kill-menu (which is all I ever use the fast-switch menu for). I'm not saying this is Apple's fault, but that it's very hard to work out when someone has "finished" with an app that could continue to, say, provide information about what the user is doing to a third party, or sucking battery life, or making annoying noises, for example. And apps that do this after I'm "finished" with them annoy me to no end. I'd consider that "broken" :)
neutronicus 16y ago
As someone who has used Matlab, and someone who has used Eclipse, you can take my "get your fat ass out of RAM already" command when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
- aphexairlines 16y ago
  Nobody is taking xkill or kill -9 away.

shareme 16y ago

ahem, in mobile we do not have quit..nothing broke not even the mobile users :)

michaelcampbell 16y ago
Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I had to learn the metaphor of "no quit option", and I welcome the quit button/option on apps that have them. I have seen many, many users; particularly new Android users; that wonder where the quit button is, and what happens when they just "leave" the current application. So, no, it may not have "broken" anything, but it has caused significantly wide, if not deep, cognitive dissonance.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Actually, on my Android phone I'm constantly using a third party task killer to stop services and apps running in the background that I thought I 'quit' by backing out of them. I also use the quit option on apps that have it. I don't entirely trust Android to manage battery life as efficiently as possible yet, especially when iPhone still does it so much better, and when every time I check the services running on the phone, there seem to be tons I had never even started in the first place. I consider that at least partly a UI/UX issue. (On a side note, that's my only complaint about Android so far, using 2.3, otherwise it's great.)
- cdawzrd 16y ago
  Your task killer might be hurting your battery life rather than helping it. In any case, in recent versions (2.1+ I think), Android is better at managing tasks than a third-party app, and overzealous background task killing doesn't help anything. http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-wi...
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    Thanks for that article, very informative, but not necessarily conclusive. There are also a ton of comments that resonate with my concerns, about how random apps I haven't touched seem to constantly start themselves and run in the background doing who knows what - using CPU (battery), bandwidth, whatever. At least one comment mentioned a significant battery life improvement after installing Advanced Task Killer and turning on its autokill feature, which I've been using a few months. I think I'll experiment a little and turn it off, and see if there's any noticeable difference in battery life.
  - smokinn 16y ago
    I heard this as well so when I got my android I didn't install one. But the battery life was horrible. Often, if I used the phone regularly during the day the battery would be dead by 9-10pm. I installed a task killer and killed everything when it booted up and killed a couple times a day. After that I suddenly have ~1.5 days worth of battery available. I'm not sure which app was being such a hog (I suspect it's an app that was refusing to let the phone go into sleep mode) but the task killer was most definitely necessary.
liedra 16y ago
... to its detriment, at times. I have a very good app on my iPhone that plots out bike paths around London for me. Sadly, when I have reached my destination, and "close" the window, it continues to use the GPS and other battery sucking things to the point where I have to manually go and kill it via the kill-menu (which is all I ever use the fast-switch menu for). I'm not saying this is Apple's fault, but that it's very hard to work out when someone has "finished" with an app that could continue to, say, provide information about what the user is doing to a third party, or sucking battery life, or making annoying noises, for example. And apps that do this after I'm "finished" with them annoy me to no end. I'd consider that "broken" :)

neutronicus 16y ago

As someone who has used Matlab, and someone who has used Eclipse, you can take my "get your fat ass out of RAM already" command when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

aphexairlines 16y ago
Nobody is taking xkill or kill -9 away.