Q: Disable autosave

I am no longer going to respond to a single thing you say, Yvan. You seem to think your opinion is tantamount to an immutable fact. You haven't presented anything based on facts, or even here-say, yet insist that Apple will not listen to its user base. You've wasted more than enough of my time, and everyone else's.

KOENIG Yvan wrote:

 

As far as I know, Filemaker isn’t a toy but a productivity tool. Its behavior is at work since many years and Apple (which own FileMaker) never introduced a switch allowing users to disable Autosave.

Congratulations, Yvan...you've just shot your own argument in the foot!

Yes, since the introduction of FileMaker 1.0 in 1990, the program has ALWAYS saved its data automatically, with no user interaction. This is the behavior its users have universally come to expect.

If FileMaker 12 were released, and users were suddenly told they now have to save their data manually, how do you suppose they would react? A large percentage of its user base would be clamoring for a return to the same operating pardigm they'd known for as many as 21 years.

What Apple has done with its apps since the introduction of Lion is an exact equivalent of this scenario. They've changed the operating paradigm from one that worked perfectly well to one that, whatever advantages it may convey, clearly conveys major disadvantages to many users — disadvantages that have been clearly articulated here and at many other locations on the web.

Now, I dare you to respond to this first part of my post, while ignoring the questions I posed (for the third time) in my previous one.

Here is iteration #4 of those questions:

1) What is wrong with making Auto Save/Versioning the default, but including the option for expert users who so choose to disable it? Please describe, in detail, the specific disasters that will result from this.

2) How, exactly, to you defend a "feature" that renders a program unusable (the example of the Keynote presentation with large files imbedded that brings up a spinning beach ball every few seconds during Auto Save)? Why is this perfectly OK with you? What alternative do you propose for this user? (And PLEASE don't say PowerPoint!)

I just noticed this in Yvan's last post:

They clearly said that iOS and OSX will be more and more close.

And where did he get that idea from? Here of course, in my statement:

A desktop computer can never by used like a tablet (iPad) and get any reasonable amount of work done. They are two very different types of computers with very different uses.

So once again, with no links to substantiate his claims, he jumps in and presents his opinion as fact.

I can only derive from his behaviour throughout this entire thread that Yvan is a troll of the worst kind, and is delibarately baiting everyone else. If he can't answer a question, he ignores it. If you state your opinion or desire for a change, he counteracts it with the same non factual garbage.

He should be permanently banned from these forums.

Dont be paranoiac, I wrote that Apple planned to make iOS and OSX more and more close weeks ago.

It was perfectly clear in the WWDC 2011 keynote.

I'm remembering that somebody answered that he already read such thing elsewhere but hoped that it was wrong.

I'm not fond of this evolution but  the fact that we dislike such change doesn't matter, it's on the road and we will not stop it.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 30 octobre 2011 22:08:51

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

And only after strong words do you reply in a gentlemanly manner with notation to back up at least one thing you've said. I can at least say thank you for that.

I have just encountered another issue. The menu now has two "Duplicate" commands (Idk how you call that in english). One in "File" and one in "Edit". I have wondered why Keynote wouldn't accept the keyboard-shortcut assignment. I wanted to make file duplication at least accessable with a shortcut but it got stuck to Duplicate in "Edit".

By default cmd-D is Edit>Duplicate. Lion assigns new shortcuts for "Duplicate" to this menu item and overwrites the cmd-D. As a consequence, you can't assign a shortcut to File>Duplicate.

DChord568 wrote:

 

1) What is wrong with making Auto Save/Versioning the default, but including the option for expert users who so choose to disable it? Please describe, in detail, the specific disasters that will result from this.

I repeat that I receive every weeks messages fropm users which loose their documents or got corrupted ones and ask for help.

Apple introduced Versions and Autosave to solve these problems.

I'm not working in their labs so I may just try to guess the reasons of their choices.

And my guess is that they thought that an Autosave feature which may be disabled will be inefficient.

They had the example of Filemaker which behave this way with no problem.

So it's easy to guess that they conclude that applying the same scheme to every app was a good answer to a true problem.

If the feature is optional, we will continue to have reports from users loosing documents and Apple want to get rid of that.

There is such an optional feature in iWork apps from the beginning and it's clear that most users don't enable it … and post crying when they loose a document. It sounds foolish but once, I received a document which was a quite finished thesis. The owner had absolutely no backup.

