What happened to Save As?

It's what I always said : use the tool which fit your needs the best way.

If I had need for Save As…, I woudn't use M…oSoft Office but LibreOffice but it's matter of personal choice.

Ni dieu, ni maître !

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 6 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

"To "Tonza" I would only like to add that the difference between marketing and technical is irrelevant to this discussion about the disappearance of Save As. It makes no difference whether Apple did this for marketing reasons or for technical reasons, the fact is they failed at both..."

To you, perhaps, because you apparently don't know the technical advantages in having a computer be proactive in saving and managing your data than the other way around.

If you've ever used an Apple Lisa, or a MessagePad, or even iWork apps on iOS, you'd already have a head start in understanding how a system implementing auto-save works. The one thing you'll notice is that you won't be relying on your remembering to save your work every 10 minutes... you know you are working on your documents, and that the changes being applied to them are significant by virtue of the fact that you are indeed making changes to them in the first place, so why shouldn't the computer save those changes?

If you don't want to make changes to a document, you either lock it or duplicate it first.

There's a more pressing agenda behind Lion's auto-saving feature than just making changes to the File menu and document versioning. Like iOS, Lion supports process management, whereby applications can be paused rather than quit, such as Lion's Resume feature. Applications have to be able to respond to messages and signals that the kernel can deliver, and the applications need to respond to those signals in a timely manner, or risk being shut down by force. That is, for the first time on the Mac, applications can be told to prepare for suspension or termination because the system decides rather than you.

In order to support this new ability to automatically manage processes, there needs to be a way for the system to save your documents without interruption. How many times have you tried to shut down your Mac, only to find it hanging on a dialogue box?! Or an app has an error and it refuses to continue unless you respond?! My personal favourite is iTunes 10, where if you have your library on an external disk and it isn't mounted, iTunes presents a dialogue box... but even if you send it a QUIT event, iTunes doesn't actually quit unless a user moves a mouse pointer over to a "Quit" button in a dialogue box that just won't go away on its own! (This is a bug that Apple has to fix, no doubt!)

For non-attended, automated use, having a dialogue box waiting for user input that never arrives is as good as an application that has crashed.

Auto-save and Resume are the two new system services in Lion that are supposed to solve this problem—one that has no need to exist in a highly parallel and scalable multi-user system. And because Lion needs to be able to manage user interfacing processes entirely on its own, auto-saving application data is paramount to making automatic process management work.

Auto-save also serves to solve the age-old, long-standing user interface "bug" of losing data should an application fail (crash). How many times have you lost work because the app you were using crashed and you didn't [get a chance to] save your work?

"If there is a technical benefit to this change, then they failed to market it effectively, because I have not met anybody, including Genius Bar employees, who can give any better explanation than the implementation of "auto-save" -- -which may be a good idea, but not a valid reason to kill the SAVE AS command."

Well, I agree that Apple Genii at the Genius Bar aren't always that cluey... I hope my explanations are serving you here!

"I made the comparison with New Coke to highlight how unpopular the result is with the customers. Telling me it was technical not marketing is a distinction without a difference. Besides, you can be sure that the chemists who worked on the recipe for New Coke consider themselves technical people, not marketers."

Because usually, technical changes are ones made under the hood, and it's not until people examine a system in its entirety that they fully understand what is going on, and why the changes are relevant.

Often, presenting a solution without its underlying problem can be confusing! And in this case, I do agree with you that Apple may have fallen short with its marketing in their attempts in making their products appear simple.

—tonza

Dennis,

I'm actually on your side about the Save As... function, but after 6 months of both sides repeating the same thing over and over, the point is either made or it's going to be ignored. Verizon, BofA, Komen, et al each lasted less than a month each.

This has degenerated into a handful of people insulting each other and repeating themselves ad nauseam. Besides, you're not not going to fix things by bemoaning this change in a forum that Apple is ignoring. Go to change.org and create a petition or something; but I can assure you that if Apple ever was reading this thread they stopped months ago when this broke down into two factions endlessly bickering.

Of course, if you'd rather stay here and fight with Koenig, be my guest; but I don't think it's getting you anywhere. Just my 2¢

So now I have files named... Backup of Backup of Backup of (original file name).pages How can this help me at all? Seriously who let this happen?

I also don't have control where I save the latest version if it is going to a new location unless I duplicate and rename then save, seriously! With Save As I could direct the files to a new location AND change the format! Safari and all the Adobe Products continue to use Save As so now we all have two fundamentally different behaviors to remember (its like driving a car with two different style street lights.. this one green means go..oh and this other one not really). This change is one of the worst features of Lion OS and unreal that it got implemented.

