What happened to Save As?

OSX will be more and more resembling to iOS.

There is no Save As… in iOS 😍

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 16 février 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Oh, I guess I took you too literally when you said, "glad"

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KOENIG Yvan wrote:

I guess that you will be glad to read this page :

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Because most of the posters in this thread will not be glad about that, I don't think. 😕

Since my first message in this thread I wrote that Apple made a choice after thinking about pros and cons. Once the choice is made they will not move back.

Like it or dislike it, since 1963, « The Times They Are a-Changin' » 😍

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 16 février 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

I am quite late to this discussion but I am glad to see the issue is being discussed. Apple has always made process more easy, not more difficult. I have read through this entire thread and, despite programmer's logic, no longer providing the "Save As"function is anti-user experience. I hate all the steps I have to go through to simply save a document. With all the copies generated I have to be very cautious before I save a final doc to Word for my MS users.

This is just too complex, a challenge, and incredibly cumbersome. I am sure I am not converting anyone here but I am not yet converted that losing "Save As" is a benefit, either. I just want my experience to be easy, that's all.

Bottom-line - Losing the "Save As" function is a complex solution which, as a simple user ad not a programmer, influence me to start a document in Word instead of Pages and, thereby, losing the richness of Pages.

Oops - is that a customer not being served and breaking away???

I totally agree with you, Dyan. No matter Apple's decision to "improve" "change" "make better" etc. the Save As, I USED it!! Without it (I'm not without it) it does seem more complicated and not better or improved! I don't care if it's logical, just usable!!

That said, this really turned the tide for me.... I will not be upgrading to Lion; I'm sticking with Snow Leopard as long as I can! I like Pages! I don't have Word and will not buy or use.

Welcome to this discussion linda2009 and Dyan. Please do not get discouraged by a few people in this thread who seem to defend the status quo and write back to people telling them how ignorant they are because they don't like what Apple has done.

For myself I can say that as recently as yesterday I was on the phone with a Senior Advisor at Apple who understood and agreed. He could not commit that this will or will not be fixed in Mountain Lion but if we are persistent about making Apple understand what a mistake they made, there is hope for us to prevail. In Tim Cook's announcement I saw something about how Mountain Lion will improve iOS device and Macs. As much as I like the idea of iOS improvements, I am not willing to see the Mac lose its edge because a few engineers disregard the way users actually work on their Macs. Save as may be irrelevant on mobile devices that do not have a file storage system per-se, but it matters greatly to Mac users and this thread is evidence.

Stay vocal, stay articulate and do not be dissauded by a few people who seem to think they know it all better than the rest of us. I don't care if they show up at my door with Bob Dylan and his harmonica to personall entertain me singing Times They Are A-Changing. And I get the fact that some changes are irreversible, but not this one.

I just read through all 10 pages of this. I started searching because I was working on my tax preparation summary for my accountant. Every year I make a nice summary for him. It's always been so easy to just open up last year's summary, make a few changes, click "Save As" and rename it with the new year putting it in the new year's folder. It was simple as can be.

Now this year I find myself having to duplicate, close the old one, rename the new one, move the new one, then edit the new one. I really wish they could have just left Save As in the file menu as an option. I just don't think that would have caused any problems.

Thanks for the discussion to those who understand how convenient it was. No thanks to tonza and Yvan, you're not helping anyone. I totally get that Apple is pushing towards a merge of iOS and MacOS, but there are some very convenient things that I would hate to see changed.

I hate it too! Adding another step is one thing (Duplicate) but it doesn't even flow with the thought process.

THOUGHT.... I want to save a file with a different name

I KNOW! .... I'll duplicate it?

Who is the lame brain that thought that this was intuitive?

BRING BACK SAVE AS...... Keep the other garbage if people like it but don't take away the most intuitive option that millions of people know and understand.

Hi Yvan,

This post of yours goes into fantastic detail - sure proves why we really need a simple 'Save As'.

Your explanations as well intended as they may well be, are completely mind boggling. Keep in mind that there has to be a simple option retained if possible and not all this incredible confusion for what used to be a simple feature. Not all Mac users have iPhones and iPads! I bought a computer and want it to work as simply and as intuitively as possible.

As Danny Glove so aptly put it in one of his movies with Mel Gibson..... "I'm too old for this S**t!" and believe me most of my friends are also too old for this **** too!

Apple run the risk of alienating a lot of people over this stuff.

P.S. I'm not impressed by losing my entire calender when I chose to switch off iCloud either ... what is Apple doing?

My main gripe with the new saving paradigm is that the previously saved version of a file is overwritten with the last state before closing, regardless of whether or not I want to keep the changes.

In order to have the version I wanted, I have to retrieve it from saved versions, which is an absurd situation (why do I have to look for something I didn't lose in the first place).

What if the file gets disjointed from its versions (stored in hard drive root)? A common situation when this can happen is when the file is moved to a network drive or emailed.

