Q: What happened to Save As?

My 1st guess was that they wanted to test the users reactions but it was a bad idea. iWork users and XCode users are probably not the same kind of users. Maybe it's the explanation.

We may assume that XCode users are more aware of computer's behavior than the ones targetted by iWork, TextEdit or Preview.

On one side we have the techies supposed to know what they do.

On the other side, standard users which aren't so deeply aware of the machine's behavior.

No offense here, just remember the old days when we were said that before delivering products to 'standard customers' they passed "monkey tests".

The new OS is designed to bring better safety in case of failure. The collateral effect is that the user must change old workflows able to change the document contents when it's not wanted.

As I wrote several times, I anticipated this behavior years ago. You will have to adapt your workflow too.

Switching to an other operating system would probably be a temporary answer. We may bet that with a gap of three or five years M…oSoft will bring the same change to its system.

I read here rants against Save As… dropping or against Versions but I read elsewhere messages from M…oSoft customers asking when their tools will benefit of the same features.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

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

You are right about the difference between the techies and the ordinary people, or the "monkeys" as you call them.  Although I think NASA and Jane Goodall proved that primates learn faster than humans ... or was that mice?   Anyway ....

Maybe as we agree on that you can see my point that the less experienced users need better tutorials to help them learn what's new and how to make the best use of it.  If the learning tools were given to the users as part of the OS, then the supervisors would not be dealing with the loss of productivity while people struggle to use their "upgraded" computers.

All along, I have not been saying that the auto-save is necessarily a bad idea.  I just say that people need to be instructed about its use and not have it thrust on them like a mystery.

And secondly, it would not cost anything or do any harm to leave the older tools in the menu in the meantime.  In graphic design programs, multiple levels of undo are the more efficient way to manage the process of iterative change.

Dennis Burnham wrote:

 

You are right about the difference between the techies and the ordinary people, or the "monkeys" as you call them.  Although I think NASA and Jane Goodall proved that primates learn faster than humans ... or was that mice?   Anyway ...

It seems that you don't understand what is "monkey test".

May look at :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_test

All along, I have not been saying that the auto-save is necessarily a bad idea.  I just say that people need to be instructed about its use and not have it thrust on them like a mystery.

Save As… was dropped and replaced by Duplicate + Save… in : Keynote, Numbers & Pages.

The changes are described in the User Guides. Here is a subset of Pages User Guide:

Save As… was dropped by TextEdit :

Save As… was dropped by Preview which is not only designed as a viewer but as an Editor !

I will post the related datas in an other message

Apple may deliver the infos but they can't read them for the users!

And secondly, it would not cost anything or do any harm to leave the older tools in the menu in the meantime.

Given the changes introduced in the system, I doubt that maintaining Save As… had no cost.

In graphic design programs, multiple levels of undo are the more efficient way to manage the process of iterative change.

Versions is an efficient multilevel undo tools.

It's the way I use it

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 22 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

… continued

Save As… was dropped by Preview which is not only designed as a viewer but as an Editor !

iBooks Author didn't dropped Save As… because this new app never offered it. Its Help state :

As you may see, the new features are well described in delivered resources.

Apple carefully designed them.

If users refuse to read these resources, the problem is not on Apple side.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 22 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

You minutely singular point of view has gone way, WAY past tiresome, Yvan.

What is tiresome ?

(1) Dennis didn't understood the meaning of "monkey test" : I gave a link to a page explaining what they are.

(2) Dennis wrote :

I just say that people need to be instructed about its use and not have it thrust on them like a mystery.

I just wanted to show that Apple delivered the wanted infos.

(3) Entering the Preview Help page, I saw the subtitle : Edit PDF document

This remind me someone writing that Preview is not an editor but only a viewer.

I thought interesting to post it.

If I understand well, only those sharing your opinion are allowed to write here.

I disagree with that and will post every time I will think that it's needed.

As you know, I'm retired so I have time available to do that.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 22 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

in reply to Kurt's comments.  I agree with him totally. 

I am semi-retired work with original art images everyday for printing.  If the SAVE AS ever disappeared from photoshop etc.  it would be impossible to keep track of the changes.  Version Numbers or such a thing is necessary. 

The new way of duplicating the files and then saving is multiple confusing steps.

Using the apple method of saved versions means you never know what changes have been made to the copy you see as there is no reference to what you did nor do you really know which copy you are working with as  in photoshop you do not see letters or numbers only funny shades of colors etc...

Any working person would have to rethink this entire workflow. We cannot do that everytime apple/adobe/microsoft decides to change their software without consulting the community.

I have been in this business for many years and also worked in the Data Processing business and if I had made the changes apple made without consulatation etc I would have been fired.

Yvan - I admire your love for apple but any Apple User working in industry/business usually do not use Numbers, Pages they do however use Preview all the time. 

I have used Apple products since 1982 and like them better than the other side - but from a business point of view it is getting harder and harder to stay loyal.  Apple just about killed us when they introduced the new (fixed actually for the better) the printer workflow with colorsync etc.  Changes were just made and all the suppliers were not ready.  I and others had to stay on OSX 5.8 until eveybody had caught up.  We cannot do this all the time.

Kurt.... I agree with your comments.. 

and Yvan.   please do not preach on this site. we do not always have time to go in and read all the new online  documentation in detail.    We must work to keep paying the bills and buy the new hardware...

Lets hope for once (and they do not have a good track record) that Microsoft do not go up this path without giving their users the SAVE AS option still there. 

