What happened to Save As?

Long before I got the system, the info was available on some forums 😉

Yes, "some forums" also breaking the NDA. You repeating this illegal distribution of information does not absolve you from breaking the NDA yourself. But enough of that.

Here is my contribution to getting the discussion back on point. Apologies if I've already posted this earlier in this thread. I know I've posted it in other forums.

This is a simple comparison of the steps needed in Snow Leopard vs. Lion to achieve exactly the same result when basing a new document on an existing one:

Save As in Snow Leopard:

1) Choose Save As from the File Menu. (The folder the dialog box opens up to will be the same one your present document is located in, which is where you want to save your new document in most cases. Thus:)

2) Type a name for your new document and key Return.

You are now ready to begin working in your new document.

Duplicate in Lion:

1) Choose Duplicate from the File Menu.

2) Choose Save from the File Menu to give your new document a meaningful name. (The folder the dialog box opens up to will be unrelated to the location of your present document. Thus...)

3) Navigate to where you want to save your new document.

4) Type a name for your new document and key Return.

5) Switch back to your old document, which has remained open.

6) Close your old document.

You are now ready to begin working in your new document.

I'm wondering in what universe Scheme #2 is a "better" way to get things done than Scheme #1.

Message sent to Apple :

Hello

In an Apple Discussion forum, I was so bored by ranters complaining against the removal of the menu item Save As in Apple applications that I wrote something like :

" you will have to become acustomed to that because in Mountain Lion, Script Editor dropped this item too".

I already read this feature in forums before receiving Mountain Lion but I may understand that you treat that as a NDA breach.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 17 avril 2012 15:42:44

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 17 avril 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 remember this post from the beginning. Here is something more recent to add to the comparison:

In Pages, there is an Insert Date & Time command. Unless you know that double-clicking the auto-inserted date, you will find that every time you re-open the document, the date value updates.

In Snow Leopard, this was manageable because unless you used Save or Save As, you did not lose track of the originally written date. You could just close the file that you re-opened and nothing changed. Now, the original gets updated and you can't refer to the Finder to know what was the original date.

Moreover, if the document was never before viewed in Lion (created long ago in Snow Leopard or something earlier) then there are no Versions to revert to.

This entire way of working makes my head spin! The biggest thing I see is that control of your document(s) has been wrested from you and given over to the system.

Say I'm working along in a Pages document. I make some changes, but I haven't saved them as yet. At any point along the way, I can make the determination that:

a) These are changes that I want to make a part of this document. (So I Save). OR:

b) These changes have taken this document to a point where I need to create a new document while leaving the old document in its last Saved state. (So I Save As...my original document remains unchanged from its last Saved state [which was determined by ME], and I can give my new document a unique identifying name.)

As we've said more than once, this is about control. As you and others have so eloquently put it in the past, these are MY documents, not Apple's. *I* get to determine how and when they're saved...or not saved.

DChord58,

that's why I said THIS implementation of version control is the dummiest I've ever seen.

It would be sooo nice if:

1. we could save a new version ONLY IF we want

2. we could associate a comment to any version WE decide to save for easy comparison

What is incredible is these features have been in CVS for 20 years now. What did Apple's developer smoke when they designed this stuff?

As we've said more than once, this is about control. As you and others have so eloquently put it in the past, these are MY documents, not Apple's. *I* get to determine how and when they're saved...or not saved.

Absolutely. I have nothing but disdain for this new workflow. What happens to my data should never, ever be at the whim of the OS. How Apple could have overlooked, or ignored this basic principle is unreal.

I can currently work around it completely in Lion, even in the upcoming CS6 suite, assuming how Photoshop CS6 completely ignores Autosave/Duplicate is applied across the rest of Adobe's CS6 apps the same way. I presume it will be.

Yes, the wording is not very good. Does it mean the original will revert to its original state after it's duplicated, or will the duplicate be the one to revert?

Honestly, I'm assuming it's the former since the image I was testing with was the one Preview wouldn't let me save in any manner. From a workflow perspective, it wouldn't make any sense at all for the Duplicate to be the one to revert. I'm back in SL at the moment getting real work done, so I can't break away to test again and make sure which image is the one to revert.

Yes, the "Duplicate and Revert" dialogue only muddies the waters further. I've run across it and done some head-scratchig about what to do. And Kurt, I've also had problems with Preview locking the file up and not allowing me to save because I didn't have permission. I went around in circles a half hour trying to figure that one out as well—and never did arrive at a solution.

I too miss "Save As" and would like the choice of using it. I can use the duplicate and save routine, but it doesn't fit what I'm doing as well most of the time as the old, straightforward "Save As".

I have been following bits of this most interesting (not to mention entertaining) conversation for awhile. Some excellent points are being made here, and I appreciate the efforts of many of you to explain in detail why the loss of "Save As" is so problematic. I really do hope someone from Apple is taking note.

