What happened to Save As?

Tonza,

I was never really talking about file systems so much as a hierarchy of folders where I can locate my work in an easy and humanly readable fashion.

I get that habit has a lot to do with it... which is in fact part of what I am talking about - Apple, without so much as a by your leave, has made my habits difficult and more time consuming. To top it off, the new habit they want me to adapt, doesn't work well for my particular scenario.

And people like you simply don't get it.

So, it is time for me to admit that you are incapable of grasping what I am saying no matter how I word it.

Now you're getting personal.

I do get it (and I don't know what group of people you think I belong to... and frankly, don't care). I have been able to analyse your difficulties that are really not that difficult to solve or understand, and explain concepts that you haven't even been aware of beyond what you see on the screen, and you think I don't get it?!

You're on your own, now.

—tonza

There is a difference between being aware of the "behind the screen" file systems, and caring about it. This discussion was never about that. What it was about is the "Save As" command. My control of my ability to save a file the way I want to has been taken away from me and you can't help that no matter how much jargon, engineering insight and technical specs you try to throw at me or anyone else in the forum here... and it just makes you sound like you are making excuses for Apple.

I don't know, nor care "what group" you "belong to" but you keep replying to me in a way that says I should be happy with the change, if only I understood the reasoning behind it.

The point is: I simply don't care why they did it.

I have my suspicions and I don't think it has anything to do with the file systems; programing a UI "button" behavior does not depend on that... this was a choice and I think it was erroneous.

As with others in this forum, we don't like it and we want our "Save As" button back.

And, yes I have put in several "problem reports" and given feedback through the correct channels.

Sorry I bothered you.

Seems like noone has mentioned another important issue with the lack of "Save As..." I need to open text files created on the Mac on a Windows machine and the Windows application required a DOS Text file. In previous versions of Text Edit you could "Save As..." and rename the file and change it to another text file format and that has always worked. Now neither "Save a version", nor "Duplicate" allows you to specify a different format, you can't even rename the file except for the forced default "...copy" name. This is a big oversight and needs to be fixed.

Fortunately WordPad allowed me to rename and reformat the file but that should not be necessary to use a Windows product to do something Mac TextEdit used to do so elegantly.

You are absolutely right. Export is in some menus but not in all, and the file types offered in some Export menus are too limited.

Dennis_Burnham wrote:

The removal of SAVE AS is different. It's a classic "ain't broke don't fix it" example. On a system known for its intuitiveness, Save a Version is as counterintuitive as can be. You execute the command and you're still on the same document, so what is the "version" and how does it differ from "Save" ? The Duplicate command has worked splendidly in Photoshop, where there is a reason to have two identical docs open together.

There's actually a precedent for this, and your example helps show the distinctions, whether you know it or not. There's been a long-standing problem (in all 1980s-metaphor software, not just Apple's) where if you are on a document and want to save a version of it without leaving the document, you can only do a Save As. The reason this is a problem is that users would do their Save As, do the (necessarily manual) renaming of the document, and get back to work. The problem? They'd forget they were still working in, and now updating, the renamed document that was supposed to be the filed-away backup version! Their changes were no longer going into the "real" document. This would result in a time-wasting round of closing the doc, renaming or switching them around, and then opening the one you were supposed to stay in if Save As hadn't derailed you.

That is an example of how Save As has been counterintuitive since it was invented, but we accept it as "good".....because it, and its workarounds, are the tradition we're used to.

Some developers solved this by adding "Save a copy". What this does is when you name and save a document, it branches off from the one you're working on, in a more useful way. Once you are done with your manual rename and your save, you end up in the same document you were were working in before, which is what you often want, avoiding the mistake above.

So, Save As is for when you want to end up in the new doc afterward, and Save a Copy is for when you want to end up in the old doc afterward. Both have their place. My point is that many (not all) people believe they want Save As back, when what they really want is Save a Copy. Photoshop does have a Duplicate command, but I do not like it as much because it adds another manual step of having to then choose Save As to still put that version on disk. Adobe knows it's not the same thing, because Photoshop has all three: Save As, Save a Copy, Duplicate. Photoshop simply provides the most flexibility...and the most confusion for newbies, which is what Apple is probably concerned about.

I see what Apple is trying to do. They are trying to rethink document handling as they have so many other things, successfully, and to address the original flaw in Save As for versioning. But the new Save behavior is not really successful. And I don't think Save As is what most people actually want to bring back. I would guess if people want an easy way to branch off a document, Apple should provide it with Save a Copy, or Apple should fix Duplicate so that it works properly.

terryc23 wrote:

Seems like noone has mentioned another important issue with the lack of "Save As..." I need to open text files created on the Mac on a Windows machine and the Windows application required a DOS Text file. In previous versions of Text Edit you could "Save As..." and rename the file and change it to another text file format and that has always worked. Now neither "Save a version", nor "Duplicate" allows you to specify a different format, you can't even rename the file except for the forced default "...copy" name.

Developers have an eye on tech support costs, and one source of tech support calls is that people Save As to the same name but different and less capable format, like rich text to plain text. This causes them to lose formatting permanently, which naturally upsets them, then they call support. This has caused developers to force the "...copy" on the filename. (Photoshop is an earlier pre-Lion example, if you try to save a rich layered file to a flat file it will append "...copy" to the name.) Which itself annoys people frequently.