There is also an option allowing them to urge the app to store a preview.pdf file in their documents.

Sometimes, this document was the one allowing users to retrieve their datas in a corrupted file but most of the corrupted docs which are sent to me in hope that I will revive them don't embed this kind of emergency item.

IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. publish books entitled xxxx for dummies.

Apple publish applications for dummies.

Look, at the entry page of these frorums.

Some applications are described as Professional ones which means that others aren't.

iPhoto is cheaper than Aperture but if you want to make professional work, better use Aperture.

Apple deliberately refuse to enter the Professional area for some products like iWork or iLife.

Is it surprising that they adjust their products to the targetted customers ? My answer is NO.

I perfectly know that disabling the Versions/Autosave features may be done.

At this time, the app behave a way under 10.6.x, an other way under 10.7.x.

I guess that it would be easy to change this test so that it behave the old way if the system is 10.6.x or if the user checked a box.

I'm even surprised, if the problem is so huge that you describe it, that nobody has deliver a tool changing the existing test. It's one of the reasons which make me think that the number of bored users like you is really small.

What's sure is that:

(1) Lion is available since three months,

(2) since this delivery you are claiming that it brought awful features

but I see no echo from Apple which took time to deliver two updates for the system itself.

2) How, exactly, to you defend a "feature" that renders a program unusable (the example of the Keynote presentation with large files imbedded that brings up a spinning beach ball every few seconds during Auto Save)? Why is this perfectly OK with you? What alternative do you propose for this user? (And PLEASE don't say PowerPoint!)

Don't be afraid, M…oSoft products aren't allowed to enter my machines so I will not tell you to use PowerPoint.

But I didn't wait you to write about the the spinning wheel problem.

Search in iWork dedicated forums with a request like :

snail AND iWork 

or

snail AND yvan

and you will see that I wrote upon this problem more often that I wrote in this thread.

More, in one of the threads dedicated to AutoSave (maybe this one), I wrote that I was glad that this problem increased because it will, at last, force Apple engineers to admit that there is a huge design flaw in the iWork applications.

If you really hope that Apple introduce a switch allowing you to disable Autosave and/or Versions, why are you running iWork 9.1 applications ?

Run iWork 9.0.5 ones, work the old way and wait for a new release.

From my point of view, Versions and Autosave will be permanently active in next releases but the apps will be redesigned so that they will no longer bring the spinning wheel.

Of course I may be wrong, but in this case we will get switches and redesigned apps because the engineers have no choice : the apps MUST be redesigned to become iCloud compliant.

The awful behavior of iWork apps is not new, it just highlighted by the introduction of Versions & Autosave.

Yesterdays I worked under 10.6.8 on a 5263 rows Numbers table containing six columns filled with pure datas and just the formula =""&F in cells of column G

The imported values embedded dates in column F. On my French System, imported dates default to the format 28 oct. 2011 but I want them to be 28/09/2011. To change the format, the app requires more than 20 minutes. It took less than 10 seconds in AppleWorks.

The hosting machine is described in my signature, I just started it from an external Firewire 800 HD with 10.6.8.

As you may see, there is no need for Lion, Versions and Autosave to see slooooooooooooooooooooow apps.

This awful behavior is reported since february 2009 without any change.

My bet is that we will get changes on this feature with next release.

If we really get that, honestly the fact that Versions & Autosave apply all the time or may be disabled is out of my own concern. In French : "'je m'en fout" or "je n’en ai rien à cirer".

May you at last understand that I'm trying to define a way to work with the existing tools, not with what this or that user is dreaming of. Existing tools are available, dreamed ones may be delivered one day or may never be.

As far as I know, those trying to make money with these products are you. On my side, it's not a problem. Earning one's living was my duty before 2003. Now, I'm retired and I'm busy spending what I earnt. I refuse when an user which I helped want to send me some reward.

If the answer given to the very first message posted in this thread was "We wish to get the ability to switch off Versions and/or Autosave", I would never enter it.

But I can't accept answers saying "Apple must give…".

Apple must nothing except make cash and during the late ten years (which is the correct syntax: the ten late years or the late ten years ?) they prove that they are efficient to do that. And yes, during these years, they dropped old users.

I know old friends which left Apple when they dropped OS 9.2.1.

I know old friends which left Apple when they dropped AppleWorks.