Neooffice did it the right way they introduced Versions while keeping the old SAVE AS.

elol wrote:

 

Yvan - I admire your love for apple but any Apple User working in industry/business usually do not use Numbers, Pages they do however use Preview all the time.

I gave the infos for Preview as well as for iWork, TextEdit or iBooks Author.

For Preview I added that this app is not simply a viewer but an Editor.

and Yvan.   please do not preach on this site. we do not always have time to go in and read all the new online  documentation in detail.    We must work to keep paying the bills and buy the new hardware...

I answered Dennis Burnham questions, no less no more.

As far as I know, the Terms of Use don't ask me to get your permission before writing here

Neooffice did it the right way they introduced Versions while keeping the old SAVE AS.

It's just your definition of the right way. I'm free to think different.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 22 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 is amazing to me that there is such a defense of a new constriction that people are voicing their honest concerns about.  The logic of a certain work flow makes no difference; it is still ok for people to want to work their own way.  There is still no reason why people can't be allowed, encouraged, to work in a way that works for them.  To take away "Save As...", a way people have been working happily for years, for consistency sake, makes no sense.  Freedom is a good thing, and it is good for people to understand a change and still want an alternative that works better for them.  It is a personal computer, after all.

EXCELLENT comments elol!  I agree that Apple should let the users choose, as you describe NeoOffice does.

For now, I'm sticking with SL so that I don't have to learn this new way.

I think I will probably have to learn the new way eventually, because I've been waiting for a long time for Apple to make/include a decent database with Pages/Numbers AND decent Mail-merging from that database, i.e. labels (not everyone wants to use the Address Book defaults!!).  Apple hasn't seen the light on the database front.  (I know about bento, but I just want a database like what AppleWorks had!!)

I like Numbers & Pages a lot more than NeoOffice though, and I've tried it, but just don't care for it.

Yvan - you are a lot of the times very helpful and have lots of helpful tips, etc.  So thanks for that.  Just no worries!

I sent feedback to Apple about the SAVE AS.  I hope everyone does that!!

Thank you, elol. It sure is nice to hear from someone else who understands how bad such a change would be to apps like Photoshop. Thankfully, you can still do Save As in Lion in CS 5.5 and earlier (those versions which will run under Lion).

Can you imagine Autosave forced on Photoshop? Super! I've got a 250 MB file open and do a small brush stroke with the clone brush. As you know, you do this easily at least a dozen times in a small area to get something to look natural. Oh, but wait! Lion is going to try and save every one of those strokes as a version. Not only can you not see the difference between them in the version thumbnails, but you'll spend 80% or more of your time watching the spinning lollipop as the OS saves yet another version you don't want it to instead of getting work done.

This a production killer for any work intensive program, such as the Premiere Pro suite, the entire Creative Suite in general, Quark, etc. The Mac will literally become useless for the professional community if Autosave became the only way to work in the Mac OS.

Let's not forget the GUI itself. It appears Apple is pushing the Mac OS to mimic iOS. Great! I can't organize client files, copy or move them, or anything else with any kind of simplicity of an actual user OS because the entire file system is locked down and hidden from the user.

Why does it seem Apple is not thinking of these issues?

For years, I ended my messages with :

To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

Since Bentoy delivery, it's clear that iWork will not offer a database application.

At this time the merge tool apply to datas stored in Numbers as well as datas stored in AddressBook.

This feature was introduced in january 2009 with iWork '09 and it behaves well.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 22 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

You really don't understand the new behavior.

Kurt Lang wrote:

Can you imagine Autosave forced on Photoshop? Super! I've got a 250 MB file open and do a small brush stroke with the clone brush. As you know, you do this easily at least a dozen times in a small area to get something to look natural. Oh, but wait! Lion is going to try and save every one of those strokes as a version. Not only can you not see the difference between them in the version thumbnails, but you'll spend 80% or more of your time watching the spinning lollipop as the OS saves yet another version you don't want it to instead of getting work done.

The system doesn't save a version after every change.

It AutoSave the modified document in the original file.

Versions are created two ways :

(1) automatically, once an hour

(2) manually when you trigger Save a Version

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 22 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 AutoSave the modified document in the original file.

And tell me, oh master of all knowledge, exactly how would Autosave save that brushstroke without saving the entire raster image? You can't separate it out like text.

Versions are created two ways :

(1) automatically, once an hour

(2) manually when you trigger Save a Version

Tell that to the many people in the Final Cut X Pro forums who have noted that once a project gets to be of any somewhat larger size at all, it becomes almost impossible to work because the system is saving every little change they make, on top of autorendering everything. Or the users in the Pages forums who have noted the same thing. Like the user who couldn't type in even just the word "the" without Autosave breaking in, AGAIN, and preventing him from working. He would have been better off with a manual typewriter.

Yes, Pages 09 does merging, but it's a pain to get labels!  Yes, there is a workaround and it works (around).  But, truthfully, MS Word does so much better with labels, just choose a label format, choose your data, and merge!  Easy!  AppleWorks Easy!  Pages 09, workaround.  No worries, I still don't own Word and won't.

Even Address Book is not Easy.  ...I'm not going into the particulars.  Just saying it's not easy.  Pages has the capability to make it easy.  Just wish they would!!

Kurt - I agree.  Why can't they give us a choice?  Why can't they make a Global option to turn off Versions and Auto Saving, etc.?  Some people want more control on their personal machines.  My Macbook and Mac Mini are not iPhones or iPads, if I want one of those kinds of OS, I would buy one!  They are great for what they do, but they are not for creating an abundance of work (just my opinion, okay everybody?  don't come down on me, just an opinion.)

thanks.