Again, I see what Apple is trying to do, but their solution is flawed. There needs to be a way to easily switch formats. Some developers prefer to keep this action away from the Save dialog by routing all format changes through Export. Meaning not all developers would agree that Save As is the correct way to address this scenario.

The point of my last couple posts is that Save As is not the perfect command many here say it is, and that if you're going to try to change Apple's recent decisions, this is an opportunity to get it right, which might mean neither Apple's way nor Save As, if you think it through.

Network 23 wrote:

terryc23 wrote:

Now neither "Save a version", nor "Duplicate" allows you to specify a different format, you can't even rename the file except for the forced default "...copy" name.

(1) Save a version save different states of a given document in a given format so there is no reason to give the ability to embed one version in a different format.

(2) When we duplicate, we use the Save… menu item to save the document and in this case we may choose the format. Here is what is available with TextEdit :

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 19 décembre 2011 22:26:42

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

Yes, I figured out that you need to Save the copy to change the name and or format. An extra unnecessary step if they had left Save As... as we all have been using it for so long, in Windows and Mac.

>>The reason this is a problem is that users would do their Save As, do the (necessarily manual) renaming of the document, and get back to work. The problem? They'd forget they were still working in, and now updating, the renamed document that was supposed to be the filed-away backup version! Their changes were no longer going into the "real" document.<<

My experience has been the converse: Filemaker has Save a Copy... since the save is automatic, but I have a number of times wanted to be working in the new Copy only to realize that my changes are in the original version and that it was not acting as Save As...

Still don't think I want Save Version or Save a Copy for text documents, etc. I really, really do want Save As... back. They can add Save Version and Save a Copy if they want, why get rid of something that has been working just fine?

terryc23 wrote:

They can add Save Version and Save a Copy if they want, why get rid of something that has been working just fine?

They don't believe it's working just fine anymore. In an effort to simplify the computer by decreasing reliance on 20th-century-vintage file systems (which in part I agree with), they see it as a shift as similar to when the first Mac was designed to force people to use the mouse and deprecate thje keyboard. People said the same thing then: Why are you taking away our ability to use our fast command-line interface? What is this clumsy mouse thing? Apple wanted to make sure people couldn't go back, so that they would have to learn how the new system worked. People hated the early Mac for that.

Again, I am not saying Lion save is a good thing right now. It is not a good thing. I'm just explaining that Apple's attitude is not new, and is, in fact, historically part of being a Mac user. We have to hold tight...and protest...and let Apple know how we want it done...until Apple gets it right. Like when they relented on their early OS X decision to not allow you to store icons on the desktop, and 100 other examples.

You are kinda right about how we need to adapt to change. I admire the way some software producers, Adobe for example, allow the user to make their own keyboard shortcuts or design their own workspace. They even sometimes offer the option to continue using the previous version's menus.

And there is a very important. reason why this makes sense and I think is overlooked by Apple's engineers when they do things like remove SAVE AS. It's this: not everyone worships at the altar of OS-X where they revel in each and every cool new tool and study the long-term impact of learning to do things in the newer, better, way. Some of us actually use our computers to earn a living, and we are willing to do an OS upgrade and maybe postpone for a week or a month the afternoon or evening when we can explore the new tools, learn how they work, and adapt our workflows to take advantage of them.

My computer is my assistant, whom I have trained to work at my command. When Apple removes SAVE AS the way they did, it's as if they took my secretary aside and broke her left wrist, handicapping her. Or they went out into my tool room and threw away all the drill bits and socket wrenches, making it harder for my mechanic to do routine machine maintenance.

Apple needs to remember that some of us need these tools to earn a living, not play. Imagine if you went into an Apple Store and put the electric outlets in the genius bar on 240V and left them a note that says: we did this to improve the way you work. You'll get used to it.

I landed in this discussion because I did a search on the meaning of "save a version" . I just could not figure out what it was about. "save as" on the other hand is self explanatory.

Like most apple users I want software which is easy to use. I don't want it to do what it thinks I want it to do or what it thinks I can't figure out for myself, and I don't want it to deliberately make things more difficult so that it can then force me to do what it would like me to do in the way it thinks I should do it. I spent forever trying to find the library folder - its easy when you know how, but why on earth did they decide to hide it from view? I also wasted half an hour trying to pull up the address book in mail! Why does the Lion default setting hide it? Answer: change for the sake of change.

I will persevere with re-learning this re-invented wheel, but thank goodness I transferred my SL to an external hard disk which has allowed me to contine with serious work.

Oh and Dennis, could you visit our local Apple Store with your screw driver? They need some shock treatment.

Dennis Burnham wrote:

You are absolutely right. Export is in some menus but not in all, and the file types offered in some Export menus are too limited.

Export exists in File menu and in Share menu.

The formats available are exactly the same:

PDF format

XL format

CSV format

In Numbers, Save As… offered the ability to save as:

Numbers '09 format

Numbers '08 format

XL format

Only Numbers '08 format is missing.

Every user may retrieve the three formats offered by Save As…

It just requires to apply :

File > Duplicate

File > Save…

which offer :

Numbers '09 format

Numbers '08 format

XL format

You are wasting more time writing here than using the app as it's designed to be.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 20 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

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

My iDisk is : http://public.me.com/koenigyvan

I don't think "Save As…" is self explanatory; we just got used to what it means.