I know some of them which never accepted the switch to intel processors and decided to leave and enter the world which stick to Intel from day one.

It seems clear that we are not friends but I guess that if you leave the boat, nobody will cry in Cupertino.

I wish you that my understanding of Apple strategy is wrong but I'm quite sure that I'm right.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 30 octobre 2011 23:47:40

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

Wonderful, three months to discover that !

It was written during the last days of July or the first days of August in iWork dedicated forums.

What make the difference is that in iWork forums we are some helpers knowing every available menu items of the apps about which we are writting.

I wish to add that there are other duplicate menu item reported since february 2009.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 30 octobre 2011 23:53:44

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

Thank you, Yvan, for at least attempting to answer my questions (only after much prodding!). However, your answers still fall far short.

KOENIG Yvan wrote:

 

DChord568 wrote:

 

1) What is wrong with making Auto Save/Versioning the default, but including the option for expert users who so choose to disable it? Please describe, in detail, the specific disasters that will result from this.

 

I repeat that I receive every weeks messages fropm users which loose their documents or got corrupted ones and ask for help.

Apple introduced Versions and Autosave to solve these problems.

I'm not working in their labs so I may just try to guess the reasons of their choices.

And my guess is that they thought that an Autosave feature which may be disabled will be inefficient.

They had the example of Filemaker which behave this way with no problem.

So it's easy to guess that they conclude that applying the same scheme to every app was a good answer to a true problem.

If the feature is optional, we will continue to have reports from users loosing documents and Apple want to get rid of that.

How can something that gives users a very clear and sharply defined choice be considered "inefficient"? Most especially if the default status — the one that is present if the user does nothing — is to have Auto Save/Versioning in place so that the legions can be saved from their own incompetence.

You have still failed to describe the disaster that would take place if this were the case. What exactly would happen? Would users who desperately need Auto Save/Versioning somehow disable it by accident? Or for reasons unknown, decide to disable it without knowing the consequences of their actions? (An "are you sure?" warning dialog box would easily cover this unlikely eventuality.)

No, what would happen is that the users who need the protection of Auto Save/Versioning would have it — and wouldn't have to do a thing. The users who find that Auto Save/Versioning causes more problems for them than it "solves" would be able to go back to the same way of working on their Macs they have happily enjoyed for as many as 27 years.

And if they happen to "lose documents," they would fall into the same category I put myself in in an earlier post: shame on them for failing to save. They would enter into the "no Auto Save/Versioning" contract willingly, with eyes wide open. They would make their choice, and would then be obliged to abide by the consequences of it.

Please explain again why this would be a bad thing.

Apple publish applications for dummies.

 

Look, at the entry page of these frorums.

Some applications are described as Professional ones which means that others aren't.

iPhoto is cheaper than Aperture but if you want to make professional work, better use Aperture.

Apple deliberately refuse to enter the Professional area for some products like iWork or iLife.

Is it surprising that they adjust their products to the targetted customers ? My answer is NO.

I disagree with your premise that Apple makes "Applications for Dummies."

I also disagree with your conclusion that, because the iWork apps do not appear under Professional Apps in your list, that they therefore are not professional applications. I believe they appear in the way they do simply because Pages, Keynote and Numbers are part of the iWork suite and are identified as such.

The reality is, these applications are in daily use in hundreds of thousands of professional environments, including my own.

Is it your contention that their nearest equivalents — Word, PowerPoint and Excel — are, by contrast, "professional apps," whereas Pages, Keynote and Excel are not? If so, then we disagree again.

It's true that Word and Excel have certain esoteric capabilities that Pages and Numbers lack. And it's also true that 95% of Word and Excel users have never once used these capabilities in their entire lives.

For the kind of everyday word processing and number crunching that the vast majority of users do, Pages and Numbers get the job done — while (especially in the case of Pages) being several orders of magnitude easier to use. (This last statement is even more true of Keynote. And having used both it and PowerPoint, I fail to see that the latter has substantially greater capabilities.)

Furthermore, if ever I were challenged to a page layout shootout, I would certainly hope I had Pages in my holster and not Word!

As for "adjusting to targeted customers" — if Auto Save/Versioning is the default but capable of being disabled, then the apps are now targeted to ALL customers. Both younger/inexperienced users who apparently need a babysitter to use a computer, AND old hands who understand responsible computer use, would be happy. Once again, please explain why this would be a bad thing.

