Why Lion's dock may mislead you

On Mac OS X Lion, running applications may not appear on the dock, and dock icons may not represent a running application. Here's one example of why that can be confusing for the user.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• mac
• osx
• lion
• dock
• processes
• applications

[helgiorn]

What happens if you press that "Force Eject" button? And why is that not an option?

[MacTutorialsAndStuff]

@helgiorn That will probably work, but it's unnecessary and dangerous. If something happens to be writing to the card when you click it, the card will become corrupted.

[matjam9000]

That is utter shit.

If I quit an application, I expect it to ... quit.

[MacTutorialsAndStuff]

@matjam9000 If you look closely, I never actually quit QuickTime. It just closed the window. QuickTime doesn't close if you just close all its windows, but Lion kills off the dock icon anyway, even if the process is still there. It's baffling.

[ctjameson]

How is unison running as well but, not in the bar? Were you downloading anything at that time?

[MacTutorialsAndStuff]

@ctjameson That's the command line version of unison. It doesn't have an icon.

[metalhaze]

You also might want to think about just hitting the space bar when you have a video highlighted on your SD card to preview the video INSTEAD of opening it in the full blown Quicktime app. I am pretty sure that will also solve your problem.

[metalhaze]

It's called "CMD + Q" instead of "CMD + W"

Make it a habit and this problem becomes a non-issue.

But you are right, this needs to be fixed for the 90% of people that would just close the window but not close the app itself.

Good find!

[andreroquem]

The problem is not application management; it's that quicktime keeps the video locked after you closed the video's window. quicktime should release the lock on the video when you close the window, that's the bug.

[psychofish25]

@MacTutorialsAndStuff I've only noticed this problem with Quicktime. If I'm watching video off an SD Card, I can't eject the card even after I quit Quicktime. It's pretty annoying.

[idmars10]

Lion also opens applications in the applications folder on my backup disk.

[Techgeek390]

Report it to Apple