Save As, Gone?

You have in your Pages Pages menu " Provide Pages Feedback". Click on it and you get to the page.

Dale Gillard wrote:

The way you edit the document is the same. You will write the same words, delete the same words, rearrange text on a page the same. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you to explain this to me, but I don't understand how it makes any difference to the way you write if a document is autosaved.

True, the words are not different, but the process of writing them will be different for some of us. For instance, I do not want to save everything I do, whether it's in a Pages document or an image. Where we could previously just close a document and not save, there is now no way to simply not save. Reverting to last saved is an extra step. Also, there is no warning that "this document has been changed", so it is easy to change something inadvertently.

Several people have already discussed problematic aspects of this approach. Link 1 • Link 2 • Link 3 • Link 4

As one user writes (link 4): "no computer program should ever do anything destructive without being explicitly told to do so or prompting the user to see if it what the user wants."

The Duplicate feature is not a workaround for the Versions or the Auto Save features. There was no technical need to replace the Save As feature with a more complicated Duplicate feature. These features are all separate and have different purposes.

Not a workaround for those features, but a workaround due to them. 🙂

The mission of Save As was to split the line of work in two, preserving the unsaved file while also preserving the edits since last save. The new way to do this is to duplicate, revert to an earlier version of the original file, then close the original file. Alternatively, duplicate now and then just in case we subsequently feel the need to split the line of work.

When there is at least one extra step compared to the way it used to be, I call it a workaround. This particular workaround may also eat RAM, I've heard.

Still, this is not to say that the new approach is useless. There are lots of people that will benefit from autosave. I am quite sure that I too will benefit from it. But while there may be benefits, there may also be disadvantages. That's life. And right now, and in my particular situation, I am not quite sure that the disadvantages (the possibility of unwarned, destructive editing, and the inability to avoid saving) do not outweigh the advantages. For others the conclusion may be very different, and I accept that.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I do appreciate it.

Where we could previously just close a document and not save, there is now no way to simply not save.

Good example. Now you're expected to Duplicate the document but not save it to achieve the same thing. So it's a new way of doing things that takes more steps.

Reverting to last saved is an extra step. Also, there is no warning that "this document has been changed", so it is easy to change something inadvertently.

Another good example. What's worse is that reverting to the last saved document will likely mean you're missing other content you did not want to delete. Note though that Pages does state in the window title bar that the document has been "- Edited".

Several people have already discussed problematic aspects of this approach. Link 1 • Link 2 • Link 3 • Link 4

Many of the posts in these links to the forum sites are rants from people who do not like change. Most do not state why they don't like Auto Save which is disappointing because there is no reasoning behing their rants.

I see what you mean by destructive editing. However, this is something I do not do for the reasons set out in Link 1. I'm both a individual user and a business user. I also use both Macs and PCs in networked environments. But I'd never open a template that my co-workers could be using and start playing with it. I know other colleagues do and I've often had to go back and fix things things for everyone else. I'll always create a new copy and experiment on that.

Interestingly, I don't engage in destructive editing on a PC either as all their word processing programs have auto save. Even with images in graphics programs (an example in the comments or one of the links) I'll create a new copy and work on that. This is especially important in the business environment as I'm required to have a saved copy of each new version of a file.

The mission of Save As was to split the line of work in two, preserving the unsaved file while also preserving the edits since last save.

That's not how I used Save As, but I can see that's another way of using Save As. And I'd imagine there are many other ways that people used Save As to work with making new documents.

When there is at least one extra step compared to the way it used to be, I call it a workaround. This particular workaround may also eat RAM, I've heard.

Opening a 400MB document in any program let alone TextEdit is an issue, even if it doesn't support Lion. But is this anecdote a reproducible bug, and is it in TextEdit, OS X Lion, Auto Save, Versions, or something else? Don't think that it's a permanent problem because of the Duplicate feature. If it's a problem then it's just a non-serious bug that will get fixed.

Thank you for the clearest explanation yet of the problems that AutoSave creates for many users, myself included.

One of the great things about working with the Mac was that you always felt in control of what you were doing, and often had multiple ways of controling the way you worked, which were yours to choose.

An Auto Save feature with no option to disable it takes that control away from the user, forcing him/her to jump through multiple hoops to avoid unintended or unwanted consequences, or to achieve a useful result painlessly (e.g., splitting the line of work in two, as you elegantly put it).

The passage you quote from one of your links should be copied and pasted by the millions and sent en masse to Apple's feedback page:

No computer program should ever do anything destructive without being explicitly told to do so or prompting the user to see if it is what the user wants.

I plan on doing this right now, and would urge others reading this thread who agree to do the same.

we are getting the same reactions about the removal of optical unit in Mac Mini

I was told at the Apple Store recently that about half of the customers that come in to purchase a Mac mini walk out with nothing, after they discover the optical drive has been removed.

They are not “ranting”, they are simply “going away”.

Just an exemple, when France abolished capital execution, which was a good decision, it was voted in the parliament. Asking citizen to vote in a referendum wouldn't have abolished it.

I think it's wonderful too, having politicians that are smarter than the people they serve. Having government decide things for us, also saves on “wear and tear” on our small brains.

An Auto Save feature with no option to disable it takes that control away from the user, forcing him/her to jump through multiple hoops to avoid unintended or unwanted consequences, or to achieve a useful result painlessly (e.g., splitting the line of work in two, as you elegantly put it).

The passage you quote from one of your links should be copied and pasted by the millions and sent en masse to Apple's feedback page:

Our beloved OS is about to become one big facebook, if it's not already.

Many people I know are also trying to find (and have found) "workarounds" for "Save As" and "Auto Save".