 

I perfectly know that disabling the Versions/Autosave features may be done.

At this time, the app behave a way under 10.6.x, an other way under 10.7.x.

I guess that it would be easy to change this test so that it behave the old way if the system is 10.6.x or if the user checked a box.

I'm even surprised, if the problem is so huge that you describe it, that nobody has deliver a tool changing the existing test. It's one of the reasons which make me think that the number of bored users like you is really small.

What's sure is that:

(1) Lion is available since three months,

(2) since this delivery you are claiming that it brought awful features

 

but I see no echo from Apple which took time to deliver two updates for the system itself.

Neither you nor I can know how possible it would be for third parties to come up with a hack that would successfully disable Auto Save/Versioning. It may be too difficult to accomplish without direct access to the code.

As you know, the first few system updates tend to focus on actual bugs in the software, as opposed to changing the way it operates. There may yet be hope for the change I and others are seeking, though I fear that Apple's viewpoint may be just as you describe it — they somehow just don't give a **** about the many loyal users who stood by them through lean times, and are happy to throw them under the bus in favor of a newer group. They may live to regret this choice, and they would not be the first company to do so.

2) How, exactly, to you defend a "feature" that renders a program unusable (the example of the Keynote presentation with large files imbedded that brings up a spinning beach ball every few seconds during Auto Save)? Why is this perfectly OK with you? What alternative do you propose for this user? (And PLEASE don't say PowerPoint!)

Don't be afraid, M…oSoft products aren't allowed to enter my machines so I will not tell you to use PowerPoint.

But I didn't wait you to write about the the spinning wheel problem.

Search in iWork dedicated forums with a request like :

snail AND iWork 

or

snail AND yvan

and you will see that I wrote upon this problem more often that I wrote in this thread.

More, in one of the threads dedicated to AutoSave (maybe this one), I wrote that I was glad that this problem increased because it will, at last, force Apple engineers to admit that there is a huge design flaw in the iWork applications.

This is the first mention you've made of this in this thread, at least since I've been participating. And you mentioned it only after I asked you four times to comment on it.

If you really hope that Apple introduce a switch allowing you to disable Autosave and/or Versions, why are you running iWork 9.1 applications ?

Run iWork 9.0.5 ones, work the old way and wait for a new release.

This is exactly what I have done in my work environment — I've stuck with Snow Leopard, as has everyone else in our small firm. In fact, it's instructive that just last week, my boss indicated that he wanted to upgrade to Lion to take advantage of iCloud syncing between his desktop, laptop and iPhone. Even if the first two had been capable of running Lion (they are several years old and cannot), I still would have advised him strongly against this move. He uses Pages every day also, and he would have been absolutely baffled by the changes in the saving scheme and the loss of Save As, which he uses frequently just as I do.

I'm running Lion at home only because I bought a new Mac a couple of months ago to replace an aging one. I was not able to choose to stick with Snow Leopard (I would have if I could have).

From my point of view, Versions and Autosave will be permanently active in next releases but the apps will be redesigned so that they will no longer bring the spinning wheel.

Of course I may be wrong, but in this case we will get switches and redesigned apps because the engineers have no choice : the apps MUST be redesigned to become iCloud compliant.

 

The awful behavior of iWork apps is not new, it just highlighted by the introduction of Versions & Autosave.

Yesterdays I worked under 10.6.8 on a 5263 rows Numbers table containing six columns filled with pure datas and just the formula =""&F in cells of column G

The imported values embedded dates in column F. On my French System, imported dates default to the format 28 oct. 2011 but I want them to be 28/09/2011. To change the format, the app requires more than 20 minutes. It took less than 10 seconds in AppleWorks.

 

The hosting machine is described in my signature, I just started it from an external Firewire 800 HD with 10.6.8.

As you may see, there is no need for Lion, Versions and Autosave to see slooooooooooooooooooooow apps.

Perhaps, but it was very clear from the poster's comments that the slowness he described was a direct result of Auto Save. If he had the ability to disable it, his particular problem would disappear.

Again, thank you for at last making a response, but I'm afraid you have still completely failed to make a case for why Apple cannot and should not make Auto Save/Versioning capable of being disabled.

DChord568 wrote:

 

Thank you, Yvan, for at least attempting to answer my questions (only after much prodding!). However, your answers still fall far short.

