Q: What happened to Save As?

oxcart wrote:

 

I think you have to assume that if the author wrote 'does not' that that is what he/she intended.  You may be asked to make these changes on behalf of the disembodied power represented by the distributed interests of your publisher's share holders, but if you stop and think for a moment, you will see that you are placeing the author in a "space[s] that seem[s] contrived to break the connection between his will and his environment, as though he had no hands... [which will likely] bring out a certain hostility in him."

Uh, as I noted, I work for a "small agency." No "disemobided powers" or "publisher's shareholders" are involved.

What is involved is a boss who, despite his many other good qualities, is a lousy writer, and who relies upon me to make his writing more effective. And this is what I do. In over 24 years, he has never once complained about changes I've made to his writing. If I had allowed it to reach the public in its original form, this agency's reputation would be several rungs lower on the ladder. Trust me on this!

(By the way, this goes for much of the writing that comes from our agency's clients as well — they understand, and are grateful, that I "tune it up.")

Going further is to get off topic... However, I would argue that contractions such as doesn't and aren't should be reserved for reporting speach, for example, in a novel when a characters words are rendered between quotation marks.  To say that contractions are appropriate in all but the most formal language you imply that 99% of the greatest English language literature suffers from the inappropriate absence of contractions.  I am always ready to be proved wrong, but I am willing to bet that if you take any Hemmingway novel, for example, or most any recent novel above the level of pulp, you will be hard pushed to find a single contraction outside of quotation marks.

I'll be glad to take that bet! Given unlimited time, I could muster thousands of examples that would prove you wrong.

Furthermore, there are different writing styles for different purposes. "The greatest English language literature" is not the gold standard for ALL types of writing. Pick up any newspaper or magazine, including the most respected ones. Pick up any popular work of contemporary fiction or non-fiction. Contractions abound. I'm not sure where you got the idea that any writing "above the level of pulp" will be more effective with no contractions (or less effective with them), but it's rubbish.

 

Having said all that, I still stand corrected for corrupting Mr Crawford's words.  He probably had good reason for affecting a chatty style.  Probably, he was talking down to the victims he was trying to reach.

A completely nonsensical conclusion with absolutely nothing to support it.

I shall bring this discussion back on track with a question.

In the latest update for ML, it says it gives the option for Save-As to revert the file to the last saved point. Is this true? Has anyone running ML tried this? I am on Lion so I can't test it myself. Is this the return of the real Save-As in place of the fake Save-As of ML, or the no Save-As of Lion? Should I upgrade to ML and rejoice? I am using iWorks and I need to know if Pages and Numbers have the real Save-As after the update. Also I use Preview and I need to know if that also has Save-As returned?

(A side note, I had some iTunes issues, I searched this forum and almost every discussion I found on any technical issue ended up with people complaining about how insane Apple have become. Some had thousands of views as people search for a solution to this OSX becoming iOS insanity.)

The post that I made concerning changes to save-as for the new 10.8.2 was supposed to be in final testing when I found the information on another forum.

therefore not released yet.

As a policy I do not install any new os release until version 3 has been available for at least one month.  I do work for clients.  Giclee prints with a wide format epson printer and cannot risk any problems.  This is the reason why I have multiple backups  and install the new software on my other halfs macbook to test before I go ahead with my machine.  I still have a 10.6.8  and a 10.5.8 on separate hard disk drives and can boot each one up and test everything.  I can still run appleworks if need be.  Yesterday my other half ( a working artist) wanted a list from 12 years ago. I also have a pre intel machine (macbook pro aluminum) still around.

Do I trust anyone (including myself)?????

cheers elo

Message was edited by: elol

Thanks Elo. I don't trust Apple any more and that is my real concern.

Steve,

I have ML 10.8.1

Numbers, Preview and TextEdit are all the same in the way that "Duplicate" and "Save" work. Open "file" menu then hold down "option" and Duplicate changes to Save As. I do not know about Pages.

The "new save as" allows you to save the file (in its latest edited state) in the same location as the original, asks you if you want to overwrite the original file, and allows you to change the target folder. Looks like the old "save as" right? - Wrong - Because your original file has already been overwritten by autosave!

By the way, Shift-command-S still invokes Duplicate instead of Save As.

I can see the benefit of using the new Save As instead of Duplicate because it enables you to save a current file with a different name in two less steps.

To answer your question, there is a command in the file menu called "Revert to" which is not specifically related to "Save As…" It gives you options which vary between "revert to previous save", "revert to last saved" , "revert to last opened" , as follows :-

Revert to "previous save" : available after opening a saved file.

Revert to 'last saved" or "last opened" : available after editing.

"Revert to last opened" : available after editing and save or save as.

After using Save As and closing the file, the above "revert to" options are no longer available and it becomes "browse all versions" but if you reopen the earlier file you still get "Revert to previous save"

So basically it takes you one version back. If you want to go back further than one version you have to invoke "Browse all Versions" which I never will do. (When you are organized you have already saved every version you will need with its own easy to identify name.)

There is another command which I don't remember seeing before which is "Rename" . This appears in Numbers, Preview, and TextEdit. but strangely only works in TextEdit. All it appears to do is overwrite your file with a different name, - seems pretty useless and just another item to clutter up the file menu. It is available in two places - in the file menu, and when you click on the file name in the header. Either way it only works in TextEdit. I tried it In ML on my old macmini and again it only works in TextEdit. (Could this be because textedit files are being saved in the cloud and the others on the hard disk?)

My conclusion: ML is an improvement over Lion and I actually find the new Save As to be very useful - I don't need to use the ridiculous Duplicate any more

What we still need in addition is the option to switch off autosave. (Could it be that they are trying to get everybody used to autosave and eventually all our work will be autosaved to the cloud?)

