What happened to Save As?

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

The people who disagree with you, Yvan KOENIG, are people who are hopeful that Apple will respect its customers. Your "love it or leave it" attitude is typical of the corporate attitude at Microsoft that drives customers away. Time will tell, of course, but if there is not this chorus of dissidence, Apple cannot be blamed for a change that nobody objects to. Those who raise their voices here, and in other discussions and feedback tools, are using the only tools available to them to respectfully and articulately make themselves heard and understood.

Your condescending attitude toward those who do not desire to deny you the satisfaction of using the newer methods is something you should consider because it does you no good and only antagonizes those who happen to not agree with your point of view. Every new addition to this thread by someone who, like Jacksonian, takes the time to read the entire discussion and add their comments to the 'petition' is being helpful, whereas by being derisive you gain nothing for yourself and only demoralize and weaken the rest of us.

The explanations of how to use the new scheme have been ably rejected already by several people. If you cannot accept what they wrote as facts, how can you expect them to give your explanations the same respect?

Love or leave us is an old Apple practice.

You may continue to dream on your little cloud that Save As… will be back one day.

I keep feet on earth and will live without this feature for years.

If you don't understand at this time, look at the next OS.

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

OK ...... I have taken some valium and breathing more slowly now.

Can someone tell me if these extra auto saves are able to be deleted? Or do I still not get it? Isn't this extra 'saving' adding clutter and taking up space?

And although this is a little off topic - why does iCloud, when switched off, delete my computer's calendar information and it can only be returned if I enable iCloud again. This is mentioned because the user's ability to control things, it seems, is being removed in other ways and not just in the changes to 'Save As' in Pages.

Be careful, if you don't want to be enslaved by iCloud you should not 'tick' some of the features.

Finally, Yvan and Tonza have coped a fair beating on this forum (from me too). I would like to say, from me anyway, that I do not wish this forum to become a place to personally attack anyone nor their integrity. You see, once properly medicated I am a reasonable person.

Hi: I for one will be dropping Numbers and Pages now the save as is missing. I do several documents then compare layout show differen people.. and select one.

the change shows absolutely no understanding of how people work.

as with some of the other features. give me the option. dont force me...

I would rather succumb to using OFFICE with all its headaches and garbage.

by the way I move forward all the time but lets not follow apple like sheep every time.

If they force this method on to other applications like photoshop etc.. the world would move over to dreaded windows.

cheers elo

I understand sooner or later "Save as…" will not be supported in OSX at all. This is one of those things Apple will not back out on. You can drop Pages but sooner or later you'll have it in Word as well.

I think when building an app you have an option to build for Snow Leopard (with "Save as…") or for Lion (with new way of saving and "Save as…" support in older systems). In order to be able to distribute via App Store, you have to build for Lion and according to the new app sandboxing rules.

This new saving paradigm is coming to all apps.

I think I finally understood why versions are being centralized, not kept next to their original files: this way only Apple will be able to offer cloud syncing for two or more computers. Until now you could sync folders with Dropbox or Sugarsync, now by doing that you will unlink files from their version history. This is a very deliberate move by Apple.

Please, there is no need to become paranoiac.

As far as I know, iCloud is not supposed to synchronize the versions, only the main documents.

If you move the file xxx.pages from HD1 to HD2, it already loose its versions datas.

I don't use Dropbox but I assume that it behave the same.

In most of the threads about this feature, what was feared was that versions were shared thru the net which was clearly not wanted by the users.

I wish to add that I agree with your sentence to which I just add one word :

"Happily, this new saving paradigm is coming to all apps."

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 21 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

It's the way several developers understand the rules applying to apps supposed to be distributed thru the MAS.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 21 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