In my experience (and yes, anecdote is not the singular of data), Windows users run everything in maximised, full-screen mode. Mac OS users have overlapping windows. Linux users do whatever seemed reasonable to whoever wrote their window manager.
Quite why this is I couldn't say; if you pushed me, I'd say it was to do with Fitt's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law), and more specifically the fact that in Mac OS the menu bar is always at the top of the screen, and therefore very easy to hit, because if your mouse goes up too far that doesn't matter. Windows applications have the menu at the top of the window, so people tend to maximise their windows to fit the entire screen to get the same effect. (Perhaps because you don't need to do this so much, the maximise button on Mac OS only makes the window as big as it needs to be, not as big as the screen.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-16 03:41 pm (UTC)Quite why this is I couldn't say; if you pushed me, I'd say it was to do with Fitt's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law), and more specifically the fact that in Mac OS the menu bar is always at the top of the screen, and therefore very easy to hit, because if your mouse goes up too far that doesn't matter. Windows applications have the menu at the top of the window, so people tend to maximise their windows to fit the entire screen to get the same effect. (Perhaps because you don't need to do this so much, the maximise button on Mac OS only makes the window as big as it needs to be, not as big as the screen.)