Try this:

Go into time machine settings, click options, set auto lock to 1 day. (why this setting is there and not somewhere else is beyond me, it's not even an actual TM option). It will auto lock files after 1 day and as such prevent accidental saving of auto save.

As for why you want to disable a feature like this since people decided to chime in. Because I don't want temporary changes to be saved to a document. or accidental changes. Even if I can revert those changes by versioning, it's still tedius.

I do a lot of temporary edits in my working with code and such, but don't actually want them saved unless I explicidly say to. I don't need temporary ideas I was visualizing to be saved.

You can work around some of these things. For Versions (currently only available in Apple apps like Pages, Terminal, Preview), you just lock the document as soon as you open/create it.

Those who absolutely can't do without Save as... could do as I have—continued to run under Leopard and Tiger—or they could try this Save As... script, written by Yvan. Once installed, it makes Save as,,, a menu command in the Script menu.

Regards,

Barry

msw70 wrote:

Lion is great, but many of us used "Save as..." extensively. Just because Lion has many great features doesn't make this flaw any more tolerable. "Save as..." was simple and elegant and didn't need "fixing."

For example, let's try to save an existing Pages 09 document as a Pages 08 document.

What you would have done in the old work flow is:

1. Click "Save As..."

2. Choose Pages 08 in the dialog

3. Choose a location or change the name.

4. Click OK.

5. Close the document.

What you have to do now:

0. Click "Unlock" if it's an older document because you may be crazy or stupid and need to have an extra hurdle to protect you from yourself.

1. Click File>Duplicate.

2. If you've made changes to the document, click through the dialog to specify whether you want to "Duplicate and Revert" or just "Duplicate"

3. Click File>Save...

4. Choose Save a Copy as Pages 08

5. Change the location and change the name.

6. Click OK.

7. The duplicate and the original are still sitting on your desktop, but you're done with them so let's close them. First the duplicate.

8. Cancel out of the automatic save dialog that pops up on the duplicate because the program doesn't care that you've already saved a copy.

9. Now close the original.

That's just nuts...

This post expresses my frustrations perfectly

...and mine.

Gizmodo wrote up an excellent review of Lion and how uncomfortably they have half merged iOS with Mac OSX.

Lion so far looks a lot like Vista to me, a shame as I had tried the developer release, but without the additional irritations of the final interactions with real world appliactions.

Peter

Leave feedback for Lion as well as any Apple app you would use Save As… in. Feedback does work & the more people who leave feedback about any feature the more likely change will be made.

Took your suggestion and sent feedback to Apple asking for a change relative to this whole "Save/Save As/ Duplicate/Revert/Etc." fiasco. Don't know whether it will do any good or not but it is important that they know. I'm less than pleased that something so simple as maintaining normal Save and Save As functionality could be so badly mis-understood and engineered by Apple developers. As a long, long, long time user of Apple products I think this decision is terrible. As I pointed out to Apple, my rationale for using Pages in the first place was because of it's seeming simplicity. We have now, unnecessarily, made what was simple to use into a complicated mess. I also pointed out that I am seriously thnking about going back to Microsoft Office becasue of this issue (hope they haven't changed Save/Save As philosophy with that software yet). I'll have to find that out. Well, we'll see.

Fortunately, Microsoft Office still has "Save As."

I was an early contributor to this thread when it first started. My latest source of irritation is that when you open an attached document from email, there is no easy means to simply save it directly to a folder on your own Mac (perhaps with a new name that makes sense to you or fits into your personal file naming taxonomy). Now, when you open the document and hit save, it just endlessly saves it to the copy of the document in the Mail Downloads folder. (God help you if you have your mail preferences set to delete attachments when you move messages to the trash.) As a result of this, once you open the attachment, you are immediately at the start of the very poor user experience to reproduce "Save As" as has been thoroughly documented in this discussion.

The email attachment issue seems like a very obvious use case that it is hard to believe was not considered. In either case it's disappointing: if Apple didn't think of it, then shame on them; and if they did think of it but proceeded any way, then double shame on them.

I suggest that you leave feedback for Lion & each of the Apple apps. Feedback does work & the more users who ask for features the more likely they are to be implemented. As always, be polite & be complete in your descriptions.

The software feedback links are at the bottom of the page & the OS X feedback link is at the bottom of the middle column.

Thank you again for your suggestions. While I, like so many, will wait and see what Apple does regarding this issue I have decided to buy Microsoft Office 2011 and have done so. This whole issue reminds me somewhat of the issues surrounding another Apple software product; Aperture. I subsequently chose to use Adobe Lightroom because of Apple's problems with that aperture program. Sometimes Apple just gets it wrong regarding software.

While they invariably will straighten all of this out they will take their time and maybe produce several iterations (as with Aperture) before righting the ship. I just am not willing to wait for all of this, although I will look forward to what they eventually come up with i-Works. Maybe that will be with i-Works 2011. In the mean time I want something to use that I am familiar with and presents no problem to either me or the world I deal with relative to a word processing program.

In a way this whole issue is quite funny to me because I historically have always had both Pages and Microsoft Word (2004 though) so that I would not have any issues with word processing. I was even beginning to use Numbers instead of Excel quite a bit. I finally (with Lion) decided to discard "Microsoft Office" (2004 is not compatible with Lion anyway) and use Pages/Numbers exclusively. No sooner did I make that decision when I discovered this little "wrinkle" in the Pages operation. Well, shame on me. I guess I blew that. After my experiences with Aperture I am very suspect about all of this. Well, I now have Microsoft Office 2011 and I am a happy camper once again.