OS X Lion app management antics…
As if all of this isn’t enough, Lion features one final application management twist. When an application is terminated in Lion, all the usual things appear to happen. If the running application indicator is enabled, the small dot will disappear from beneath the application’s Dock icon. Assuming it’s not a permanent resident, the application icon will disappear from the Dock. The application will no longer appear in the command-tab application switcher, or in Mission Control. You might therefore conclude that this application’s process has terminated.
A quick trip to the Activity Monitor application or the “ps” command-line utility may dissuade you of that notion. Lion reserves the right to keep an application’s process around just in case the user decides to relaunch it. Upon relaunch, the application appears to start up instantly—because it was never actually terminated, but was simply removed from all parts of the GUI normally occupied by running applications.
That’s right, gentle readers. In Lion, an ostensibly “running” application may have no associated process (because the operating system automatically terminated it in order to reclaim resources) and an application may have a process even when it doesn’t appear to be running. Applications without processes. Processes without applications. Did Lion just blow your mind?
