I need to regularly shutdown brutally my Mac, due to program misbehavior (Starcraft 2 and EVE Online), which take control of the graphics and never surrender it back.
While I admire the tenacity of those embattled programs… I'd rather nuke them with a single stroke, as I would on Linux by killing the X server.
The irritating part is, the underlying OS runs fine, since I can move the mouse around, change luminosity or sound. I just can't switch back to anything, work, email… so I have to fully reboot.
How do I do that? What's the secret key combo?
Best Answer
Command ⌘ + Option + Esc opens the "Force Quit Application" dialog, which lets you select and kill running applications.
If that does not work,
Command ⌘ + Option + Shift + Esc held down for 5 seconds kills the foremost application.