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Originally Posted by karlth
I've never heard a good explaination on why the X button minimizes the applications instead of closing them.
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That's easy, but most don't want to believe it. The concept was that memory management would take care of, switching things off if neccessary, providing more rapid response in applications the user used frequently. That was the genisis of the 'don't close' concept. The choice of X has been acknowledged as maybe a bad idea in hindsight. With no task bar to show open programs, the - (dash) for minimize wasn't entirely appropriate either. There wasn't any precedence for a 'background this app' icon.
Actually for a number of the 'normal' users I deal with, it doesn't make much difference to them. Most were barely aware that programs were running in the background. They turned on their devices change through the apps they want to use and turn it off. The average user doesn't even see any particular performance hit when working with a half a dozen stock apps open. I often help folks with issues and find at least that many apps running and generally that is not the problem.