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The dock is a quick way to locate and group the top applications you use most often. Consider them shortcuts; they don’t take up extra space on your disk, they aren’t running in memory.
When an app is running, it appears in the dock with a little dot under it. So it can be doing something for you, regardless if there are windows open or not. Quitting the app ends it, and the dot will go away.
If you ran an app recently that isn’t pinned to the dock, and have quit it, you may see its icon on the right with the last few you ran. That way, if you needed to, you could run it again (maybe you accidentally quit it, or it’s the next day and you don’t want to hunt for it). You also have the opportunity to pin it to the dock and organize it where you want.
You can unpin every thing from the dock, but it’s not very helpful, as now you have to rummage around Application folders or use Spotlight or its clones.
Beware of deleting system applications you think you don’t use. MacOS does not ship with crap ware. I had a friend who “didn’t want all that junk” and uncomfortably learned the contacts tied to the calendar (e.g. birthdays) and the email completions and messages identifying who people were and to photos identifying people.
Mac tries very hard not to fragment applications all over the place. The system has its stuff, you have global applications, you have your personal applications, and you have your data.
You can move things around and they still work. Apps don’t have to be in a particular spot to work.
You can even copy them to another machine, and most of the time they work.
You can even connect to another machine via Finder, and run its apps. Same for putting apps on external drives.
Surprisingly, this isn’t new. Mainframes and personal computers from the 1960s on up do this. It’s Windows that is the odd ball.
When you get an inspection sticker, take one drop of 3-in-1 oil and put it on the sticky side and spread it around with your finger over the whole sticky area. Now apply the inspection sticker to the windshield. Because it’s not being held on by glue, but surface tension, you can reposition it after it’s on the glass too. If you need to remove it, you need no tools — you can peel it off in one piece with your fingernail. And you can do the same trick to re-adhere it to another surface.
