Because Windows users always maximize their apps. Nobody knows why...

I'm sure they'd do the same across 3 or 6 screens. Probably in Windows the maximize button stops working if you don't use it often enough.

<RANT>
When people read magazines it's the only thing they look at. Me, I hold it up next to a TV so I can watch TV and read at the same time. WHY CAN'T EVERYONE BE AS AMAZING AS ME!?
</RANT>

I hope to god you aren't a software developer. And if you are, stick to the server side.

When you say "because most windows users do X" what you mean is, "most users do X". And guess what? While you may be some special, hyper-functional snowflake, if most users maximize their windows then chances are very good that it's because in general, maximized windows work better.

Dismissive attitudes like your own are a plague on open software and the reason so many OSS interfaces suck.

I have a piece of advice that will serve you in your professional and personal life: stop assuming that you're better than everyone else. Your way is not inherently superior. When you suspect that your approach to X is indeed superior, maybe you should back it up with some actual research instead of using the "I fucking rule!" design methodology.

It's been proven again and again that we're not much better than computers when it comes to *genuine* multitasking. We function through fast context switches. Maximized windows give us a full "visual context" that allows us to quickly acclimate when changing tasks.

Every interface is comprised of the same buttons, colors, shapes, etc. If you have three programs, each taking up part of your monitor, you're wasting cycles to zero in on the relevant tools when task switching. It's a minimal waste but it's real and it builds up over a day.

For example, with Firefox maximized on my right work monitor, the back button takes up the exact same pixels on the screen *every single time I use Firefox*.

With a non-maximized window, where's the back button? I have to look for it. Sure, I know the relative position of the button, but now I have to compute that in order to get my eyes to the back button. With an absolute position, it becomes muscle memory.

(Yes, I know, alt-left-key, etc. Why do you think hitting the keys is so much faster than using the graphical widgets? It's not the mouse, anyone who can play quake demonstrates that a mouse supports fast and very precise movements. It's muscle memory and lack of visual seek time.)

I feel that non-maximized applications, pop-up dialogues and pop-up alerts are the worst thing to happen to graphical interfaces. They're dirtying the visual context with the irrelevant. Furthermore, they over-complicate the design and code of graphical applications. All to support methods of multitasking that people aren't good at.

Oh, and before you say, "I'm good at multitasking!", I once thought I was as well. And no, you aren't.

Funny you say that. Thanks to the insane state of modern copyright, music companies are at least partially powered by dead stars. [Citation: Elvis, Biggie, Tupac, 0.5 * Beatles]

I think it's a little presumptuous to assume that a widespread experience (in this case, that quitting smoking is hard) is invalid because of a personal, anecdotal experience. It's easy to be dismissive of the masses in such a way; it's one of my own bad habits.

In this particular case I totally disagree with you; you were never really addicted. I smoked off and on, in a manner almost identical to what you described, for *ten years* before I became actually addicted to smoking. I would smoke regularly for a year or two, then I'd just decide I was tired of the habit and I'd stop for a year or two. I used to smirk at the idea of people who "can't stop".

"No," I'd say to myself, "you just don't want to stop."

The last time I started (a couple of years ago) it's like some switch flipped in my head. I now smoke a pack a day, it's horrible for me and it's way too expensive, and I'm making all kinds of plans to quit. Plans I haven't taken the first step toward implementing. I had a bad run financially around a year ago and I found myself severely restricting my food intake to cut costs so I could afford my smokes. I'm genuinely addicted after ten years of screwing around with the stuff.

"No," you say to yourself with a smirk. "You just wanted the smokes more."

Yeah, you're right. I wanted the smokes more than *food*. And what exactly do you think addiction is? Yes, addiction is largely behavioral. So is running when attacked, flinching when something is thrown at us, smacking at a burning sleeve, etc.

At the risk of oversimplifying, human brains are designed to measure the response of an action (pleasure/pain/etc) and give increasing emotional gravitation toward the actions which give a pleasure response and increasing repulsion toward the actions which give a pain response. This mechanism is deeply seated and terribly powerful. Further compounding the problem, it's a reaction *designed* to overpower reason.

It makes selective sense. Who survives better? The person who instinctively avoids pain, or the person who has to reason through the situation? The problem is that the advantage of that system (it's a dumb reaction) is also its greatest weakness. It can't distinguish between an illusory/destructive positive outcome, like from smoking a cigarette, versus a genuinely positive outcome, like putting out your burning shirt sleeve.

So to draw the line between habitual patterns and biological causes is a false dichotomy. Habitual patterns ARE a biological mechanism. And they're not "overblown". You just haven't run across a truly ingrained but negative habit yet.

However, I have a great experiment for you that'll put you face-to-face with that very power! Your urine, when it first exits your body, is sterile. It's totally safe. You rationally know it's totally safe. So next time you need to urinate, go in a cup and then drink it. See how you react. That reaction? It's illogical. What you're doing is safe and you know it. So why are you struggling? The power of lower-brain habits (such as don't ingest waste products) are overblown!

You may think they're not analogous, but they are; behavioral addiction uses the same mechanism. "Smokes > food" gets ingrained through the same mechanism as "waste product == BAD".

Drink up!