Don't be afraid, M…oSoft products aren't allowed to enter my machines so I will not tell you to use PowerPoint.

But I didn't wait you to write about the the spinning wheel problem.

Search in iWork dedicated forums with a request like :

snail AND iWork 

or

snail AND yvan

and you will see that I wrote upon this problem more often that I wrote in this thread.

More, in one of the threads dedicated to AutoSave (maybe this one), I wrote that I was glad that this problem increased because it will, at last, force Apple engineers to admit that there is a huge design flaw in the iWork applications.

 

This is the first mention you've made of this in this thread, at least since I've been participating. And you mentioned it only after I asked you four times to comment on it.

Here is what I posted here

I apologize but when a group of beings deliver a product deserving the descriptor : idiotic, it must necessarily be at least some idiotics persons in the design team.If the team didn't embedded such members, an idiotic product would not reach the 'distribution' door. It would remain in the closets or in the trash.

The choices mare in the iWork implementation of Lion's feature are perfect.

The problem is not the change introduced by Lion.

If I was you, I would shout THANK YOU !

The perfect changes bring to surface the huge design flaw striking iWork apps since their first release.

The apps are rebuilding the entire index.xml file after each change, even one character change.

This is why iWork apps are the first ones after a practice of computers starting with Apple ][+ which I must wait while typing.

I repeat that for years but it had no echo.

Now, thanks to Lion and its new features, it appears in the crude light.

Each version of an iWork document contains at least a complete index.xml file.

Same thing when the app autosave so, some of you discover what they missed for years.

To push documents on iCloud, apps are supposed to send small chunks of datas describing only what was changed.

iWork apps are unable to do that.

My own understanding is that the design team knew perfectly what it was doing.

He knew that the implementation of the new features would reveal the wrong design and that this done, they will be given the resources required to rebuild quite from scratch.

To work correctly with iCloud, at least as it was described in the late keynote and in the technical sessions, apps must drop their old monolithic documents and replace them by documents made of bricks which may easily be modified and sent in the clouds. For sure, this push old guys like me to think to the aborted "open doc" scheme.

Here guys are ranting against iWork 9.1. It's perfect. I draw oil on the fire and it worked. Perfect.

If these threads reach the workspace one infinite loop, it would be perfect.

Engineers will have concrete datas to oppose to decidors for which 10 hours of development are 10 wasted hours.

iWork was designed to replace a product in which every instruction was heavily thought, nothing was asked to the microprocessor if it wasn't double checked that there was no faster way to do it.

This wonderful tool was replaced by three drafts of application, no more that proof of concept. Nothing is optimized. Have you ever tried to use the Search tool in Numbers on a document with a table of 20 columns of 1000 rows ? You must wait the machine after every character typed in the search field.

My understanding is that this era must necessarily end between today and january 2012.

You are shouting against Version and AutoSave. What will you do went the Cloud wil be delivered ?

At this time, when I want to push a screenshot to my iDisk it requires more than one minute. I was never able to push a Pages document in less than five minutes.

This will no longer be acceptable with the iCloud service. Decidors will be forced to give resources to build efficient tools, not bells and whistles distributors.

I don't understand what may be detrimental in an Autosave feature applied to a well designed application and it's why I repeats here and there.

The features are fine. What's wrong are the hosting apps but I don't understand how all of you you missed that.

Autosave is required as far as a firm decide to deliver computing to the rest of us. Here, even those claiming that they aren‘t interested in technology, more or less, we are  geeks. We know that we must save what we are doing  because computers aren't perfect tools, because electricity providers aren't perfect and even because us, yes these knowledgeable "us", we are far from perfect.

Twenty years ago, I made a typo while typing a command in an Assembly app. It destroyed the contents of the Syquest crtridge containing the source which I built to localize AppleWorks GS. I was unhappy but I said : no problem, I have a replicate.

Alas two days before I made an error and used the backup to backup an other cartridge.

I was forced to redo the entire disassembly of the beast. Happily it was a second nature and I was able to do the trick quite with eyes wide closed.

I promised that I will never redo that.

But I don't count the number of times when a guy like me, aware of potential failures, 'forgot' to duplicate or triplicate a file because trying to solve a problem is much more interesting than replicating datas.

So, a tool doing the job for me is welcome. A tool which may be disabled is useless. As far as I know we have no choice to remove safety belts in motorcar or aeroplanes.