I agree with what you are saying that Save a Copy with the ability to rename and relocate may be worthwhile. To note thirty plus years ago (um right 1984) when the Save / Save As concept was as foreign a concept to us all as much doing anything else on a personal computer... for the first two weeks we all struggled and then clarity set in Save = no backup required, Save As= backup required, then it became engrained in the culture of using a computer. That is a way long time for any behavior to exist especially in tech world and not to expect a backlash of some sort is to be out of touch with reality.. (especially when the change is questionable at best). I have tried to be open to change and have upgraded to Lion and trying to embrace it but today when I see naming of files and the difficulty after three months of constant use.. Ugh. Apple just call it a Mulligan and send out a patch.

Perfectly ridiculous.

(1) If your file is named Backup of Backup of Backup of Backup… it's your fault

(2) You are always free to define the location when you save a duplicate.

Learn to use the tool and you will get correct behavior.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 10 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

"So now I have files named... Backup of Backup of Backup of (original file name).pages How can this help me at all? Seriously who let this happen?"

You can tell Pages to turn off making backups in Preferences (this is something that Lion doesn't need, and serves for Snow Leopard users). Uncheck the "Back up previous version when saving" option in the General preferences for Pages.

"I also don't have control where I save the latest version if it is going to a new location unless I duplicate and rename then save, seriously!"

Documents need to be named before they can be committed to the filesystem—it happens with Save As as well as Duplicate, otherwise, automatic save cannot work. If the document you duplicated isn't saved, the system will ask for the name of the new file (and you can specify a new place on the filesystem, too).

Actually, to me, there is some stupidity on the part of Apple engineering in the implementation of Auto-save. Files that are not named should be saved somewhere anyway, and the system should alert you of anonymously-named files that need to be named the next time you log onto your computer. The Newton and Lisa did this, giving the document the default name "<application> Document, saved <date>" on the Lisa, and the document's creation time on the Newton. With Lion's current implementation, if you have unnamed documents that are open, and the system needs to force matters (ie., shut down, restart, force quit, etc.) you risk either hanging your application or losing your data.

You can bet your bottom dollar that I'm onto that case with Apple engineering!

—tonza

I have gone through the few applications that I have that support Auto-save on Lion, and have noticed in 10.7.3 that performing a SIGKILL on processes that have untitled documents are able to save their contents to the Autosave Information directory, and recover them when the applications are next opened. So I'm pleased that this is indeed the case!

The same goes for quitting applications with unsaved documents open via the Quit command... applications are able to save untitled documents, and recover them when the applications are resumed.

So what I said here:

"With Lion's current implementation, if you have unnamed documents that are open, and the system needs to force matters (ie., shut down, restart, force quit, etc.) you risk either hanging your application or losing your data."

is not worthy of consideration and can be ignored, unless an application is not written properly and doesn't exhibit the behaviour described as planned.

The apps I have used to test with are:

• Textedit

• OmniGraffle Pro

• OmniOutliner Pro

• Pages

• Numbers

and they all are reliable when it comes to recovering documents after a fatal circumstance. So far, so good!

Unfortunately, I don't have any other applications to play with apart from those that come with Lion, but I am confident that auto-save is doing what I would expect it to do under adverse conditions.

—tonza

At this time, I'm aware of three other apps that use AutoSave :

iBooks Author

Keynote

Preview

It seems that Final Cut Pro X does the same but I can't check : I don't own it and there is no such feature in the trial version.

The empty file which I displayed in my screenshot was created under 10.7.3 😟

I can't say if it's a general behavior because I get some surprising behavior with the system used in French.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 11 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 seriously don't believe that a change in semantic regarding Save As... and Export... versus Duplicate and Export... is costing anyone any serious amount of cash just because of the way people have been introduced to a user interface some 20 years ago.

The differences between preparing and deferring a document are so benign that there is no reason for people to be confused at this slight change in semantics. I for one welcome the new capabilities in Lion regarding auto-save and resume, because time and time again I feel that with many other facets of computer technology so advanced today, that it is ludicrous to expect that we have to continually micromanage our machines to do the sorts of things that our machines should be able to do themselves around the real work we have to do. Taking out the more costly possibility of data loss due to human falacy (ie., you forget to save a document) is much more useful and in my opinion, much more important than the costs of changing a user interface convention to the benefit of having computers do more work for you and expose less opportunity for mishaps.

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion. But if you have concerns regarding the costs of training and productivity in relation to subtle changes in a computer's operation, then I have a plan for you—let people who want work on the older system (Snow Leopard) do so, while introduce Lion to people who wouldn't mind the change. That way, the staff you have can progress as Apple's technologies evolve and ultimately leave those pretty bad 20-year-old habits behind.