Done.

And here is a related question involving Autosave (apologies if this has already been addressed somewhere along the way): I've noticed since upgrading to Lion that Preview, TextEdit, Numbers, and Pages all seem more sluggish. (Files slow to open, save, close, etc.)

Has anyone else noticed this behavior? And could such sluggishness be being caused by the Autosave, either in terms of extra processing going on in the background, or in terms of bloated files due to the versions that are tagging along, etc.?

If this is the case, I would like not only to have the option of "Save As" but also the option of disabling Autosave.

Hi Donnie,

give a try to Keynote. Create and edit a 200 slide presentation with hires photos (quite common for workshops, events, etc).

When I did (10.7.0 or 10.7.1) my computer spent more time autosaving than allowing me to edit the file. It may have been fixed in next Lion releases, but I can't tell: I rolled back to Snow Leopard and Powerpoint.

Hi:

This is just the type of situation where we should call up the apple support desk. Ask for help explain that you cannot run this way . What can they do?

If no solution then tell them this is not satisfactory and you will move on to powerpoint instead as you must get on with your job.

Keynote has always been one of their pride and joy applications.

Hit them where it hurts...

This way it is now on the logs that gets reviewed by management and moves up the chain.

cheers

elo

Your Keynote experience, Stefano, is precisely the kind of problem Apple needs to recognize. Keynote is, as elol added, one of the applications Apple is most fond of. I love Keynote, and I can't imagine using anything else to create a presentation.

Some of my Keynote files and small, text-only, and intended to be exported to Power Point to share with others less fortunate than us. In fact, the now-discontinued iWork.com beta site used to be outstanding for giving viewers of the file the option to download the format of their choice, or download nothing at all and just view it. But I digress ...

Other Keynote files are larger because they include many photos. Often, people don't realize that the photos they insert into a Keynote file need not be high resolution when the presentation is not being printed, but only viewed on a display device. Nevertheless, it doesn't take many photos or Quick Time movies to make a Keynote file quite large. Add a soundtrack with music or narration and it gets even bigger. And we don't need to waste valuable disk space storing so many incremental copies of the file.

Moreover, if you were to use the Revert command and needed to decide which verion to go back to --- how would you differentiate one from the other. Maybe the slides themselves provide a clue - but maybe the changes you made involved builds or transitions from one slide to another, and you could waste hours examining the earlier editions trying to find the last one that preceded the "error" you made that caused you to desire to revert in the first place.

And, to add insult to injury, while you're taking all that time exploring your previous versions of the file, Auto-Save is still working away, making new versions of your current file.

Conclusion: Keynote should definitely allow users to specify if they want auto-saving turned on or off, perhaps with a user-specified time interval. For someone who wants to use SAVE AS instead, that option should also be there.

Given that Keynote also works on the iOS platform, where storage space is more limited than on desktop computers, the auto-saving makes more sense, it is worth noting that there is no REVERT command. Search the Keynote HELP file for "revert" and you won't find anything. If you edit a slide and find the need to go backward, you get an UNDO button. No saving, no reverting. Does it make sense on the mobile device? As far as I'm concerned, it's good enough for me.

But on the desktop, which I still consider my "real" work environment, I want more control.

Dennis, I agree 100%.

have you ever used CVS? A 20 years old technology allowing you to:

1. save a new version if AND ONLY IF you want

2. attach a comment to the new version for easy retrieval (e.g. "Changed slide transition to cross-fade")

Cheers

Regarding Text Edit, I'll just add that you can save in various formats when saving the TextEdit file for the first time. But only when saving it for the first time. If you have re-visited a Text Edit document several times, you would have to make a Duplicate, and then you get your format options, which include Plain Text, Word, and RIch Text. You can also export to PDF.

Inasmuch as I am in the message above being scolded for wasting time by someone who reminds me that the Export commands in the File Menu and the Share Menu are identical, let me mention that none of the defenders of the new Apple menu changes seem to think there is anything confusing about the same command being located in two menus. I have often wondered if the result of my using the Share menu item will produce different results, especially when delving into the many options for QuickTime.

I should also add that I reserve the right to waste my own writing time. Anybody who chooses to read, or not read, what I've written can decide for themselves whether their reading time was wasted. As much as I bemoan the way our colleague in France wastes everyone's reading time, I have learned to skip his posts. In this case, however, i cannot help identifying a small, but significant flaw he consistently makes.

He would anger fewer people if, instead of writing "there is no reason" he would say "I don't see a reason". Doing so would demonstrate an ability to at least try to see things from someone else's point of view and thereby maybe learn something, too. The declarative there is no reason just underscores the obnoxious and self-righteous certainty that he is right and the rest of us are wrong.

(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.