In hour houses, we are no longer allowed to use the old fuses in which my grand father inserted a coper wire because this son of a b… of lead wire which was fusing too often.

I worked 30 years as a potter but I studied to build bridges. Doing that, I learnt tha safety devices make sense only if we can't disable them.

How many machines are set to allow automatic opening of "safe files". As mac users, we are lucky. We are so few that virus designers aren't interested by our micro society (I don't use the word community because I hate it).

In this thread and in others about the same theme.

Most writers (you see, I don't write 'ranters' even if I think to it) appears to be unable to make the difference between Autosave and Versions.

Autosave is designed to save the entire document as it is at a given instant.

Versions is designed to save different stage of the conception of a document. It resemble to what I did with my autosave scripts : save consecutive versions of documents. I didn't do that to be able to retrieve ol versions but to retrieve an openable file when the more recent one prove to be unreadable.

I was astounded after reading and rereading threads about Versions to see that knobody wrote about the major design flaw. As well as the 'main' document is in good health, we may reach its versions.

If the doc become corrupted. Nada, Apple doesn't offer a tool allowing us to enter the stored versions to extract a viable document.

More astoundingt, when I posted tools allowing to fill the gap, I assumed that there will be comments asking for this or that enhancement because I'm not fool enough to think that what I do in my retired house is perfect.

Nada, no comment, I worked for nothing.

The important point is to spend hours to discuss a feature which is supposed to require one more click than the other one. You will be able to work for years to spend in clicks what was spent in this threads.

But I'm glad to see that. I repeat, I assume that Apple will be forced to redesign iWork.

Oops I was forgotting an important detail : a large set of the reported oddities with Autosave and Versions is related to users wanting to save on networks but telling that only after several exchanges.

Deliberate design or temporary omission, I don't know but we must live with it : neither AutoSave nor Versions apply to networks. I was said that it was already true with Time Machine. I can't check I never networked my machine. No link between a machine and the rest of the world is the best firewall and antivirus ever designed.

OK. I wrote in a perfect disorder my reflections about the situation.

As far as I know, every Lion user choose to be one. In the world, there are much more beings suffering of diseases which they didnt choose.

Some of you think that the new scheme bring click wasting. I apologize but all your clicks are nothing compared to a well publicised rape.

Nothing in common ?

For sure. I just wished to claim that there are diseases and DISEASES.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 6 septembre 2011 22:32:47

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0

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

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

You may also look at :

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16066315#16066315

in this thread

And a short list of threads in which I wrote about the iWork design flaw.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/8769494#8769494

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16280074#16280074

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15661147#15661147

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15624728#15624728

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15785429#15785429

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15760903#15760903

https://discussions.apple.com/message/6338183#6338183

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16053098#16053098

https://discussions.apple.com/message/11349279#11349279

https://discussions.apple.com/message/7976348#7976348

https://discussions.apple.com/message/7409994#7409994

https://discussions.apple.com/message/9679209#9679209

https://discussions.apple.com/message/6320088#6320088

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15740787#15740787

I wish to add a link about autosave request :

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15868698#15868698

You will discover that I carefully urged the asker to read threads like this one before switching to Lion.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 31 octobre 2011 12:29:43

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

The choices mare in the iWork implementation of Lion's feature are perfect.

That proves it. You are absolutely insane, and here for no other reason to drive others to your same mental state. There is no such thing as "perfect".

You are shouting against Version and AutoSave. What will you do went the Cloud wil be delivered ?

Absolutely nothing, because I will never, ever use it.

Once again, you post a long, rambling document that you could have stated in two short sentences.

Apple is perfect no matter what they do.

Yvan is always right, no matter how wrong.

I guess I am confused.. you used a database as an example of autosave?

I have yet to come across a single database application which Auto-Saves data as you type... ever, anywhere. You always have to actively do something to save what you are working on... SAVE, COMMIT, ENTER, etc.  I have never seen one which saves as you type whether you wanted to save that record or not...

I have manageed the implementation of over 14 ERP systems, several CRM systems, Many Access DB system/applications, Hyperion, and others.

Having Autosave in these DB applicaitons would be disasterous.

Please clarify how a DB has implemented AutoSave?  And how this is a "Safety" feature?

Yvan, I can't begin to penetrate the deep forest of verbiage in your latest post. I know that part of the difficulty is the translation from your native French to English. I don't criticize you at all on this score...you do better than many might do.