I understand Apple wants forces this new model to mimic the behaviour on iOS devices but this is an example of insanely bad UX.

I can't image what happens when Adobe and other companies that deal with large files implement this nonsense. The worst thing is… this is something Apple will never back out of. The best we can hope for is they'll give us an alert when closing file, whether we want to save or not.

Dusner

You are truly a visionary! I think you need to work at Apple - how do we smuggle you in there? I couldn't have said it better (although I have had a couple of attempts to do so).

BRING BACK THE 'SAVE AS'.

If I wanted to use a complicated crappy system I would have bought a PC.

🙂

I haven't seen Dusner's contribution to this thread, but I am glad to see that there are some others who agree that Apple is to blame for this and Yvan and tonza, while entitled to a contrary opinion of their own, haven't been helpful to those who are trying to learn and adapt.

A very relevant point is made about the way Apple seems to want to give the Mac certain behaviors that are perfectly suited to mobile devices. Gestures, when using a trackpad, are a good thing even if it may take users some time to adopt them as natural motions. But iOS devices do not have a file storage system like the Mac therefore a different thought process is engaged for saving and naming files.

As for the suggestion that Apple will "never go back" I would not be so quick to reach that conclusion. Returning SAVE AS to the File Menu will not require any new engineering nor will it defeat the new operating system. It is a time-tested and proven UI feature that could simply become a user option, or preference setting. Just compare the evolution of your System Preferences in Lion to the way they looked and behaved in earlier editions going back to Jaguar or earlier. Most of them have been adjusted forward and backward in a conscientious effort to make things easy and intuitive for users to comprehend.

We can only hope that Apple Care is getting thousands of phone calls from users who don't know what the new UI expects them to do. They say that the engineering team reads the feedback, but I have long been suspicious that feedback is not as persuasive as the call volume and complaints. People don't call AppleCare to express their joy and satisfaction. If the support reps observe that a higher than expected number of calls comes in about SAVE AS, you can safely bet that they are measuring what it costs them to answer those questions. Sooner or later, they will realize that it will cost the company less money to restore something as simple as SAVE AS than to aggravate customers and waste their support resources (time and money) on something unnecessary.

Moreover, anybody who likes the new Auto-Save features and Template functionality ( and there are some in this discussion who do ) will not be disadvantaged by a revert to what works for the rest of us.

Thousands of phone calls… It's not a cost for Apple. They decided they'd force a new file system philosophy on users and they will stick to it. They never listen and even if they did… it's not like there is a loud voice screaming against it. Ars Technica gave it a positive review: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/7

Another use-case scenario: Synchronised folders on two computers (e.g. with Dropbox). Only one computer has the versions, the other has the last state before closing the file and is completely disjointed from the versions. I suppose iCloud will deal with it and that is another reason Apple will stick with it: those versions will swell and with them so will the paid iCloud account.

Adding "Save as…" would only create more confusion now.

We're done here. For good.

Thank you so much, raftr, for pointing us to the Ars Technica review. The URL you gave us, and the page following that one, are the most informative and educational pieces I have seen on this topic since this thread began. As one who has been among the most vocal in this discussion about the disappearance of Save As, I will be the first to stand up and say that the Ars Technica article opened my eyes and mind to a better understanding of the new auto-save features in Lion.

Having said that, I will also add that I am not yet convinced that ALL work on a Mac necessarily resembles work on a mobile device. I am an active user of the Adobe Creative Suite, for example, where Save As is even more fundamental to the iterative design process in programs like Illustrator and Photoshop that have for many years supported multiple levels of UNDO rather than redundant document storage. With an illustration, it would be exceedingly difficult to compare all the prior auto-saved versions to identify tiny design differences in color, position, size, etc. - it's simply not the same thing as looking at words or paragraphs of text. Indeed, I think the same argument could be made for a spread sheet with cells that contain formula definitions that are not visible to the "naked eye" when comparing previous versions.

I have also not dropped my opinion about the cost consequences for administrators of workgroups. The brightest among them might comprehend and benefit from the Ars Technica literature and borrow from it for tutorials that help their users benefit from the new features. But in the meantime, the chaotic frustration is an expensive burden.

I rather doubt that Apple would scheme to do all this as a way of driving up cloud-based storage revenue. They make enough money from real product sales to not have such an ulterior motive. But I do resent the way my hard drive becomes unnecessarily swollen with documents I never asked for.

jacksonian71 wrote:

Thanks for the discussion to those who understand how convenient it was. No thanks to tonza and Yvan, you're not helping anyone. I totally get that Apple is pushing towards a merge of iOS and MacOS, but there are some very convenient things that I would hate to see changed.

Tonza explained why the design was changed. I explained how you may use the new scheme.

As far as I know, Save As… will not be reintroduced. I guess that it will be dropped a bit more soon.

The problem is no longer the return of Save As…, it's to choose between OSX as it is or an other system.

Live with it or leave it.

My choice is done, I look in front of me, not behind.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 20 février 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k