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lucafrombrooklyn

Q: Disable autosave

Hello, anybody figured out how one can disable autosave? I just *don't* want it, and I have my reasons.

Thanks,

 

l.

Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 10:30 AM

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Q: Disable autosave

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  • by Trysta,

    Trysta Trysta Jul 25, 2011 12:27 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 12:27 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn

    I would also greatly appreciate the ability to remove autosave. I already sent apple feedback. Please everyone send Apple feedback. Sometimes they actually do listen.

     

    In my case things are complicated by the fact that Apple also removed save as and replaced it with 'duplicate' and 'export'. Two functions which basically split the role of Save As in two. I need to both duplicate a file and specify its location and NOT have to then go find that duplicated file a lot of the time and Save As did this in one step. With either duplicate or export it now take two steps??? Not sure why that is necessary.

     

    And I now have to deal with locked pdf files all the time or risk saving changes I didn't want without warning (if I disable locked files in preferences). Having the 'this file is locked warning' is annoying at best and of course saving changes I don't want and don't care to keep track of so I can find the right 'version' is also not ideal.

     

    Really I don't understand how Apple could insert this very different way of dealing file management into an OS (and remember in their ideal world soon all apps with behave this way) without giving users the option to turn it off. I mean they realized the reverse scrolling might be disruptive (it is completely useless) and they gave people the option to disable resume. Autosave/Versions seems like the other obvious candidate.

     

    I am trying REALLY hard to like Lion if only because I like mac laptops and would like to buy one again in the future. Why must Apple make that so hard?!

  • by coocooforcocoapuffs,

    coocooforcocoapuffs coocooforcocoapuffs Jul 25, 2011 12:34 AM in response to Trysta
    Level 3 (853 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 12:34 AM in response to Trysta
    Really I don't understand how Apple could insert this very different way of dealing file management into an OS (and remember in their ideal world soon all apps with behave this way) without giving users the option to turn it off.

    Could be a matter of simple economics: maintaining two functions that do the same thing costs more then just adding one new to replace the old. I think the days of software coders catering to users is now officially over. It's their way (or their bosses way) or the highway, case in point: FCPX. Look at the hullabaloo that caused, and look at the result. The same will happen here.

  • by lucafrombrooklyn,

    lucafrombrooklyn lucafrombrooklyn Jul 25, 2011 12:40 AM in response to Altazon
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2011 12:40 AM in response to Altazon

    I do not think Autosave ruins documents, but it definitely ruins the workflow of a lot of people -- not just of power users, but of everybody who handles documents of a complexity higher than one's memory span (i.e., writing seven words, plus or minus two, in a document). The idea to copy the behavior of an iPad to the computer is fundamentally wrong in this case because an iPad is not a computer: you don't write a book on an iPad, you do it on a computer (for a similar way to copy the wrong model, carefully inspect the differences between Lion's Address Book--almost useless now, as it copies the physical characteristics of a physical address book, including all its limits-- and Snow Leopard's Address Book, which at least had some usability. Now if you look at groups, you can't look at individual addresses, and vice-versa... because in a physical book you can't do it and so let's regress a computer back to when there was no computer, so that people will be less confused . Call it progress.... ).

     

    What should be done to make Autosave become tolerable, and perhaps useful in some cases?

     

    1. It should become a per-application option, minimally; ideally, a per-document option.

     

    2. Versions should include version changes highlights -- as in "Track changes"-- with respect to the current manuscript version.

     

    3. "Revert to save..." should let you go back to the last saved version BY THE USER, and not by Autosave, so that you can always go back to the version YOU saved last.

     

    4. "Revert to save...." should be "undoable", so that if you don't like the last version YOU saved, you go back again to the version with the latest modifications  (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.

     

    5. Changes during versioning should be fast enough and unobtrusive enough to allow people to really work smoothlessly -- the test case here is Keynote, with its presentations that can be really very big (in my case, when I teach, I have presentations that easily go beyond 200Mb).

     

    The point of distinguishing saved versions by the user and saved versions by the computer is a really fundamental distinction. The computer saves things arbitrarily (in this case, every 5 minutes). The user saves changes in a meaningful way: s/he saves what she WANTS to save. No OS can substitute the intentions of the user! Right now, with my trial-and-error attempts, I have not seen a way to distinguish what I want to save and the arbitrary saves done by Autosave (I may be wrong). 

     

    Short of these requirements, I really think it is doing much more harm than good to anybody minimally using a computer to do real work. Anybody sees anything else? Let's hope somebody at Apple reads this.

     

    l.

