Q: What happened to Save As?

I seriously don't believe that a change in semantic regarding Save As... and Export... versus Duplicate and Export... is costing anyone any serious amount of cash just because of the way people have been introduced to a user interface some 20 years ago.

The differences between preparing and deferring a document are so benign that there is no reason for people to be confused at this slight change in semantics.  I for one welcome the new capabilities in Lion regarding auto-save and resume, because time and time again I feel that with many other facets of computer technology so advanced today, that it is ludicrous to expect that we have to continually micromanage our machines to do the sorts of things that our machines should be able to do themselves around the real work we have to do.  Taking out the more costly possibility of data loss due to human falacy (ie., you forget to save a document) is much more useful and in my opinion, much more important than the costs of changing a user interface convention to the benefit of having computers do more work for you and expose less opportunity for mishaps.

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion.  But if you have concerns regarding the costs of training and productivity in relation to subtle changes in a computer's operation, then I have a plan for you—let people who want work on the older system (Snow Leopard) do so, while introduce Lion to people who wouldn't mind the change.  That way, the staff you have can progress as Apple's technologies evolve and ultimately leave those pretty bad 20-year-old habits behind.

I'll end this discussion here, because I have tried to discuss the reasons behind the changes, the benefits they would bring, and the fact that Lion's new features are actually not new in the world of computer science, and that these new features are ones that I have been waiting a very long time for Apple to re-introduce because of the benefits they bring.  I sincerely do hope that you can consider my comments without blatant dismissal.

The more reliable that our computers are, and the less micromanagement we have to apply to get our computers to work, the more real-world work we can get done.  And surely that is a good thing, isn't it?

—tonza

Hello tonza.

Your answers are so precise, clear and accurate that I wish that you will not quit the thread.

Please, continue to give such infos.

I think that it would be really useful to gather your messages in a new thread.

For my own use, I gathered them in a Pages document.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 11 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

Hello Dennis.

Your answers are so precise, clear and accurate. Please, continue to give such info.

I seriously don't believe that a change in semantic regarding Save As... and Export... versus Duplicate and Export... is costing anyone any serious amount of cash

Tonza,

It adds up quickly enough for me to call it serious cash.

Let's say you have 15 people in your company who work on computers running Mac OS-X.  Let's say that their average rate of pay is only $20/hour including benefits. 

(I am deliberately using an example of a pay grade that does not assume that higher pay equals more Mac experience or Mac-savvy, but you can multiply my result by a factor of 2 or 3 to see how it applies to more senior people --- moreover, IT people will tell you that the higher paid executives are often the most clueless, when it comes to computers.  I have a very successful, wealthy CEO relative, for example, who thinks it is illogical on his Windows computer to use a START button to turn of the computer.  But I digress....)

If those 15 people waste only 5 minutes each day, that adds up to $5,000 per year for the company.  5 minutes per day is 1,000 minutes per year on 200-day annual work schedule.  That's 16.667 hours multipled by 15 people multplied by $20.00.   I don't know how many people you employ, but I'm not inclined to throw away $5,000 without blinking … or thinking … or drinking. 

If your company has 15 senior executives … no wait, let's call them Job Creators … who each waste this same amount of time, it gets a lot more expensive.  Let's say these Job Creators are each paid $150,000 per year.  Assuming they work an 8-hour day, their compensation is $93.75 per hour, so the cost to the organization for their 5-minute per day struggle comes to $23,437.50. 

<snip!>

I give up... I'm not going to argue about a non-issue.

—tonza

I arrived at it by making it up.  My sentence began with the speculative word "if". 

If somebody waste 5 minutes a day thanks to the new scheme, it's time for him to learn the way to work with the apps.

The only seconds which I wasted with the removing of Save As… are those spent to write some scripts for guys feeling unable to live without the feature or to answer dumb messages here and there.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 12 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

If somebody waste 5 minutes a day thanks to the new scheme, it's time for him to learn the way to work with the apps.

Do you really, truly not understand that "learning the way it works" cannot change the fact that Duplicate is slower and takes more steps than Save As?

Isn't the question "How much would it cost Apple to leave it in?" Nothing.

The problem isn't related to the cost of this or that for Apple.

Tonza explained very well the reasons behind the changes.

The design choice is consistent, Re-introducing Save As… would break this consistency.

From my point of view, the new design isn't wasting time.

It's the way I'm working for years, long before the design change.

For those which want to Save_As in a single action, I delivered a script.

You have the tools allowing you to behave as you want. You refuse to use them.

It's not my problem and it's not Apple's one.

It's when you continue to rant here that you are really wasting your time.

For mine, it's not a problem, I'm retired

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 12 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

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Terry is absolutely right.  It would have cost Apple nothing to leave it in.  Gradually, people would learn something new without disrupting their work.

Suppose you took your 6-speed Porsche in for an oil change and they gave it back to you with an automatic transmission that you didn't ask for and don't want.  Would you be content to know that they did it for your own good becuase is is consistent with the way they are designing newer models?  I know it's not a perfect analogy, but the point I am making is that nobody likes to have their tools removed or altered in such a way that they can no longer use what they are satisfied with.

It's not the same thing as the removal of diskette drives from the first iMacs.  You had a choice to buy the machine or not.  Clearly, Apple is making an attempt to migrate us away from the use of a mouse.  It is less expensive to build trackpad devices and they believe gestures are a better operating method than the limited point and click.  So here's what they did right:  they gave us choices.  You can buy a new Bluetooth mouse that understands gestures when you swipe across its surface.  You can buy a trackpad and begin using it instead of or in addition to your mouse.  But they did not suddenly take away the mouse and your 10year old USB mouse still works fine even if it has no right click or other modern features.

I try to not be offensive here, but I just can't respect those who write that because they understand what the new feature is intended to do, the rest of us must be neanderthals.  ANd my time here will not be wasted if the result is that someone at Apple pays attention to the chorus of disaffected Lion users.  They constantly tell us they monitor feedback and forums.  This may be a debate but it is neither a rant nor a waste of time.

To retired individuals who experience neither a  loss of productivity nor a waste of time, I say:  congratulations, I hope you are enjoying your retirement and will intersperse your computer activities with some consideration for others who have not yet reached your milestone in life.

No... it would cost Apple the time required to develop and support two different sets of APIs on Lion.

The cost is not nothing.

—tonza

I don't write code but I think you are making some assumptions about their development process. 

In any case, I could have just as well worded it "What would it have cost Apple to leave it in?"

"Do you really, truly not understand that "learning the way it works" cannot change the fact that Duplicate is slower and takes more steps than Save As?"

That's not true, it doesn't: Duplicate and Save As... take the same amount of time to execute on a 650 MB Pages file filled with 28 pages worth of graphics and some text in their own frames:

The only difference between Save As... and Duplicate is the order of operations the system performs in conducting your work.  This is a mindset that can easily be overcome with a little practice.

Sorry about my earlier ed.

—tonza