What happened to Save As?

PeePee Sprinkles wrote:

I also "researched" under "File": there is no "Save As". Pushing Option makes a "close all" appear, not "save as", that's why we came here to find an answer.

OK, I'm mightily confused. Let's first establish whether you're talking about Lion or Mountain Lion. Your statement above is correct for Lion...Save As was never implemented there.

But on my Mac (running OS 10.8.2), in Pages, Preview, Numbers and Keynote — after I make a change to a document, Save As... does indeed appear when holding down the Option key before keying the File menu.

A dialog box opens (to the same folder that held the original document), and I can rename the file to my liking. The open file with the change assumes that name. If I now open the original file, it is in the last-saved state, i.e., before I added new text and invoked Save As.

How is your experience different?

Steve Maximus wrote:

It is NOT the same Save-As function as there was in the past. So while there is a function called Save-As, it does not do what Save-As used to do. So I think you will find that Dennis is not crazy and not ranting.

I'm confused again. In what functional way is Save As different from how it worked in Snow Leopard and earlier?

In simple terms Alex, The new "save as" is not the same as the old "save as". The old "save as" used to leave the original file as it was. When you use the new "save as" it saves your latest work on the file in a new file, but unfortunately autosave also updates the original file.

I apologise for the rudeness of my friends. Your reaction was the same as many who have arrived at this thread only to be driven away by the intolerance of others. Read through the history of this thread and then stay and join the fight for the return of the original "Save as..." and more importantly, the option to switch off "autosave"

Hundreds of thousands of people have changed back to using non-apple software on their macs to avoid the "duplicate/autosave madness". No wonder the share price is falling!

Hi Mark (and 10,000 others)

Save As before you make changes. Original doc will then be unchanged. This is good practice anyway.

Ian.

Mark, what am I missing here?

In my experiments earlier tonight in Pages, here's exactly what happened. I...

1) Opened up a previous document and added some text.

2) Invoked Save As... by holding down the Option key before keying the File Menu

3) Saw a dialog box that opened to the same folder as the original document.

4) Typed in a new name for the document with added text.

5) Reopened the original document.

The original document did not have the added text. It was the same as when I opened it in Step 1.

It's true that if I Browsed Previous Versions, a version existed with the added text. But it was not the "Current Document." Furthermore, it looked as though there was an option to go to the "Last Saved Version" in case something went wrong in this process.

I'm one of the many who spilled a lot of electrons into this thread (and many others) when Save As was taken away. That was surely the most boneheaded move in the history of Macintosh.

But I thought we had won a hard-fought battle, and all was well. So I'm trying to figure out what complaints you and others still have.

Yes, I still wish that the entire AutoSave/Versions paradigm could be disabled (something I said consistently throughout the course of the battle). And I agree that Snow Leopard represented the pinnacle of the Mac OS. I still have had zero desire to upgrade my work iMack to Mountain Lion, and I'm quite sure I won't until software starts breaking within it.

Still, I believe the current system is as good as it will ever get, and I haven't yet run into an instance of it messing up my work or my workflow, which Lion and early Mountain Lion most certainly did. Have I just been lucky?

I would welcome further calm, dispassionate discussion on this issue. As for PeePee Sprinkles' invocation of the term "jerk," all I can say is...before you go throwing that term about loosely, I'd love to introduce you to a certain Frenchman!

Hi Dchord,

Actually you are right and I was wrong. I have been avoiding using preview, text edit, numbers, etc for quite a while and it seems my knowledge was out of date. I just played around with numbers and text edit, and found that now invoking the new "save as" using the option button does in fact leave the original file without the changes.

Was it changed in the last update to version 10.8.2 of Mountin Lion?

How do I delete my previous post Ha ha?

Hi Mark --

Yes, I believe they finally got it right in OS 10.8.2. But you're correct that there was definitely a false step when Mountain Lion was first released. The promised return of Save As was heralded with great fanfare, but in fact the changes were saved to the original file when it was used, rendering it as useless as before.

At some point the chimpanzees assigned to Mountain Lion were replaced by people with brains in their heads, and things were put right.

I would like to further add that a great many people ridiculed you, me and others who doggedly fought for the return of Save As. They thought we were simply Luddites resisting change, and further told us that Apple would never be moved to bring Save As back no matter how loudly we complained (are you listening, Yvan?).

We proved them wrong...and I'm very proud of everyone in this thread, and the many others in other forums who refused to accept these facile answers.

At least in this narrow instance, the good guys won. In the grander scheme of things, though, I still fear for the future of the Mac OS. As so many of us said in the course of the battle, I do NOT want my desktop OS to mimic my iPhone one. I do NOT want to lose the functionality that has worked so beautifully in the course my 25 years of using Macs.

But despite this important victory, I'm still worried.

Great analogy Dchord

I hope I can contribute to clear the scenzrio.

In Mountain Lion the Option key show Save As in the File menu. But... not always.

If you disable the autosave/version cr4p (with the applepersistence flag from the terminal) then the Option key does NOT show Save As. It shows the Close All, but not the Save As.

Or at least this was the behaviour before I permanently deleted ML.

Hello Dchord,

yes, that's the way it should work. The problem is this: a new version is saved with the added characters and another newer version is saved with the original content.

If anything goes wrong (sometimes applications crash) you may end up with a changed version without knowing it.

Same scenario for the flag (I don't remember its name) asking if you want to confirm changes when you exit a program. It makes you believe you will decide if you want to save changes or not before quitting.

Actually, new versions are constantly saved and when quitting youhave the choice to restore a previous version.

Once more, if the application crashes the file is changed (but you may think its not, since you did not tell the application to save changes). Then let's say you move the file to a file system not supporting versions... your changes are permanent until you manually remove them.

Regards

Stefano

If only they would change it back to how it was in Snow Leopard we wouldn't be having this discussion!

elolaugesen wrote:

Hi:

the on line apple store once again have Snow Leopard available for sale, £14.00 (not appstore)

cheers elo

If it would run on the new hardware they would sell millions!

Mark

If it would run on the new hardware they would sell millions!

Mark

I urge you all to use the Apple feedback form to ask for a SL updated with all the new drivers included so that we can do just that. It would not be too much trouble I shouldn't think.

Also, at the same time ask them to reinstate the keyboard shortcut for find-by-file-name. This disappeared in the transition from 9.2 to 10.0 and did not come back till 10.4. Then in the transition from 10.6 to 10.7 it went away again. Will they ever learn? And they might also stop spotlight from returning hits to email messages. I have never yet performed a finder search when I was looking for the content of an email! How dumb is that?

Lion/Mountain Lion is the Vista of the Mac.

sorry, i realise i could have been a little nicer, i just searched it myself and it turns out there is literally no mention of what i said anywhere that i could find, if you cant find it after what i suggested then im afraid i cant help you though as i have mountain lion installed

You have nothing to apologize for. Your response was entirely correct, and PeePee Sprinkles (you have to wonder about someone who would choose that as a screen name) came back with far more vitriol than was called for...particularly when what he said was completely erroneous. With just a small amount of searching, he could have easily found the answer in multiple locations.

And in very typical fashion, we note that he has not come back to admit that he was wrong. He just melted back into the woodwork, as so many other cowards on this board do when shown the error of their ways.

You took responsibility for your post...something that is obviously quite beyond him.