The Vulcan Death Grip

The BeOS, with it's true protected memory architecture, is extremely hard to crash these days. However, not every BeOS application is as solid, and even the best programmers have occasional bugs in their code. The reality of computing is that applications crash, if only every once in a while.

On the BeOS, thanks to that protected memory, when one application crashes, the system and the rest of your software will keep running. But that crashed application may be "stuck" and still be running, and may even be slowing your system down. Or maybe it's just got an annoying window on the screen, and you would like to make it go away.

On the Mac OS, when an application crashes or becomes unresponsive, you can do a Force Quit. On the BeOS, you use the Vulcan Death Grip instead. To kill an application using the VDG:

1. Press and hold down Control-Alt-Shift (or Command-Option-Shift if you have a Mac keyboard) on the right side of your keyboard.

2. Click on the application's icon in the Deskbar with your mouse pointer.

It's a slightly awkward contortion to hold down the keys on the right side of the keyboard and then use the mouse to click on the app's entry in the Deskbar, which is why this shortcut became known as the Vulcan Death Grip. Use it wisely!