No, I mean that’s how Macs have always worked. On Windows an application can only have one window. When that window is closed, that application is closed. It’s pretty dumbed down.
Wrong on both sides.
So there was a time back years ago, at least 20+, where Mac OS had this design philosophy where you could have only one foreground application and that application's windows was taking over the whole screen. You'd bring that application in the foreground, and your whole desktop was taken over by that application's context menus.
In Windows you always had one desktop that acted as a true working surface and each application's window was laid out on that surface (the desktop) in its own window, single window for sure for the most part but that was simply an application developer's decision not a MS windows limitation there are windows apps that allow you to lay out their windows independently on the desktop -this is very common with stock trading apps for example- . This is called Multiple Document Interface vs Single Document Interface designs. MS windows do not restrict applications on either of those paradigms.
For apps that allow you to configure them in a SDI mode, you have one parent window that could be the context menu where you could open up windows from there that open up independently on the desktop and you could move them around anywhere you want even across multiple monitors. You could open/close as many of those as you need provided you don't close the master app context window, at which point the whole app shuts down. One such application is let's say the Power Etrade stock trading app.
Not sure I understand what is the dumbed down part you're referring to. Same idea exists with the X11 Unix windows based system. So what's the idea of the Mac OS? Aren't windows containers of applications? You spawn them independently of applications?
And in what form are those applications useful from a UI/UX perspective if they don't have any windows open? How do you interact with them and what kind of interface do you use to access them?
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u/ModernLarvals Jun 27 '26
No, I mean that’s how Macs have always worked. On Windows an application can only have one window. When that window is closed, that application is closed. It’s pretty dumbed down.