I'll end this discussion here, because I have tried to discuss the reasons behind the changes, the benefits they would bring, and the fact that Lion's new features are actually not new in the world of computer science, and that these new features are ones that I have been waiting a very long time for Apple to re-introduce because of the benefits they bring. I sincerely do hope that you can consider my comments without blatant dismissal.

The more reliable that our computers are, and the less micromanagement we have to apply to get our computers to work, the more real-world work we can get done. And surely that is a good thing, isn't it?

—tonza

Hello tonza.

Your answers are so precise, clear and accurate that I wish that you will not quit the thread.

Please, continue to give such infos.

I think that it would be really useful to gather your messages in a new thread.

For my own use, I gathered them in a Pages document.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 11 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 seriously don't believe that a change in semantic regarding Save As... and Export... versus Duplicate and Export... is costing anyone any serious amount of cash

Tonza,

It adds up quickly enough for me to call it serious cash.

Let's say you have 15 people in your company who work on computers running Mac OS-X. Let's say that their average rate of pay is only $20/hour including benefits.

(I am deliberately using an example of a pay grade that does not assume that higher pay equals more Mac experience or Mac-savvy, but you can multiply my result by a factor of 2 or 3 to see how it applies to more senior people --- moreover, IT people will tell you that the higher paid executives are often the most clueless, when it comes to computers. I have a very successful, wealthy CEO relative, for example, who thinks it is illogical on his Windows computer to use a START button to turn of the computer. But I digress....)

If those 15 people waste only 5 minutes each day, that adds up to $5,000 per year for the company. 5 minutes per day is 1,000 minutes per year on 200-day annual work schedule. That's 16.667 hours multipled by 15 people multplied by $20.00. I don't know how many people you employ, but I'm not inclined to throw away $5,000 without blinking … or thinking … or drinking. 😉

If your company has 15 senior executives … no wait, let's call them Job Creators … who each waste this same amount of time, it gets a lot more expensive. Let's say these Job Creators are each paid $150,000 per year. Assuming they work an 8-hour day, their compensation is $93.75 per hour, so the cost to the organization for their 5-minute per day struggle comes to $23,437.50.

If somebody waste 5 minutes a day thanks to the new scheme, it's time for him to learn the way to work with the apps.

The only seconds which I wasted with the removing of Save As… are those spent to write some scripts for guys feeling unable to live without the feature or to answer dumb messages here and there.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 12 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

If somebody waste 5 minutes a day thanks to the new scheme, it's time for him to learn the way to work with the apps.

Do you really, truly not understand that "learning the way it works" cannot change the fact that Duplicate is slower and takes more steps than Save As?

The problem isn't related to the cost of this or that for Apple.

Tonza explained very well the reasons behind the changes.

The design choice is consistent, Re-introducing Save As… would break this consistency.

From my point of view, the new design isn't wasting time.

It's the way I'm working for years, long before the design change.

For those which want to Save_As in a single action, I delivered a script.

You have the tools allowing you to behave as you want. You refuse to use them.

It's not my problem and it's not Apple's one.

It's when you continue to rant here that you are really wasting your time.

For mine, it's not a problem, I'm retired 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 12 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

Terry is absolutely right. It would have cost Apple nothing to leave it in. Gradually, people would learn something new without disrupting their work.

Suppose you took your 6-speed Porsche in for an oil change and they gave it back to you with an automatic transmission that you didn't ask for and don't want. Would you be content to know that they did it for your own good becuase is is consistent with the way they are designing newer models? I know it's not a perfect analogy, but the point I am making is that nobody likes to have their tools removed or altered in such a way that they can no longer use what they are satisfied with.

It's not the same thing as the removal of diskette drives from the first iMacs. You had a choice to buy the machine or not. Clearly, Apple is making an attempt to migrate us away from the use of a mouse. It is less expensive to build trackpad devices and they believe gestures are a better operating method than the limited point and click. So here's what they did right: they gave us choices. You can buy a new Bluetooth mouse that understands gestures when you swipe across its surface. You can buy a trackpad and begin using it instead of or in addition to your mouse. But they did not suddenly take away the mouse and your 10year old USB mouse still works fine even if it has no right click or other modern features.

I try to not be offensive here, but I just can't respect those who write that because they understand what the new feature is intended to do, the rest of us must be neanderthals. ANd my time here will not be wasted if the result is that someone at Apple pays attention to the chorus of disaffected Lion users. They constantly tell us they monitor feedback and forums. This may be a debate but it is neither a rant nor a waste of time.

To retired individuals who experience neither a loss of productivity nor a waste of time, I say: congratulations, I hope you are enjoying your retirement and will intersperse your computer activities with some consideration for others who have not yet reached your milestone in life.