Message was edited by: markinbali

Mark, thanks. This is so $#€£ing confusing. I will upgrade to ML when I get my next computer. I will hold off on that for as long as possible in the hope that whatever ?!€£ head at Apple who thought of this gets hit by a bus and we can go back to sanity. If it stays insane then I will look elsewhere. The Surface looks cool and I've use Word before. Maybe those retina display touch screen ultra books that are half the price of an Air might be appealing in 6 months time.

(In KL for now, we might be there in a week's time. If so we will come by your office...)

OK see you at my "office"

Mark, I had an epithany. If I use another email service (not iCloud) and I don't use the Apple eBook Author, then I don't need to use Lion or Mountain Lion. I can go back to Snow Leopard and my 2GB laptop that I ugraded to 4GB will run super fast. iWorks 09 will be fine and basically everything I want will be as I want it. Also I don't need to buy another computer. I can buy an old (non Thunderbolt) 27 inch display and use that with my laptop. Crazy?

Alternatively is it possible to put SL on a new Mac? I heard that they force you to use ML. Is that true?

then I don't need to use Lion or Mountain Lion.

So far, that's where I'm sitting. I have no need of a single "feature" in Lion or Mountain Lion. The one advantage I do see is ML being full 64 bit only system and is faster overall. And other than a bug (file windows will not stay at a smaller width) and Safari's unified URL/Google bar (which I hate, and Apple once again decided for everyone else, "This is so great, we're not giving you an option to change it."), it really isn't so bad. But as I've noted many times earlier, it doesn't torque me off as much as many others because I don't use any Apple production apps in the iLife or iWork categories, so I'm not forced into the Autosave/Versions workflow.

Alternatively is it possible to put SL on a new Mac? I heard that they force you to use ML. Is that true?

That has always been true, as far back as the Mac has existed. Newer hardware isn't supported by older versions of the Mac OS because they don't have the hardware drivers for them. Even within a version that happens. As an example, my current Mac Pro came with 10.6.4, so it cannot boot from the retail 10.6.3 disk, or install from that disk. The hardware changed after 10.6.3's release. I can use 10.6.3 on the older Mac Pro though (which came with 10.5.6) since it was included as supported hardware in the retail SL release.

There are minor exceptions. When Lion was released, new Macs of course came with Lion. But some models had no hardware change at all, so could run Snow Leopard. Problem was, they also were last sold with a newer release of SL than the retail disk supported. So if you wanted to install SL on your Lion equipped Mac, you needed to find a copy of the newer Snow Leopard gray disks that model shipped with before Lion's release. You also couldn't call Apple to get those gray SL disks because supplying your serial number to Apple (so you get the correct replacement disks) would tell them it came with Lion, and that's what you would get again.

Steve,

I'm no expert, but if you want my opinion, SL is the best OS Apple ever produced. I think an older mac would run better with SL, and if it does everything you want it to do then that is the way to go. With 4 GB it will go like a rocket! I think you would have to do a clean install, - bit drastic!

The new macs are designed for ML and ML is designed for the new macs, and you are right, you can not install SL on a new mac.

I have to admit, I like having the new stuff and keeping up to date, but then for what I do, I can live with the new routine, and I use Word and Excel so no problem with the Save as nonsense.

One problem for me would be if they ever force Rapidweaver to go the new way. I use it for building my websites, its perfect for me and I don't have the time to go back to struggling with Dreamweaver and code. The answer would be to not upgrade, but then eventually the addons would be upgraded and I would be left behind. The addons do get better all the time.

Another problem is Filemaker Pro. I built a database for doing my restaurant costing and pricing, and I am totally dependent on it. The version I have will only run on SL, which is the one and only reason I keep SL on an external hard disk and run it on my macmini.

My brother has an early Air and he has kept with SL. My daughter has a macbook on SL - no reason to change.

Kurt, you are right, that unified URL Google bar, I hate it too. They've downgraded it to mobile phone level.

Well, unless I'm missing something, today should be a day of celebration. With the release of OS 10.8.2, we have finally had a true "Save As" returned to us.

Yes, as a whole the system is not as simple and elegant as Snow Leopard, but the bottom line is that I can at last get the workflow back that has worked for me and millions of Mac users for going on three decades.

I've tested it out on my Mac Mini upon which I just installed the update, and it works as it should. Here is what I did to test it. You can do the same:

1. Open an existing Pages document.

2. Type a new word or two into it.

3. Hold down Option as you click on the File Menu. Save As... will be one of the choices. Select it (or key Shift-Option-Command-S).

4. A Save box will open up to the same folder your original document was in.

5. Give your new document a unique name and Save it.

6. Reopen your old document; it will be in its last-saved state and will not have the newly typed word(s).

I want to thank everyone here and in the many other threads that have addressed this issue for fighting the good fight, and for persisting until we got what we wanted, and what was right.

And one more thing...Yvan, if you haven't been banned permanently from these boards, the manly thing to do would be to come back and acknowledge that you were wrong when you said:

1) Apple would never change this new way of operating

2) We were wrong for wanting this change.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath for this.

Wow thanks for the news. I was considering reverting back to SL and not buying a new Apple computer ever again. This is both great news and sad at the same time, that it took so long to get to this simple resolution.

Hi:

Away from home for a week and only have very slow download capabilities.  Therefore cannot try it.

what about the versions?    that is if you type something leave it for 15 minutes while doing something else....does it still work as you said above? original still availble without the version changes being forced on me?

you mentioned that you typed only a couple of words then did the save as.      what happens if you go for a coffee or a beer before the save as..??

cheers elo

Anybody knows is Save As... is available also if the ApplePersistance is disabled?