Q: What happened to Save As?

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.

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

Hi sorry guys..

it is in the comments field is not under the file in the menu bar  but under the Pages and Numbers.

checked it out and just typed along...

cheers elo

That covers it pretty well. I saw a couple of things to add after playing with an image in Lion with Preview.

Not sure if it's been there all along (I don't think it was) but after making a change to the image and then selecting Duplicate, it now asks if you want to revert the original before opening the duplicate.

In a sense, giving you a Save As step to put the image back to its original state on the fly. Unfortunately, this is not the default choice, but at least it's there. Couldn't tell you if the rest of Apple's apps also behave this way (Final Cut X Pro, Pages, etc).

Anyway, the point being it affects step six under Duplicate in Lion: a bit. If you chose "Duplicate and Revert", then the steps remain as is. If you chose the default of "Duplicate" and didn't want your original altered, then you have to add a step 7 to revert your original after closing it (or reverting while it's still open).

Either way, I can't see anything that's better about the new method. If this were the only way I could work, it would very much slow down how much work I can get done in a day as I use Save As dozens to hundreds of times a day. All of these extra steps for Duplicate would noticeably add up.

And just to show how half baked this whole system is, Preview wouldn't let me change a document. Now, I realize this is a first iteration under Lion, so there's bound to be some bugs, but I made some changes to an image and tried to close it with the changes. Preview told me I couldn't because the file was locked. I told it to Save Anyway, and then it told me I didn't have permission.

Wrong. I did a Get Info and the file was not locked, and I had full permissions. No matter what I tried to do in Get Info, I could not save the image directly over itself. I had to make a Duplicate and then save that.

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.

Not sure if it's been there all along (I don't think it was) but after making a change to the image and then selecting Duplicate, it now asks if you want to revert the original before opening the duplicate.

 

 

In a sense, giving you a Save As step to put the image back to its original state on the fly. Unfortunately, this is not the default choice, but at least it's there. Couldn't tell you if the rest of Apple's apps also behave this way (Final Cut X Pro, Pages, etc).

Thanks for sharing this thing, Kurt.  I looked at it and my first reaction was "huh?"   I suspect that a lot of users will be puzzled by the meaning of this dialog, not only what is the most appropriate response but also what caused it to pop-up in the first place.

By contrast, the one below needs no explanation for anyone who has used a computer since 1983.  I've been in the Apple Store at the One-On-One desk where seniors, who are new to computers, are learning Save As for the first time.  It takes about 10 seconds for someone to explain it, and they've learned it that fast.  No questions asked.

Will they occasionally forget to save something and will they ever lose some work?  Perhaps so.  But I gotta tell you, I have had an open case with Apple since December 14 when a Keynote document I created on my iPad got "saved" to the iWork Cloud and nobody can open it.  On the iPad, it can't even be seen in Keynote; it's just totally missing.  When trying to view it in iCloud with Safari, you can click on it but nothing happens.  Engineers took 3 months just to FIND it and now they tell me it's not recoverable.

My point:  data can be vaporized.  We make our best efforts to avoid data loss.  Time Machine does a superb job of protecting people who otherwise neglect the process.  Versions is a cool new way to do on-the-fly backups of individual files, but using it should be optional, and Save As should remain an option for those who want to use it, for whatever prehistoric reason they choose.

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.

I still have Snow Leopard, and came to this discussion as I was trying to decide if I wanted to leap and upgrade to Lion.  (both my systems are under a year old, I made sure to get them before Apple took away DVD drives!)

I was reading about all the features of Lion and when I started reading about the loss of Save As, I wanted to learn how to use Pages, Numbers, and Preview without that function.  Man, what a nightmare.  I am sticking with SL for as long as possible.  Kurt, your latest about the "Duplicate and Revert" adds even more to my conclusion that the saving functions are so confusing!

In this dialog, it is basically doing the exact opposite of what I am used to doing.  If I could choose Save As, instead of Duplicate I would be finished with my senario.  Using this dialog box (first I have to really think about what I am doing here!!), it sounds like it is going to Duplicate my original document, then revert the duplicate to the previous state and then I will have two documents open.  Now I will have two docs open.  My original document with all the changes (so it's basically no longer an original!) and a new/duplicated document reverted to the original state.  CONFUSING!  for me anyway.  Okay, at this point, what's my next step?

(Using Save As), I just Save As the original document and I have a new document with all the changes.  My original does not need to get reverted, because it has stayed in its place and quietly reverted on its own.  I don't need to remember that the Original/Old document is now the New/Changed document and the New/Reverted document is the Original/Old document.

Am I understanding this?  Like I said, this is way too confusing!!

Kurt Lang wrote:

 

That covers it pretty well. I saw a couple of things to add after playing with an image in Lion with Preview.

 

Not sure if it's been there all along (I don't think it was) but after making a change to the image and then selecting Duplicate, it now asks if you want to revert the original before opening the duplicate.

 

 

In a sense, giving you a Save As step to put the image back to its original state on the fly. Unfortunately, this is not the default choice, but at least it's there. Couldn't tell you if the rest of Apple's apps also behave this way (Final Cut X Pro, Pages, etc).

 

Anyway, the point being it affects step six under Duplicate in Lion: a bit. If you chose "Duplicate and Revert", then the steps remain as is. If you chose the default of "Duplicate" and didn't want your original altered, then you have to add a step 7 to revert your original after closing it (or reverting while it's still open).

 

Either way, I can't see anything that's better about the new method. If this were the only way I could work, it would very much slow down how much work I can get done in a day as I use Save As dozens to hundreds of times a day. All of these extra steps for Duplicate would noticeably add up.

 

And just to show how half baked this whole system is, Preview wouldn't let me change a document. Now, I realize this is a first iteration under Lion, so there's bound to be some bugs, but I made some changes to an image and tried to close it with the changes. Preview told me I couldn't because the file was locked. I told it to Save Anyway, and then it told me I didn't have permission.

 

Wrong. I did a Get Info and the file was not locked, and I had full permissions. No matter what I tried to do in Get Info, I could not save the image directly over itself. I had to make a Duplicate and then save that.

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.

Hi:

To all the new posts on this discussion list please register your concerns with apple...  use the Iwork apps to do this...

cheers elo

After reading through about half of the posts in this thread, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. Apple needs to put "Save As" back into it's applications.
2. Those who have been disagreeing with Item 1 above are either arrogant or clueless.
3. Ivan the Atheist is rude and his rudeness seems to be the only thing that makes him happy.

Amen