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by layer8 141 days ago
I don't disagree, but you have to know which applications reliably keep their state across restarts. You can't blindly rely on it on any desktop system. The Microsoft Office applications actually do auto-save documents since a couple of years ago, even though the recovery UX can be a bit awkward.

What Microsoft doesn't care about is that you may have applications running that don't do that, when Windows reboots for updates.
2 comments
wpm 141 days ago
On macOS the feature is baked into the OS's APIs, the app developer just opts into using them. If they don't, quitting with unsaved work will prompt the user modally, and block the restart to the point where the OS will timeout the reboot process and give up. The only way to purposefully lose unsaved work in almsot every app I've ever used on macOS is to yank the power cable or hold the power button down.

Window locations and app state are written to plist files, again, using OS libraries and APIs for app resume. I can reboot my Mac and not even realize it happened sometimes it all comes back the way it was.

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layer8 141 days ago
The blocking happens on Windows as well, except that the timeout logic is the reverse: it force-quits the applications then, because presumably the potential security update is more important.
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HendrikHensen 141 days ago
Yep. On Mac (and Linux, actually) I know of some applications that do that. I also know that on Windows most applications don't do that. I would also never leave un-saved work open on Windows.

I was replying to: "The fact that you leave unsaved work overnight is the actual crazy part". As long as you know which apps auto-save and know you can somewhat rely on them, it's not so crazy.

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