Q: How to disable Versions completely

I do not like that new versions are created and saved without my say-so. I do not like that I am not asked to save/discard changes upon quitting.

 

In short, the 248 great new features provide me little reason to upgrade but the 249th and 250th features are deal-breakers. Until they can be turned off I will not use Lion.

It's not just Apple. The general trend for many years has been a “dumbing down” of all kinds of products.    (Don't get me started about "Nanny cars".)

It is sad to see this control being removed from Mac users. Even more disturbing is this kindergarten mentality cannot be disabled or turned off for those with an IQ greater than 70.

I have gone back to Snow Leopard and very happy that I did. When these issues are corrected, or there are third-party apps to to correct I will try again. Fortunately I made good backups prior to Lion.

My first Mac OS Was 1.1 back in 1984.  I always enjoy each upgrade.

The only time I skipped an upgrade was from OS 9 to 10.2.  (I skipped 10.0 and 10.1)

Sad to report, I have now gone back to 10.6.8.  (Snow Leopard)

In the Windows world, which I am sadly forced to use occasionally, I wisely skipped Vista, and went from Windows XP to Windows 7.

I was able to get over most of the technical problems with Lion.   I felt that the interface was “dumbed down” and harder to use and missing some features  (Bounce was removed from mail).

I shall eat some humble pie about now.

I have discovered the system eventually decides the changed folder is 'bad', marks it as so, and populates the drive with a new empty DocumentRevisions-V100.

Back to the drawing board on disabling Versions!

File Vault 2?

1. Like using a sledge hammer when you want to push in a thumb tack.
2. Have to add regular backup too.
3. Work-a-round for a lacking option not to auto save.
4. Maybe File Vault 2 is better than the initial File Vault.  Late off folks reported loss of all user data after corruptions.

------------

What happens when you want to send the file to someone.  You want to avoid the embaresment of them being abot to fish out all you old changes.  It's easy to fish by the unix strings command.

I come to this thread late, but my experience is different:

I was curious about how versions are saved, so with considerable difficulty--as Apple really protects the ".DocumentRevisions-V100" folders well with permissions (even after copying the file to an external disk and hacking it using Snow Leopard)--I had a look at several files that had versions.

In each case, an entire file was saved for each version. So if you have say, 100 versions of a file that is 1MByte in size, you will have 100MBytes of versions. If this scheme holds true, those working with iterations of big media files are going to be facing disk space problems very quickly. It appears that duplicating a file and then deleting the original will instantly delete all of its versions. Nice to know. But remembering to do this is another matter entirely. The idea may be fine, but the execution falls well short of Apple's traditional standards.

In each case, an entire file was saved for each version.

That's true only for small files (where keeping just the differences wouldn't save much space).  For larger files, only the changed "chunks" are saved.  Apple, of course, doesn't specify how that's determined, and some 3rd-party analysis indicates it's different for different kinds of files, such as video vs. text.

I went back to SL for that reason because of Autosaving and Versions and I won't be adopting Lion until they can be disabled (and numerous other disappointing retrograde "innovations" have been fixed)

That may mean I'll never adopt Lion but will soldier on with SL.

After all, some people are still using Tiger or even earlier.

rccharles wrote:

 

File Vault 2?

1. Like using a sledge hammer when you want to push in a thumb tack.
2. Have to add regular backup too.
3. Work-a-round for a lacking option not to auto save.
4. Maybe File Vault 2 is better than the initial File Vault.  Late off folks reported loss of all user data after corruptions.

 

------------

 

What happens when you want to send the file to someone.  You want to avoid the embaresment of them being abot to fish out all you old changes.  It's easy to fish by the unix strings command.

I strongly agree. I can't risk sending such files to my clients.

Tom in London wrote:

 

rccharles wrote:

. . .

What happens when you want to send the file to someone.  You want to avoid the embaresment of them being abot to fish out all you old changes.  It's easy to fish by the unix strings command.

 

I strongly agree. I can't risk sending such files to my clients.

Not to worry:  the old changes are not stored in the actual file; they're in the hidden /.DocumentRevisions-V101 folder.

If you send (or print, or copy) a file, you send (or print, or copy) only the current version.

Thanks, Pondini. I have kind of wondered about the "Chunks" folder in there. I am really not a programmer, but I try to learn how things like this work so I can troubleshoot or at least ask the right questions if and when the time comes. For now I am sticking with SL and experimenting with Lion. Our family and my small company are facing a very "fraught" transition here with Lion and iCloud as we have only a couple of Core 2 Duo machines. We have been heavily reliant on/happy with MobileMe. We are facing a transition to new equipment if we go with Lion and iCloud. Potential memory gobbling by Versions (expensive SSD memory) is something we would like to understand and avoid as best we can. Never faced this kind of frustration before with Apple.

If you haven't yet, you might want to review OS X Lion: About Auto Save and Versions. 

It's a bit misleading in spots (such as, under Versions: "Each time you open a document, OS X Lion automatically saves the current version. It also saves a new version every hour while you work, building a history of the document as you go.")  That may be where a lot of folks got the idea it was keeping full copies of each version.

You have to keep reading to see "OS X Lion saves only the information that has changed since the last version" but even that isn't entirely accurate for a small file.   Further on is the info about how long the old versions are kept.

It also details some of the related features and how to use them.

And yes, I'd be a bit reluctant to jump into iCloud.  Not only is it a bit confusing and different from what many are accustomed to (the "originals" are in the cloud, not on your device), but it's new.  While there was extensive beta testing, some folks do seem to be having trouble with it. 

Tom in London wrote:

 

rccharles wrote:

 

What happens when you want to send the file to someone.  You want to avoid the embaresment of them being abot to fish out all you old changes.  It's easy to fish by the unix strings command.

 

I strongly agree. I can't risk sending such files to my clients.

I can assure you that such a thing is impossible. Your fears about Lion's Version and Autosave are illogical.

Gary K. wrote:

 

Potential memory gobbling by Versions (expensive SSD memory) is something we would like to understand and avoid as best we can.

Versions doesn't work that way. There is nothing to worry about.

etresoft wrote:

 

Tom in London wrote:

 

rccharles wrote:

 

What happens when you want to send the file to someone.  You want to avoid the embaresment of them being abot to fish out all you old changes.  It's easy to fish by the unix strings command.

 

I strongly agree. I can't risk sending such files to my clients.

 

I can assure you that such a thing is impossible. Your fears about Lion's Version and Autosave are illogical.

And in the case of a file to which I've made changes that I *do* want the other party to see (e.g. a draft report we're both working on)?

Tom in London wrote:

 

And in the case of a file to which I've made changes that I *do* want the other party to see (e.g. a draft report we're both working on)?

I don't understand your question. The file that resides in the normal user-accessible areas of the file system is the complete file that you can send to anyone you want. There is no version information inside it. It may have been saved incrementally via Autosave, but that is an opaque structure.

In this case, I would think that Versions would be very useful. Save a version before you send the file to someone else. Then you can continue to make changes while still having easy access to the version that you sent the other party.

Well, the way Versions works seems to be a lot less cut and dried than your optimism suggests, but thanks for the hopeful thoughts.