Whatever the validity of your statements, they address only a small part of my post, and a less significant portion at that. The few morsels I can plug out that speak directly to the issue of this thread are these:

>>I don't understand what may be detrimental in an Autosave feature applied to a well designed application<<

After all the specific examples given in this thread, many others on this forum, and at many other locations on the web, you STILL don't understand? Then there's little point in continuing this discussion.

>>So, a tool doing the job for me is welcome. A tool which may be disabled is useless. As far as I know we have no choice to remove safety belts in motorcar or aeroplanes.<<

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that injury or death in an automobile accident is on a slightly different level than loss of data on a computer. How can you miss the obvious fact that safety belts can be "disabled" easily if the user simply declines to buckle them in the first place?

If you really want to go down this path, OK. I am a fervent believer in safety belts in automobiles. I use them without exception when I'm on the road, and think that anyone who refuses to use them is an utter fool.

However, I would object strenuously to an automobile design in which the seat belts automatically buckled you in the moment you started your car's iginition, and could not be manually removed from use by the driver or passenger; i.e., if they only ever would release you when you turned off the ignition. (Am I remembering correctly that at one time there were automobile models with safety belts that operated in this way? If there were, they certainly didn't last long, and with good reason.)

At any rate, your analogy certainly doesn't hold. A small number of users regularly disable safety devices — for example, one poster here mentioned doing so with his table saw. They make this choice knowingly, realizing full well that they run a risk in doing so. The table saw user knows that he will have no claim whatsoever against the manufacturer of his device if he willfully defeats the default way in which it operates — that is, with the safety device on — and suffers an injury.

And so it would be Auto Save/Versioning as the default, but with an option to disable it. You have still failed completely to say why such an option would be a bad thing, or specifically, what disasters would ensue if it were.

Instead, you simply repeat your mantra about a safety device being useless if it can be disabled. That doesn't cut it. Either give us a real-world example, or abandon this futile effort.

bejohnson wrote:

 

I guess I am confused.. you used a database as an example of autosave?

 

I have yet to come across a single database application which Auto-Saves data as you type... ever, anywhere. You always have to actively do something to save what you are working on... SAVE, COMMIT, ENTER, etc.  I have never seen one which saves as you type whether you wanted to save that record or not...

 

I have manageed the implementation of over 14 ERP systems, several CRM systems, Many Access DB system/applications, Hyperion, and others.

 

Having Autosave in these DB applicaitons would be disasterous.

 

Please clarify how a DB has implemented AutoSave?  And how this is a "Safety" feature?

FWIW, FileMaker Pro has always operated in this way. There is no Save command in this app. I never viewed it as a safety feature, but rather, simply the way it works.

DChord568 wrote:

 

Thank you, Yvan, for at least attempting to answer my questions (only after much prodding!). However, your answers still fall far short.

 

 

KOENIG Yvan wrote:

 

DChord568 wrote:

 

1) What is wrong with making Auto Save/Versioning the default, but including the option for expert users who so choose to disable it? Please describe, in detail, the specific disasters that will result from this.

 

I repeat that I receive every weeks messages fropm users which loose their documents or got corrupted ones and ask for help.

Apple introduced Versions and Autosave to solve these problems.

I'm not working in their labs so I may just try to guess the reasons of their choices.

And my guess is that they thought that an Autosave feature which may be disabled will be inefficient.

They had the example of Filemaker which behave this way with no problem.

So it's easy to guess that they conclude that applying the same scheme to every app was a good answer to a true problem.

If the feature is optional, we will continue to have reports from users loosing documents and Apple want to get rid of that.

 

How can something that gives users a very clear and sharply defined choice be considered "inefficient"? Most especially if the default status — the one that is present if the user does nothing — is to have Auto Save/Versioning in place so that the legions can be saved from their own incompetence.

 

You have still failed to describe the disaster that would take place if this were the case. What exactly would happen? Would users who desperately need Auto Save/Versioning somehow disable it by accident? Or for reasons unknown, decide to disable it without knowing the consequences of their actions? (An "are you sure?" warning dialog box would easily cover this unlikely eventuality.)

How many time must be repeat that from my point of view such safety feature must be continuously at work.

If we want to get rid of Autosave, we may easily do that and I described how several times.

Apple publish applications for dummies.

