Disable autosave

I'm really quite confused as to why so many people are down on Auto-save. The whole point is to make all those moments when a document is lost because yo uforgot to save a thing of the past. You can still create duplicates (Save As...) of files you are working on, You can still explicitly save when you want. And the entire auto-save system is smart - it tries to save when you are not working or take a pause so you aren't interrupted. Plus, the changes that are saved ore incremental, so it's not making a copy of the file for each version. It's great!

I highly doubt that Apple will make auto-save a toggle-able feature. It's too close of a core feature of Lion to give people the option to disable. I'm hoping for incremental updates (highlighted changes, easily distinguish user saves in Versions). So submit that feedback. But I'm honestly confused as to why people are considering leaving their Macs because of auto-save. It doesn't really take away anything from your current workflow, and instead adds a ton that's quite useful!

topher, I'm gonna keep this short.

• try to work with big files.
• try to work with files in your dropbox
• try to work with files on a shared volume.

There needs to be an off switch.

I will admit I haven't worked with files on a shared volume yet - but large keynote files (and I mean LARGE, 400-800 MBs easy) work just fine. I haven't been monitoring the file size that much, but I know that auto-save works incrementally, so I'm assuming the file size differences aren't too great.

The basic idea is good and no one would complain if there was a background feature to restore your documents in case of a crash, power loss or "not-saved" mishap.

What we have here nothing like a fall-back or restore help but more like a forced saving procedure. A very hungry pussycat.

For my part I am afraid to open documents because that might break my valuable content. Lion saves everything by default and so I am unsure what is saved now and what not. It might save things I don't want to be saved.

I think people are a bit confused, or anxious about leaving the save decisions and procedure to the system. A computer can never know what the user has in mind.

That's my personal impression and I'm still in the phase of trying out.

Edit:

Autosave interferes my typing (kicks me out for the save process) on 2 MB Numbers and Pages files.

Working with Textedit on an active FTP connection is no good idea either.

lucafrombrooklyn wrote:

(Believe it or not, "Revert to saved..." is not undoable right now, so that if you go back to a previous version, you loose track of your own changes.

If you press <Cmd S> your current version will be saved, along with the normal periodic versions. It is in the stack, so yes it is "undoable".

In fact if you make a mess, which I often do, you just need to save it and then "Revert to Saved" to restore the previous version.

Simple isn't it!

The versions are in a "star wars" stack, with tabs giving the time saved, as with Time Machine backups. Of course, if you need a particular version you can make a copy. You can "pull out" any version you want and it is very undoable. Yes, simple.

If it's core feature it made me switch back do Snow Leopard. But I have to upgrade again soon since I do development. I could live with versions as long as it doesn't eat up all my limited SSD space. But auto-save is really annoying: when I crop some photo in the old Preview it's instantaneous, but on Lion it takes several seconds and it ends up with lots of useless duplicates files. Sure, I can use third party apps... And system really feals slower in my 2009 macbook air.

Luca, stop spreading misinfo:

If you use "revert to saved", you do not go back to the previous version YOU saved, but to the full lists of versions automatically saved, among which you will never be able to pull out the one you actually saved.

That is absolutly NOT how it works. Revert to saved only gives you a display of saves that YOU made. People are getting really confused over autosave and versioning...

People are getting really confused over autosave and versioning...

I am not sure if people are confused about them or confused about Apple's logic in making them universal to the OS.

It is really a deal breaker for me ... just cant ascertain if Apple crew is victim of some group conspiracy where they were fed paint chips in Lion design process, have a touch of megalomania, or are just part of the dumbing down of society.

Aside from the autosave / versions, not sure why the need to make a macbook pro appear to be like a 17" iPhone. The whole thing is just rediculous and without merit; in lieu of a fix, want nothing to do with the mentality, which means goodbye to Apple.

Ha that's funny! But even u seemed confused. I think what Apple has decided to do is to make versioning systematic across the OS. As a creative who has tried so many pitiful attempts to do this on a filetype or product by product basis, I think Apple is making the right decision. Even with what the got today, it looks like it has the potential to solve a problem that's been around since the IBM/370. I have no clue why people compare Lion to an iPhone and shy away. That's just smart marketing by Apple and has nothing to do with the OS. Just ignore launchbad, it's eyecandy for the masses. Ignore swipes and wipes and triple-bypass taps, it's not even needed, and again, it's there to sell magic trackpads. But saying that this effort is without merit is a tad unfair, no?

I don't think you are right. "Revert to Saved" just brings up the star wars thing with the versions listed, all of them.

Anyway, when I'm working on my best sellers, I used "Save As" at the end of each chapter and added a ch1, ch2 etc onto the file name. I can do exactly the same now, using "Duplicate". The versions thing is more of a recovery aid or for forensic analysis perhaps.

If they hadn't renamed "Save As" to "Duplicate", this thread would probably not exist.

The versions thing is more of a recovery aid or for forensic analysis perhaps.

If they hadn't renamed "Save As" to "Duplicate", this thread would probably not exist.

Love it...CSI Cupertino! And on the rename, I bet ur right. Apple could have never mentioned it in the marketing blurb, few would have ever noticed.

I totally agree with you, the user should be able to choose (especially when the feature in question does not require to re-design the whole system).

But when you compare with Windows, please, be honest. The file system almost did not change between Windows 98 (!!!!) and Windows 7. It even has a compatibility mode to make sure that your very old softwares can run on your latest version of Windows.

Run a computer on Windows 98, and one on Windows 7, there is almost no difference at all on how you handle files. I would love to hear an example about how Windows made you change your workflow.

I both like Windows and OS X, no one is better than the other. But one of the most amazing features of Windows is especially that it is retro-compatible with pretty much everything, and therefore allows you to upgrade without changing anything to your habits, as the settings and funtions are consistent, since Windows 98.

WIndows changes, but always allows the user to stick to its old habits. Lion made that mistake, it changed, but removed the old features, instead of giving the user a choice.