Quicken Mac should quit (or offer to quit) when all windows are closed

jacobs

Many Mac users are confused that clicking the red close button on the main Quicken window does not actually quit the application. They thin they have "closed out of Quicken", but they haven't. Especially because many people have used iPads or iPhones, where actually quitting apps is not required, they don't understand the Mac is different, and that there are some functions in Quicken which are only triggered when the program is quit or launched. I have seen numerous painful examples on this forum where users weren't generating backups, or weren't having the date of the next transaction reset, because they were leaving Quicken open and running rather than actually quitting. 

Quicken should quit — or offer to quit — when all Quicken windows are closed.

So if I have just the main Quicken window open, and I press the red button to close the window, Quicken should either just quit or pop up a dialog box: "Do you want to Quit Quicken?" If I have multiple Quicken windows open, this action shouldn't happen until I close the last of those windows (e.g. have no more widows open). 

If the developers feel this could cause a problem for any users, then a preference setting could be added for "Quit Quicken when all Quicken widows are closed"; the default for such a setting should be "on."

Jon

I must respectfully disagree. Quicken Mac should act like a Mac app, and with very few exceptions Mac apps don't close just because their windows are closed. Users who are new to the Mac platform need to get used to the way the Mac works, rather than each Mac app having to add a preference to act like a Windows app. (And Windows has to be where this is coming from; iOS apps don't behave this way so folks coming in from that platform wouldn't expect it, and I don't think Android does it either but I don't use an Android phone.)

If there is going to be a preference, the default setting should be to act like a Mac app. Former Windows users who prefer the Windows way of doing things can alter the setting.

jacobs

@Jon You're probably right; it shouldn't quit automatically because it's not typical Mac behavior. (Although some applications do quit when you close their window; even many Apple apps, like News, System Preferences, Contacts, Dictionary, Calculator, etc.) So I amend my request to only the idea that there should be a preference setting for Quicken to Quit when windows are closed, or to ask the user if it should quit the app when all windows are closed.

While it's fine to say users "need to get used to the way a Mac works," it's obvious not all users understand that closing a window doesn't quit the application — but that in Quicken's case, it can cause confusion or anguish. In many cases, the difference to users is undetectable. Close a Safari widow and it's "gone"; click Safari in the dock, and it comes back with an empty window — there is no consequence to not quitting the app. Same for Mail, or Word, Preview, etc. It really doesn't matter whether a user closes the active window or quits. (Especially with modern macOS memory management which has features like compressed memory and app nap which make it unnecessary for users to quit apps when done using them.) 

But in Quicken's case, closing the window(s) does not close the data file/database, which is not apparent to users. There can be negative consequences for not quitting; I've seen on this forum a number of times where users don't have the backup file they desperately need because they unknowingly hadn't been quitting Quicken and triggering Quicken to make those backups. Less critically, there are users who get frustrated that when they start using Quicken, transactions default to the date they used the last time they worked in Quicken — because they had closed the window instead of quitting the application. And there are users who have gotten perplexed simply because they closed the main window and didn't know how the get it back open from the Window menu.

Jon

jacobs said:

But in Quicken's case, closing the window(s) does not close the data file/database, which is not apparent to users. There can be negative consequences for not quitting; I've seen on this forum a number of times where users don't have the backup file they desperately need because they unknowingly hadn't been quitting Quicken and triggering Quicken to make those backups. Less critically, there are users who get frustrated that when they start using Quicken, transactions default to the date they used the last time they worked in Quicken — because they had closed the window instead of quitting the application.

@jacobs You bring up a good point here which I hadn't considered. I went & looked at a few other apps that operate on individual files or libraries (Numbers, Pages, BBEdit, Lightroom) and in each of them closing the window resulted in closing the file/library but not exiting the app. If Quicken did the same & closed the current file when the window was closed, it would solve those problems. I think changing Quicken to do that (rather than exiting the app) would be a good idea.

You'd still have the issue with users new to the platform not understanding what to do with a windowless app - you have to go to File > Open rather than the Window menu - but that gets back to learning the Mac.