 

Look, at the entry page of these frorums.

Some applications are described as Professional ones which means that others aren't.

iPhoto is cheaper than Aperture but if you want to make professional work, better use Aperture.

Apple deliberately refuse to enter the Professional area for some products like iWork or iLife.

Is it surprising that they adjust their products to the targetted customers ? My answer is NO.

 

I disagree with your premise that Apple makes "Applications for Dummies."

 

I also disagree with your conclusion that, because the iWork apps do not appear under Professional Apps in your list, that they therefore are not professional applications. I believe they appear in the way they do simply because Pages, Keynote and Numbers are part of the iWork suite and are identified as such.

 

The reality is, these applications are in daily use in hundreds of thousands of professional environments, including my own.

 

Is it your contention that their nearest equivalents — Word, PowerPoint and Excel — are, by contrast, "professional apps," whereas Pages, Keynote and Excel are not? If so, then we disagree again.

 

It's true that Word and Excel have certain esoteric capabilities that Pages and Numbers lack. And it's also true that 95% of Word and Excel users have never once used these capabilities in their entire lives.

 

For the kind of everyday word processing and number crunching that the vast majority of users do, Pages and Numbers get the job done — while (especially in the case of Pages) being several orders of magnitude easier to use. (This last statement is even more true of Keynote. And having used both it and PowerPoint, I fail to see that the latter has substantially greater capabilities.)

 

Furthermore, if ever I were challenged to a page layout shootout, I would certainly hope I had Pages in my holster and not Word

I thought that I was clear enough when I wrote :

IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. publish books entitled xxxx for dummies.

Apple publish applications for dummies.

Isolating the second sentence as you did id dishonest which changes the meaning of my wording.

The fact that iWork apps are used by professional don't change the fact that they were not designed for professional use. Just an example : an app which issue PDFs whith a 72 dpi rez for graphic objects if the shadow feature is used once can't be named a professional one. It's a well known feature surfacing very often in Pages for OSX forum.

Some Apple high level representatives were surprised when a group of French users prove them that AppleWorks was used by many companies for every tasks dedicated to computers but this changed nothing to the app's behavior. It was deliberately killed and replaced by iWork which was targetting the same range of users. I don't invent that, it was said by Apple representatives. iWork was built because Apple felt that they couldn't leave the huge range of standard users, those targetted by xxx for dummies books, with no application fitting basic needs but they didn't wished to compete against M…oSoft for so called professional applications (for your own information, the three periods in M…oSoft are supposed to replace the letters "erd").

I didn't bought a macPro recently but some months ago, while iMac and macMinis were delivered with a trial copy of iWork on DVD, this product was not delivered with macPro. I even remember time when these macPro were delivered with a trial copy of M…oSoft Office.

No need to tell me that every machines are delivered with the non-professional package named iLife, I'm aware of that.

Again, thank you for at last making a response, but I'm afraid you have still completely failed to make a case for why Apple cannot and should not make Auto Save/Versioning capable of being disabled.

Always the same question, so, always the same kind of answer. Only an Apple representative would be able to give the true answer but as you know they aren't loquacious.

How many time must I repeat that from my point of view, such safety features must be active everytime.

As was written by papalapapp (I forgot this feature), Filemaker behave this way with no problem. Why would it be different for other apps ?

The fact that you aren't accustomed to such behavior isn't sufficient to drop the choice made by Apple staff.

They know their customers and they are able to arbitrate between pros and cons of every decisions.

When they delivered there late Final Cut Pro X, many users shouted against it and some threads were longer than this one.

As far as I know, Apple didn't move back upon their design choices. They just delivered some features which weren't ready when the first release was delivered.

Some users left for Adobe Lightroom and to my knowledge Kleenex share didn't reach a new high.

Look at OSX evolution. It will receive soon two features which are already available in iOS.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/30/apple-looking-to-bring-airplay-mirroring-imessage- application-to-mac-os-x/

In a French forum (macBidouille) I just read :

On assiste bien à ce qui semble utile d'un côté mais aussi inquiétant, une réelle convergence entre iOS et Mac OS (ou plutôt OS X Lion, nom officiel sans le Mac).

Automatic translation :

We attend good in what seems useful on one side but also worrying, a real convergence enters iOS and Mac OS (or rather OS X Lion, official name without Mac).

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 31 octobre 2011 16:24:48

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