Matt Neuburg on Lion’s Automatic Termination

Matt Neuburg:

In my view, therefore, the attempt to copy the iOS experience to the Mac is inappropriate. Apple’s entire agenda here is misguided. On iOS, you can use only one application at a time, so it makes sense that the system can quit an application you’re not using; to help you, a recently used application is listed in the Fast App Switcher even if it is no longer running. But on the Mac, you can effectively use multiple applications at once — that’s what I was doing in this instance — and neither the Command-Tab switcher nor the Dock shows an application that has been automatically terminated.

Astute criticism. This is one of those places where Lion’s adoption of an iOS design just doesn’t fit with an existing and much-used Mac feature like Command-Tab switching.

★ Tuesday, 9 August 2011