  • by Tom in London,

    Tom in London Tom in London Jul 25, 2011 1:21 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn
    Level 4 (1,626 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2011 1:21 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn

    Yikes! I've just been reading this thread- having downloaded Lion but not installed it yet. Now I'm thinking I wasted my money. Here's a very typical task that I do:

     

    2 days ago I needed to edit about 50 photographs I'd taken. I need these photographs to be very high quality, because they will be published in magazines etc.

     

    When I'm out on a photo shoot, I never worry too much about what's in the frame because when I get back to base I can try out all kinds of cropping (usually with Graphic Converter) and simply undo any crop that I don't like.

     

    From reading this thread, I understand that now with Lion, the Graphic Converter files I'm sandboxing with will autosave on me and I won't be able to go back to before I cropped.

     

    And don't tell me to make a copy and work on the copy. That multiplies my work time x 2. And the other other reason is that I may be tossing that file back and forth between different applications (e.g. from Graphic Converter to Photoshop and back again, many times) before I'm happy with it. Only *then* do I save it. NOTE: *I* save it. When I'm good and ready to save it.

     

    I've loved reading this thread- apart from the spelling mistakes (and the dreaded "loose" when you really mean "lose") some of the writing is of publishable quality and very funny.

     

    I think I'm going to  stay with SL until the arrogant new autosave thing in Lion is removed. My livelihood and career depend on *me* saving stuff when *I* want to.

     

    (A few minutes later): Just been reading another thread about versioning, which somehow seems to be related to Autosave, and to Time Machine.

     

    I never use Time Machine and keep it turned off. If I keep it turned off does that mean I have also turned off AutoSave? (I hope so !)

  • by Werner P.,

    Werner P. Werner P. Jul 25, 2011 1:11 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 1:11 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn

    As a software engineer myself, who has been using versioning software for years now, all I can say is simply that the autosave implementation was done utterly wrong and works only in the mobile space where you almost never work on documents and if at all only make minor changes. I had a bad feeling when I read about it (I have yet to use it extensively). But my personal feeling is, the versioning workflow should have been done differently.

     

    a) Save a version diff on save

    b) allow saveAs

    c) If the user exists the application prompt him to save

    d) To the save as as usual and version the new file (sort of a branch in software development)

    e) allow the user to mark special versions with a tag

     

    This would have fit right into the workflow of the people without breaking anything and would have added versioning seamlessly.

     

    Note in software development, you usually version on demand after the user is saved and most ides keep local versions at save time.

  • by coocooforcocoapuffs,

    coocooforcocoapuffs coocooforcocoapuffs Jul 25, 2011 1:15 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn
    Level 3 (853 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 1:15 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn

    hey luca, I am also from Brooklyn - 50 years ago! has it changed? Anyway, I like your suggestions, but I've been writing for 30 years now and software developers have been asked to do what you (we) want for that amount of time or more (point 1 especially).

     

    I think it's important to separate out autosave from versions (somehow), and I think Apple has got it confused now.  Apple actually did a nice job on FCP Autosave, as any user of FCP (not FCPX) can tell ya. Things worked intuitively, where you were even allowed to specify where the autosave folder was, what the interval was, etc. and still had a "revert to save" that was undoable. Why this was not replicated in other products, no idea. Some folks have been saying that the expertise to reproduce and maintain such code is just gone from the company. Others, like me, think it's just economics...times are hard and everyone is cutting corners. But maybe it's both, and in that case we are all scroomed as users.

     

    Anyway, interesting eh?

  • by coocooforcocoapuffs,

    coocooforcocoapuffs coocooforcocoapuffs Jul 25, 2011 1:42 AM in response to Tom in London
    Level 3 (853 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 1:42 AM in response to Tom in London

    Graphic Converter supports versioning?!? That's a shocker. Why on earth would they do that? I always assumed that they just did what Aperture does, which come to think of it is pretty slick...maybe we just need an aperture-like wrapper for all document types! I'd be happy with that...drives are cheap and the interface is nice.

  • by Tom in London,

    Tom in London Tom in London Jul 25, 2011 1:47 AM in response to coocooforcocoapuffs
    Level 4 (1,626 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2011 1:47 AM in response to coocooforcocoapuffs

    I don't know if GC supports versioning. I have the latest Lion-compatible release but I haven't tried it on Lion yet. I'm just assuming that at some point Lion will autosave everything in every application- or am I getting this wrong? Does anyone have a list of applications that autosave so that I can trash them?

  • by Marc Troy,

    Marc Troy Marc Troy Jul 25, 2011 1:51 AM in response to Werner P.
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 1:51 AM in response to Werner P.

