Is there already a rant thread to restore save as button and disable autosave?

I found some threads with users having problems with new autosave and duplicate feature, and none of them contained an answer, and I was asking myself if there is an "Apple give us the save as button" back thread somewhere already.

This is as close as you'll get:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Matt

Ranting does no good. If you want to effect change, go to Apple's Feedback page and explain why these features are evil. In the past we have had some success in getting Apple to change features or return lost features.

The simplest thing to do is to switch to Snow Leopard. (or Windows or Linux.)

Some companies require the disabling of autosave and versions for security reasons. There are various modifications available on the Internet to do that.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/30/how-to-save-as-mac-os-x-lion/

So, what the deal with removing such a simple button as save as?

Software is primarily sold by making “changes” not necessarily “improvements”. By eliminating “save as” the software has been changed.

It's distressing to see Apple dumbing down the Mac in general. Documents in the cloud, auto-save, versions, Launchpad, hidden Library folder, sandboxed apps, etc. I'll be curious if Apple backs down from this given all the complaints.

It's distressing to see Apple dumbing down the Mac in general. Documents in the cloud, auto-save, versions, Launchpad, hidden Library folder, sandboxed apps, etc. I'll be curious if Apple backs down from this given all the complaints.

I heard the same argument about computers when Apple released the Mac. The GUI is dumbing down computing. Yeah, right. Save As is a great feature, it has also been a source of data loss for years and I'm frankly amazed that it has taken this long for someone to tacke it. Lots of programs have auto-save and there are lots of auto-save utilities for those that don't but now that Apple offers the feature to developers it is dumbing down. Right.

Dvayanu wrote:

I found some threads with users having problems with new autosave and duplicate feature, and none of them contained an answer, and I was asking myself if there is an "Apple give us the save as button" back thread somewhere already.

These are the threads you are looking for:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3216589

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3210906

It's distressing to see Apple dumbing down the Mac in general. Documents in the cloud, auto-save, versions, Launchpad, hidden Library folder, sandboxed apps, etc. I'll be curious if Apple backs down from this given all the complaints.

I agree. Most of the concerns (I won't say "issues" as many here find these changes beneficial) I have with Lion have been thoroughly commented on by others. I guess we'll get an idea of how things are moving with the introduction of Mountain Lion. If they haven't made any changes based on input they received from Lion, I guess they'll keep heading down the same road. I've been seeing more and more comments from people asking "Why can't I do this or that the same way I do it on my iPad?". Apple hasn't been the "little guy" anymore for a number of years now. What used to be a product mostly used by enthusiasts has become the pinnacle of mainstream. The old 80/20 rule means you design your products to meet 80% of your customers requirements. If you try to cater to the 20%, you stand to miss out on the larger opportunities. Years ago, 80% of the Mac community were more techy alternative types. Today, with iPhones and iPads being the tech toys most lusted after, they've become a huge part of Apple's market. It only makes sense that they would try to give those folks an easy transition into using Macs by making them more iPhone/iPad like.

Apple made some bold moves with Lion. They may have just been testing the waters to see how people react. I frankly don't care if they bring in as many iOS features as they want, I just want the option to disable the stuff that doesn't work for me. You can't make huge changes to the way files are handled without giving any options to continue using the previous method which people have been using for decades. It's just too disruptive to many peoples workflow. Apple's iOS methodology of "we know what's best" found it's way into quite a few areas of Lion. Change is great, but you need to allow people time to adjust. Put the features there, but give me options... Let me decide what works best for me.

Of course there's another way of looking at it.

First of all this autosave behaviour. I really don't want pages or numbers to save every nonsense I may write in a file, sometimes by simply mistyping cmd-v in a wrong window, without me telling it to do so. How dumb is that?

Not Dumb at all. Very intelligent actually. Why on earth should protecting your data require an extra step - saving? All that's happening here is that the app is defaulting to protect the data, instead of defaulting to having the data unprotected. It's common sense that it should take an extra step to trash data, not to save it. What's odd is that no computer up to now has defaulted to protecting the data.

If I write an invoice to the customer, I take the invoice from the last month, click save as, select new number and change some dates and sums.

So, to be clear, you're using last month Invoice as a Template, right? So, why do that when you can just use an actual Template? Much more simple. That's what that whole 'Save as Template' command is about.

Why would you use Save As?

1. To preserve the data at this point in time so that you can revert to it - well saving does that now. It creates a snapshot of the data at this point in time, and you can revert to it.

2. To save in a different format: That's what Export is for.

This is just one of those darned if you do and darned if you don't situations. Apple's implementation in Lion "is" actually better for protecting your data. The problem is, when you've been using one method for decades and a new method is introduced for such a basic function, people can't just flip a switch and start using the new method without some learning curve. Fortunately, the new method makes it less likely that you will lose anything as you try and figure out how everything works. As I said, I would prefer at least the option of using the old method. I expect this would be difficult to manage though. It would be a nightmare if you could just switch back and forth between the two methods. I'm not even sure that would be technically possible to do. It's safe to say that without being forced to switch, most people would continue to use the older method if given the option (myself among them). So this "nudge" in the newer direction on Apple's part is really necessary to move forward.

I'm sorry but I can find no way in my grasp of the English language to make sense of this statement:

Instead of protecting my data is trashes the data, by saving when I wanted it not to.

Saving your data trashes it?

Why not explain to us why it's better that the default setting is your work is unprotected?

So, you're using a Template or you're not? If you always base this month's Invoice on last month's, then duplicate in the Finder and open the Duplicate. Same effect, slightly different workflow.

I'm delighted that you have never lost any data. I reckon that makes you one of very few.

Regards

TD

Saving your data trashes it?

Yes. I routinely open files to make minor modifications to in order to drag those modified components into a new image. When I close the file I only opened to grab pieces from, I do not expect, nor do I ever want the OS to save any changes without my consent. So yes, anytime the OS saves changes without asking me, it is trashing my data.

And yes, I know I can revert it before closing, or after the fact from the desktop, but I shouldn't have to waste my time doing that. It's much faster to close and click Don't Save.

I'm delighted that you have never lost any data. I reckon that makes you one of very few.

My either. The only time I've ever lost data was when hard drive died on me before I had backed some unimportant stuff (just had to retrieve it again on the web), and floppies disks back in the day that were suddenly unreadable. I have only once or twice in over 25 years of computing deleted a file by my own mistake. And I then was able to recover them.

What I'd really, really like to know is why those who prefer Save As have to justify such a simple thing - choice. That's all it would take to solve all of this. Give the user a choice of which way they want to work. Both sides get the workflow they prefer. I can't see a single thing wrong with that.

It appears so. Though since Apple had already repurposed Command+Shift+S as a keyboard shortcut for Duplicate, it now takes four keys to do a Save As. That may still be relegated to only the apps Apple develops. I would imagine most third party apps will still use Command+Shift+S for Save As. Especially those which ignore the whole Autosave/Versions function, such as everything from Adobe.

The thought I have on it, is will it work like Save As used to? For instance, you have a document open and choose Save As. The way it has worked for the last 2+ decades, the newly named document takes on any changes you have made while that document was open, and the original is closed with none of the changes applied (or at least no further back than the point you pressed Command+S while working on it).

Will the new Save As simply create a newly named file in a new location while still leaving the original document open? It wouldn't make sense to do that since you'd essentially be duplicating the Duplicate command under a different name, but I haven't tried the Mountain Lion developer's preview to see.