Well once apps update themselves, you should be back to the old way.
What if they don't update? Do you have to wonder about every single program you add to OSX whether it will screw up the system's sleep behavior? Why should the user have to depend on every single 3rd party software vendor to have their computer behave properly when Apple could have some basic checks like CPU access that is way beyond idle or massive disk activity?
It gets worse, though. After finally straightening out my sleep issues on my 2012 Mac Mini (seems that one particular mouse was always freezing on wake and so I didn't let the computer sleep, but it was just that exact mouse; another same exact model I had on another computer wakes just fine on the same machine), I have no discovered that NFS is not recognized by Apple as an assertion like SMB and AFP are. In other words, even though Apple includes and maintain and updates the NFS protocol, they don't have it in the preference GUI for sharing and if you use it, OSX will ignore activity over NFS to keep the computer awake. And THUS,
Apple violates their own rule. Frankly, I think NFS should be right there in the GUI anyway, but it's besides the point. Some of us need NFS for various reasons (Eden XBMC on an older AppleTV being mine that doesn't talk to SMB2 included in Lion and above and frankly, NFS works better than SMB ever did anyway).
Someone could make some money making an assertion program that adds a system assertion when a certain program is running or there's high CPU or disk activity, etc. and removes it after a certain amount of time of non-activity. That would be a FAR better solution than having to run around the house turning caffeine on and off every time I want to watch a movie on the other end of the house (defeating part of the convenience of having a system where I don't have to get up and look for a DVD/BD in the first place; here it's replaced with having to run to the den to stop the server from going to sleep).
Those settings refer to incoming network connections, not outgoing from your Mac.
That's a shame. It shouldn't matter whether it's incoming or outgoing. If there's activity, there's a reason and it should not go to sleep.
Edit: Actually, I just tested it again and it ignores NFS incoming network requests also. It's clearly just not set to recognize NFS. If I access a picture share on the same server from XBMC using AFP, the computer instantly wakes right up. Apple simply needs to add assertion support to NFS. Why include NFS if you're not going to support it? From what I understand, OSX Server used to include GUI configuration for NFS and they removed it. That makes little sense to me. It just seems Apple wants to purposely limit anything not theirs. I assume they only update and include NFS because it's probably required to get their UNIX certification or something.
lol you guys are funny coming up with terminal commands and 3rd party apps to overcome a simple setting in Sys Prefs!
Yes Apple are really dumb to have introduced such a setting, particularly as it IGNORES disk activity of your downloads, set it to ON after an OS update without warning AND bury this change behind an "Advanced" button!
There is nothing advanced about this stupidity. We should all sue Apple for loss of productivity until the solution is found and revealed!
Solution:
Sys Prefs/Security/General/Advanced button bottom right/uncheck the dumbfluck "Log out after 60 minutes of inactivity" that ignores continued disk activity!
WTF does logging out have to do with anything? I just checked this setting and it's unchecked and never was checked nor have I EVER been logged out automatically by OSX. In short, it has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.