    Werner, your summary nails it. I agree.

     

    Dealing with Apple since a few years now: They will never fix this feature, and we all know it. They think it's the way to go and that's where it's heading. The only option I see right now is to buy 3rd party software and skip the whole Apple catalogue.

  • by coocooforcocoapuffs,

    coocooforcocoapuffs coocooforcocoapuffs Jul 25, 2011 1:58 AM in response to Tom in London
    Level 3 (853 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 1:58 AM in response to Tom in London

    Hard to predict the future Tom, but I don't think there is need to worry just yet. The autosave/versioning ...what shall we call it now...debacle, miracle, disaster, blessing? is just for a few apps: iwork, textedit (is that it folks?). Perhaps Apple threw this out to see what would happen...who knows. But I would not start trashing good apps like Pages and Keynote just yet... they may get it right down the road.

  • by lucafrombrooklyn,

    lucafrombrooklyn lucafrombrooklyn Jul 25, 2011 2:21 AM in response to coocooforcocoapuffs
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2011 2:21 AM in response to coocooforcocoapuffs

    Hey Cocoforcocoapuffs: I *was* in Brooklyn 20 years ago... I am not now, sorry :-) I have been actually posting with another name on the lists for a long time. Then few weeks ago all my messages to the lists disappeared and are now filed under the user "Merged Content 1", and I was given another user name I have never chosen, using parts of my old address -- perhaps at Apple they were using Versions and got confused, that'ts what happened.... But I trust Brooklyn is even more beautiful now.

     

    Tom in London: I checked, Graphic Converter does support Autosave (I actually don't think you can switch it off from its preferences). However, in your particular case I think you should not worry because you will be able to go back to your previous uncropped versions --- actually that's what Autosave is for. And probably given that you work with photos, it should be pretty easy to go back and see and find the previous uncropped versions. Indeed, probably what they had in mind at Apple when they implemented this feature were graphic modifications like these, which are easy to spot when inspecting a "Time Machine-like" kind of display.

     

    Incidentally, I use Time Machine, but  even if I switch it off, versioning and autosaving reamain on. So no, there is no way to switch autosaving off that I can see, but no, you should not be worried about it for the particular use you are planning to do of GraphicConverter (so far as I can see).

  • by Werner P.,

    Werner P. Werner P. Jul 25, 2011 2:27 AM in response to Marc Troy
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 2:27 AM in response to Marc Troy

    Marc, I agreee here, Apple has this ourway or the highway mentality. I am not sure if they will revert it, maybe, if they do it wont happen in Lion anymore, all they probably will add is a autosave off switch which very likely will also turn off versioning. Which means we then are down to spotlight snapshots.

    Either way I filed a bugreport on this issue with references to this thread at least given them some hints that their workflow is broken.

    (Btw. I have similar gripes with the gray in gray icons which in my opinion are a usuability desaster especially in Finder)

  • by lucafrombrooklyn,

    lucafrombrooklyn lucafrombrooklyn Jul 25, 2011 2:36 AM in response to Werner P.
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2011 2:36 AM in response to Werner P.

    Werner:

     

    thanks.

     

    Yes, the gray-on-gray is another mistake, as everybody working in perception may tell you (and it is oddly clashing with improved controls for accessibility for visually impaired people. You improve Universal Access for the visually impaired persons and then you worsen perceptibility for everybody who has slight visual problems). Please post this issue on a separate thread if it does not exist again, as it may be useful as well.

  • by Tom in London,

    Tom in London Tom in London Jul 25, 2011 2:56 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn
    Level 4 (1,626 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2011 2:56 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn

    Luca - those are kind thoughts but I guess I didn't explain myself properly. When I'm working with files I don't want to go hunting for some previous version. I want to just undo by hitting CMD +Z, and maybe doing that again and again until I get back to where I want to be.

     

    Is that no longer going to be possible in Lion? Is my Mac going to start interfering with the way I work instead of helping me?

     

    It's intolerable that files will be autosaved when I don't want them to be saved. Autosave is useful but only when I want it.

     

    What on earth are the people at Apple thinking about?

  • by paulsalter,

    paulsalter paulsalter Jul 25, 2011 8:26 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn
    Level 2 (465 points)
    Jul 25, 2011 8:26 AM in response to lucafrombrooklyn

    I have reverted back to using iWork 08 without this autosave feature for all new documents until I can find an alternate office type app (perhaps ms office) that doesnt have this auto save in it

     

    I dont mind the idea of auto save as a temp solution while I am workingin a document, incase of machine crashs,  but I dont want my document actually saved unless I tell it to

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