Did some experimentation with this. If I have the 'close windows when closing an application' box checked which as I understand it disables Resume if I restart my iMac (running OSX 10.9.5) with a folder open and a document in a Mac app and a Firefox window open and I have the 'reopen windows when logging back in' checked when I restart only the Mac applications reopen (as well as the folder that was open before); Firefox does not reopen. If I do the same thing but have Safari open instead of Firefox that reopens when I restart as well as the folder that was open. If I uncheck the 'close windows when closing an application' box in system preferences general tab and have the 'reopen windows when logging back in' checked any application, whether Mac or third party opens.bayswater wrote:The feature is call Resume. It opens windows -- any that were open at shutdown. That includes windows that were opened by applications, not just finder windows (which is an application BTW). Resume was introduced in 10.7, presumably to allow you to just pick up where you left off in your last session. It creates and saves a database of the "saved state" of your applications and uses that to decide what to open on startup depending on how preferences are set.
If you choose "close window when closing an app", and uncheck the aforementioned box on shutdown that will help, You can make it app specific, somewhere in preferences. You can also use a terminal command to get rid of it entirely. (I'm not going to post one -- there are a lot of them and I haven't tried any of them)
So it's not a cut-and-dry (or is it try?) deal, at least in Mavericks.