Comment by microtonal

it's disingenuous to the user

That is nonsense. It is just a different model and the model Mac users have been used to since the 80ies. When I close a window/document, I often want to another document with the same application, so why close it? If I want to close an applications, I can use Cmd-q. Moreover, their visual presence is not gone, such an application is still in the Dock and in the app switcher.

And why do I care if an application continues running? If it hasn't been used for some time, macOS compresses its pages. And inactive native applications will be put in App Nap, which freezes the application, so that it doesn't use system resources until it is activated again.