Disable autosave

before you could just close without saving, now you cannot.

How you are going to find which version is the one you want to keep?

I really do not see your problem and you have just contradicted yourself. First you complain that files don't save when closing, now you are complaining they do save.

If I want a file to be saved, I do a Cmd-S as I always did. If my document is good I save it, if it is bad I quit with it unsaved, or now I can revert to a good version.

The versions are just an extension of the old .bak concept in Word and the presentation is in line with Time Machine backups. Finding the historical version you want has the same difficulty. Although it is usually only one or two steps back.

You can revert to another version or even make edits between versions.

I wont pretend to understand why you are using Preview to edit a CAD document with multiple layers, unless it is a condensed version of the file. How large is the file?

putnik wrote:

quit but don't save

....

So now the file is in an "edited" state but not saved.

So what is different from any other file editing system. If you don't save the edit before you close the file?

In fact, if I make a messy edit, I want that it does not save automatically when I quit. This happens to me quite often...

That's precisely my issue. In Lion, try doing the steps that I wrote. The file *will* be saved automatically. It is autosaved by TextEdit while in an "edited" state (You will see "edited" in light grey in the title bar before you quit). The file on disk doesn't represent the last version that I saved with "cmd-S". it is whatever happened to be on screen when I quit TextEdit. In order to get the file I last saved with "cmd-S" I have to open TextEdit and then do a File->Revert document and then find the one that was saved with Cmd-S rather than an autosave that happened when I quit TextEdit. This is a pain in the rear. Furthermore there is no way that I can see to distinguish the two (an autosave and a cmd-S save) so I just have to figure out which is which on my own.

What's more.. a copy of the file doesn't retain all the previous versions. Which means I can drag an autosaved version to a USB stick when, in fact I wanted the last version I saved with "cmd-S" and I can't get at the previous versions unless I go back to the original file. As I said before.. there is no way to know, from within the finder, that the file is an autosave and there is no way, within the finder, to browse previous versions. So I will just blindly copy the wrong information because Lion is doing something silly with autosaving.

The wole thing is a confusing and complicated mess and Apple needs to get rid of it.

putnik wrote:

If I want a file to be saved, I do a Cmd-S as I always did. If my document is good I save it, if it is bad I quit with it unsaved, or now I can revert to a good version.

It is *not* unsaved. It is autosaved over top of your original file. Try it. I've tried this in Preview and TextEdit. They both exhibit the same behaviour.

• Load a jpeg in Preview (one that you've modified recently so it's not locked)
• Brighten the colors
• Quit without hitting cmd-S (note that you don't get an option to quit without saving.. it just saves whether you want it or not)

• drag the jpeg from Finder into a new mail message
• note that the brighter colours are there

This is *bad*

Message was edited by: berj

• Load a jpeg in Preview (one that you've modified recently so it's not locked)
• Brighten the colors
• Quit without hitting cmd-S (note that you don't get an option to quit without saving.. it just saves whether you want it or not)

• drag the jpeg from Finder into a new mail message
• note that the brighter colours are there

Out of curiosity, I actually followed your steps although I usually use a photo editing software for this type of work. FWIW, to me, Preview is what its' name implies: a preview of an image, etc.

In any case, I followed your steps and, yes, the image is different (in my case, I darkened it).

But then, I did what you have not done:

I clicked on "browse all versions" (the tiny triangle right next to your document's name)

I was then able to pick whichever version I wanted, restore the old one, etc. - multiple options available. That part of Auto Save is called Versions.

You can use one of those in your email - there is no need to use the one you changed.

I was then able to pick whichever version I wanted, restore the old one, etc. - multiple options available. That part of Auto Save is called Versions.

You're missing the point. If I, the user, being the only one who knows what I do or do not want to save has not told the OS to save any changes, it should not be saving anything.

Kurt Lang wrote:

If I, the user, being the only one who knows what I do or do not want to save has not told the OS to save any changes, it should not be saving anything.

Right.

You're missing the point. If I, the user, being the only one who knows what I do or do not want to save has not told the OS to save any changes, it should not be saving anything.

Not really. I was simply offering a way to work with the "this-is-how-it-is-now-and-you-can't-do-anything-about-it" ways and "features" of Lion rather than just complaining about it. I absolutely loathe that feature of Lion - excuse me, there is another that I detest more: Resume. However, this is how the OS is designed and works, so unless you want to revert to SL (and I have two internal partitions: one with SL, one with Lion), you need to find a way to work with it that will make it suitable/workable for you.

You bought a new tool.

You must learn the way to use it.

If you aren't sure that you will want to save the ocument in progress, open the original, duplicate it and work on the replicate. As long as you will not save it, nothing will be written on the disk.

As I wrote many times, I didn4t wait for Lion to save documents which may be used to create new ones as templates/stationary.

Doing that I don't need to open then duplicate.

Preview was named this way when it was just a viewer. Each new version adde several functions so now it's more han a viewer. I would not use it to edit picture but some user do that. Once again, if you are not sure to retain your changes, work on a duplicate on define your original files as template.

It's really funny. The new features were perfectly described by Apple. Only users which bought new macs have no choice for their operating systems. Other weren't forced to buy an Operating system which doesn't fit your needs.

Good or Bad, Life is made of changes. You are perfectly free to behave as an adult customer and refuse a tool which doen't match our needs. Knowing Apple staff, I guess they knew that the new features will be rejecterd by a few customers. They just bet that new customers will be largely more numerous than old bored ones and it seems that they were right.

I didn't used Preview before Lion so I no more use it under Lion.

