It's a part of Mac's design philosophy, probably goes all the way back to 1984. Since we're discussing making XFCE act more like a Mac, I would find the experience incomplete without this important detail.
It might boil down to preference, but - trying to be objective - this paradigm makes more sense, especially as you watch apps on other systems struggle to achieve the same goals (e.g. via tray icons), which usually don't work consistently, or require setting additional preferences. If I close a music player window, I want the music to keep playing. If I close the activity monitor window, I want the app to continue accumulating stats to make a graph - unless I quit the app entirely. Closing the window/tab (Cmd-w) and quitting the app (Cmd-q) are distinct actions. Now why would a note-taking app work differently? This is a more coherent design, that puts less cognitive load on the user.
It works because each app tries to stick to one task - you're switching between tasks, not windows. The counterexample that illustrates how bad can this problem get, is the terminal apps: every window with mutt, vim, ncmpc, top, or irssi looks the same, has the same icon, BUT has different keyboard shortcuts! Madness.
> It would be cool if MacOS offered an option to chose.
I will argue that having a more thought-thru and consistent paradigm is more important than having more options - especially if all the options still can't get you a decent experience.
It's definitely achievable through third-party applications; you can probably DIY something using Hammerspoon.
It might boil down to preference, but - trying to be objective - this paradigm makes more sense, especially as you watch apps on other systems struggle to achieve the same goals (e.g. via tray icons), which usually don't work consistently, or require setting additional preferences. If I close a music player window, I want the music to keep playing. If I close the activity monitor window, I want the app to continue accumulating stats to make a graph - unless I quit the app entirely. Closing the window/tab (Cmd-w) and quitting the app (Cmd-q) are distinct actions. Now why would a note-taking app work differently? This is a more coherent design, that puts less cognitive load on the user.
It works because each app tries to stick to one task - you're switching between tasks, not windows. The counterexample that illustrates how bad can this problem get, is the terminal apps: every window with mutt, vim, ncmpc, top, or irssi looks the same, has the same icon, BUT has different keyboard shortcuts! Madness.
> It would be cool if MacOS offered an option to chose.
I will argue that having a more thought-thru and consistent paradigm is more important than having more options - especially if all the options still can't get you a decent experience.
It's definitely achievable through third-party applications; you can probably DIY something using Hammerspoon.