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Using Activity Monitor to force quit an application is a common and effective method on macOS. Activity Monitor is a built-in utility that provides a visual representation of all the currently running processes on your Mac. When an application becomes unresponsive or crashes, users can open Activity Monitor, locate the troublesome application in the list, and choose to force quit it by selecting ‘Quit Process’ or ‘Force Quit’. This action closes the application, freeing up system resources and typically resolving the unresponsiveness.

While Terminal can also be used to force quit applications via command-line instructions, it may not be as user-friendly for those unfamiliar with the command-line interface. System Preferences does not provide a method to manage running applications directly; it's more about configuring system settings. Finder allows users to manage files and applications but does not specifically include the functionality to force quit apps. Therefore, Activity Monitor stands out as the most straightforward option for this task.