At this time, the new behavior apply to five applications it's really not a huge problem.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 25 octobre 2011 22:19:19

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

Then, doesn't the "Edited" caption tell you that the file has changed. If you want an older version you just revert to it.

I was simply offering a way to work with the "this-is-how-it-is-now-and-you-can't-do-anything-about-it" ways and "features" of Lion rather than just complaining about it.

Complaining is how users get things changed. If no one complains, Apple can only assume everything is just peachy. To repeat (not directed at you personally) once again, this should be a user choice.

However, this is how the OS is designed and works, so unless you want to revert to SL (and I have two internal partitions: one with SL, one with Lion), you need to find a way to work with it that will make it suitable/workable for you.

Already did that from the day I purchased Lion. I set it up on an erased partition so I can test and play with it until I find it to be in a usable state. Actually, there's no reason I couldn't be using it now since I don't use a single Apple supplied app to do any work. So Quark, all Adobe software and everything else I use still does Save As.

Then, doesn't the "Edited" caption tell you that the file has changed. If you want an older version you just revert to it.

The point, again, is that I shouldn't have to waste my time reverting. If I had wanted to save any changes, I'd have done it myself.

KOENIG Yvan wrote:

{snip}

It's really funny. The new features were perfectly described by Apple. Only users which bought new macs have no choice for their operating systems. Other weren't forced to buy an Operating system which doesn't fit your needs.{snip again...}

The new features were absolutely NOT perfectly described by Apple. Yes, there were descriptions but there was nothing to lead one to conclude that there were some potentially serious problems with the implementation.

As one senior citizen to another you should have learned by now that sometimes the best response is no response.

babowa wrote:

You can use one of those in your email - there is no need to use the one you changed.

And as I pointed out in my original post in this thread.. versions are lost when you move a file from one volume to the next so the only one that exists is the autosaved one.. there is no way to revert.

This feature is incomplete and poorly thought out from the beginning. It needs to be fully functional from the Finder in order to at least ameliorate some of these issues.

As a work-around, how about using duplicate with a particular version and then drag that over to another volume..... (remember, I am not making excuses for this, just trying to get it to work with as little effort as possible).

@ Kurt Lang:

I agree with most of what you said; however, I don't think Apple pays particular attention to these forums - I've submitted my share of product feedback countless times. Apple does look at those as well as the bug reports from the developer pages.

I agree with most of what you said; however, I don't think Apple pays particular attention to these forums

For the most part, no. Threads that get a lot of posts though do get escalated at times by the hosts to the powers that be.

I've submitted my share of product feedback countless times. Apple does look at those as well as the bug reports from the developer pages.

I've used the bug report site for a handful of things. I haven't brought this one up yet since it's getting so much attention in various threads, I kind of figured 10.7.2 would give users an option to disable Autosave/Versions/Duplicate, and use the traditional Save As method. But for now, it seems someone is unwilling to give users that choice. Which makes no sense. The user can always find ways to use a computer which best suits them. They can't do that if someone, somewhere, thinks they know better than you how you do your own work, or how you think. Which of course is impossible, but that's what this "feature" tries to do.

KOENIG Yvan wrote:

Preview was named this way when it was just a viewer. Each new version adde several functions so now it's more han a viewer. I would not use it to edit picture but some user do that. Once again, if you are not sure to retain your changes, work on a duplicate on define your original files as template.

Who's talking about editing? I have about 50GB of photos to look through -- I'm not editing.. I'm just inspecting. I use preview for that. Some of the photos are rotated wrong and others are a bit dark. While I am looking through them I will rotate them or brighten them just so I can get a better look. In Snow Leopard when I quit my preview session it would ask me if I want to save anything. Now it just saves over my files. Are you suggesting that I make a duplicate of all 50GB of photos just to view these files the way I always have?

So let's got to an alternate method. Lock all the files so that Preview won't save over them.

But now when I try to make a change (again.. just to view.. not to edit) preview tells me that the file is locked and I need to duplicate or cancel my change. Fine. But now it opens the image up in a whole new window and I can no longer view the image in sequence with all of the others (order is important).

So now I've got to find another application to do something that Preview was *perfect* for prior to Lion. In other words.. Apple broke what didn't need fixing.

I'm all about change.. change is good. It's how we got to where we are.

What I'm *not* all about is change that reduces usability and increases chance of error and data loss. The feature itself (autosave and versions) is fine. I've got no problem with it philosophically. The problem I have is with how they *implemented it* (unsafely and incompletely).

It's really funny. The new features were perfectly described by Apple. Only users which bought new macs have no choice for their operating systems. Other weren't forced to buy an Operating system which doesn't fit your needs.

The world simply doesn't work that way. Not for me anyways. We have an office with 30 Mac workstations. They are all running Snow Leopard. We are no longer able to buy machines which run snow leopard.. the next time we buy a computer we will *have* to upgrade everything to Lion otherwise we would be in the position where some machines would behave one way and others would behave another way -- ie an IT nightmare.

Then there's the issue of my laptop. It's 3 years old. On its last legs. I'm going to need to replace it soon. So I upgraded to Lion on it so that I can at least be prepared for what will be coming when I need to upgrade. What's more.. if I want to be able to enjoy the old features of Mobile Me on my iDevices by using iCloud then I do indeed need to upgrade to Lion -- not right away but certainly before next june when Mobile Me goes away. So yes.. I am being forced to upgrade and deal with Lion. It's either that or leave the platform. I'm not going to do that without at least making my voice heard about how they've screwed up. Hopefully they will come to their senses and realize that they need to fix it.