The "magic" and unattached Apple menu make is so much more difficult to train the uninitiated ... and it causes a number of complications re: what's running?, RAM depletion and file backup.
The Macintosh menus are attached to the top of the display, not to the windows. Apple had its menus at the top of the screen long before Microsoft tried to copy the Mac GUI, but changed it a bit so nobody would notice they were copying, uh, innovating.
Makes more sense to have only ONE menu for each program, instead of menus for each open window. Microsoft must have come up with that in their Department of Redundancy Department. Takes up less room to have top of screen menus rather than ones inside each window. More screen 'real estate' is better. It's also easier to keep programs open even though windows are closed so you don't have to relaunch over and over.
When you really need to know what's running, there's a tiny white arrow next to each running program in the Dock [my Dock is to the left and hidden except when I need it]. If you're a micromanager, you can keep the Activity Monitor open to watch how the visible and invisible processes are using CPU, real memory, shared memory, private memory and which ports are in use, including the Activity Monitor's use of CPU and memory.
The Dock came from NeXTSTEP, not as a "catch-up" to anything. The main difference from NeXT to Mac is that Mac OS X allows programs, documents and folders in the Dock instead of simply programs.
The operating systems are different. Get used to it. Vive la différence! Learn the idiosyncracies of multiple systems, appreciate and use them. Mac users have done it for years. So have a lot of Windows users. Your turn. Switch from program to program - Command + Tab [borrowed from Windows!]. Switch from window to window in a program - Command + tilde ~ [or accent grave `]. Easy.
Maybe you could use David Pogue's Missing Manuals. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
