> I've never understood the "no open windows but still running" model
Here's a very specific use case that comes up all the time (for me, but I think it's more general too) where this model is superior: I have a folder-ful of files that I need to go through one-by-one. In my case it's usually assignments my students have handed in. What I want to do is open the first one, then Cmd-W Cmd-O and look at the next one, and so on. What I have to do if I'm unlucky enough to be on a windows machine is open the first one, look at it, open the second, click or Ctrl-Tab to the first, close it, and then look at the second. This is excruciating. Alternatively, I could keep one dummy file (or perhaps just the first one) open while I sequence through the rest. This is also annoying.
This is roughly the same reason (or one of them, anyway) that I also like the screen-wide menubar: at least some actions are relevant to the program, not to the document, and there's no reason that I should need a document open to execute those actions.
If you're not editing the files, can't you just use Quicklook to basically navigate through them iteratively and intuitively? I've added plugins to support php and java. (IIRC from here: http://www.quicklookplugins.com/ )
You could have a 2nd app like a spreadsheet for "scoring"... in fact this is what I did when I'm reviewed resumes for new hires.
Historically, most applications supporting multiple files would have used MDI interface, which is perfectly happy having just a window with no documents open (the equivalent of a Mac app with no windows open). Normally, this window has nothing but a menu bar, and perhaps a toolbar.
But for single-document applications, what I do (on Windows, running Cygwin), is roughly this:
for f in *.your-file-ext; do cygstart --wait "$f"; done
That'll iterate through each of the files in sequence, opening them up in the application registered for that file type, and wait until the application is closed for each file.
If some action is required, I might stick a 'read' in to that ad-hoc script.
(Disclaimer: I contributed the --wait flag to cygstart for just this kind of task.)
Here's a very specific use case that comes up all the time (for me, but I think it's more general too) where this model is superior: I have a folder-ful of files that I need to go through one-by-one. In my case it's usually assignments my students have handed in. What I want to do is open the first one, then Cmd-W Cmd-O and look at the next one, and so on. What I have to do if I'm unlucky enough to be on a windows machine is open the first one, look at it, open the second, click or Ctrl-Tab to the first, close it, and then look at the second. This is excruciating. Alternatively, I could keep one dummy file (or perhaps just the first one) open while I sequence through the rest. This is also annoying.
This is roughly the same reason (or one of them, anyway) that I also like the screen-wide menubar: at least some actions are relevant to the program, not to the document, and there's no reason that I should need a document open to execute those actions.