The last few months I have been frustrated by TextEdit, which has kept crashing on me. Often when I ⌘-TAB from TextEdit to another application, TextEdit inexplicably crashed on me, and I had to go to find the application icon and start it again. The same has applied to Preview.
It turns out that this irritation is something Apple consciously inflicts on their users. The "logic", if one with some superhuman will can call it that, is described in their Developers' Programming Guide in the section The App Life Cycle. The section could equally well have been called The User Near Death Cycle, as its description of Termination is written to drive the user mad.
The introductory phrase "Automatic and Sudden Termination of Apps Improve the User Experience" is clearly an ugly lie. It goes on:
"Automatic termination eliminates the need for users to quit an app. Instead, the system manages app termination transparently behind the scenes, terminating apps that are not in use to reclaim needed resources such as memory."
However, I do not want the system to transparently mess up my workflow behind the scenes. TextEdit is one of my most used applications, and I never close it. I always want to have it available, and I want to be able to quickly ⌘-TAB to it at any time - with or without open documents.
Apple, in yet another attempt to stifle my creativity with bad design, prevents ⌘-TAB by closing the application whenever I'm not looking. "Transparently". "Behind the scenes". Or as one could also phrase it: "Behind my back". "Transpiercingly" stabbing the user's back.
Luckily I discovered a command to disable this blot on the art of software engineering. Just open the Terminal and type:
defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool TRUE
A restart seems necessary to activate the change, but the peace of mind is more than worth it.
It turns out that this irritation is something Apple consciously inflicts on their users. The "logic", if one with some superhuman will can call it that, is described in their Developers' Programming Guide in the section The App Life Cycle. The section could equally well have been called The User Near Death Cycle, as its description of Termination is written to drive the user mad.
The introductory phrase "Automatic and Sudden Termination of Apps Improve the User Experience" is clearly an ugly lie. It goes on:
"Automatic termination eliminates the need for users to quit an app. Instead, the system manages app termination transparently behind the scenes, terminating apps that are not in use to reclaim needed resources such as memory."
However, I do not want the system to transparently mess up my workflow behind the scenes. TextEdit is one of my most used applications, and I never close it. I always want to have it available, and I want to be able to quickly ⌘-TAB to it at any time - with or without open documents.
Apple, in yet another attempt to stifle my creativity with bad design, prevents ⌘-TAB by closing the application whenever I'm not looking. "Transparently". "Behind the scenes". Or as one could also phrase it: "Behind my back". "Transpiercingly" stabbing the user's back.
Luckily I discovered a command to disable this blot on the art of software engineering. Just open the Terminal and type:
defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool TRUE
A restart seems necessary to activate the change, but the peace of mind is more than worth it.
