>Believe it or not, full screen apps are a Windows thing.
Nope. It’s just that maximizing—single action to expand a window the whole screen minus the OS docks/taskbars—is present in every widely used OS except for Mac OS.
>they haven’t let go of the idea that all apps need to use the whole screen at all times
Not sure where you’re getting “at all times” from. Windows and Linux desktops all easily support having windows take up less than the whole screen. In fact, it’s easier than in Mac OS because of window snapping to sides and corners. It’s only that Mac OS makes it very clumsy to get the effect that maximizing has on every other OS.
Most 21st desktop UIs are, to a greater or a lesser degree, Windows ripoffs. Most of Win95 or later, but sometimes you can trace a specific version -- e.g. KDE apes Windows 98 in program design as well as function.
(Rendering filer window contents as HTML before displaying them using the browser engine: this was designed by Microsoft to evade prosecution by the US DOJ for anticompetitive bundling of IE with Windows. It tried to claim that IE was integral by, for example, rejigging Explorer to render using IE. The Win 95 and 95B versions do not do it; nor did NT 4 at launch.)
If you believe that all GUIs do this, that suggests that the only desktop GUIs you've seen are ones that are copies of the Windows design.
To the best of my ability to recall that long ago, before Windows 3 and OS/2, most GUIs didn't have a maximise function.
Examples: AmigaOS; DR GEM; classic MacOS; Sun OpenLook; Acorn RISC OS.
Prior to full-screen mode on macOS, you would option-click the window resize button to resize it to the full size of the screen. This still works. It just doesn’t snap.
Option-click maximizes to full screen minus menu bar and desktop volume icons.
Apps like games and screen savers don't seem top have trouble covering up the entire desktop and menu bar.
I prefer it to the current macOS Finder where zooming covers up the menu bar and desktop volume icons, and where there doesn't seem to be an easy way to zoom to content.
>Believe it or not, full screen apps are a Windows thing.
Nope. It’s just that maximizing—single action to expand a window the whole screen minus the OS docks/taskbars—is present in every widely used OS except for Mac OS.
>they haven’t let go of the idea that all apps need to use the whole screen at all times
Not sure where you’re getting “at all times” from. Windows and Linux desktops all easily support having windows take up less than the whole screen. In fact, it’s easier than in Mac OS because of window snapping to sides and corners. It’s only that Mac OS makes it very clumsy to get the effect that maximizing has on every other OS.