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I don't wan't OSX to be like iOS.
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Time Machine does not hold every version imagineable, only whatever was on disk when the backup ran. It runs periodically. So you might have to choose between 2 files, one which is "missing some modifications" and the other that "has too many", instead of reverting to "that one that's just perfect".
Just like Versions can't save you in case of a disk wipe or if you move or erase the file from the hard drive.
Versions and Time Machine are complementary. One doesn't replace the other.
Again, please tell us what doesn't make sense in Versions ? I have yet to see the starts of a compelling argument against it. Most of it is just ignorance of how it works.
I'm ready for OS X to keep including features from iOS, Mountain Lion looks great... but I also want Apple to expand OS X desktop features as well as add new ones. I also don't want anything resembling the iOS UI to replace what we've got right now.
Oh, and I definitely don't want to be stuck getting apps from just Apple.
Oh, and I definitely don't want to be stuck getting apps from just Apple.
Dropbox does NOT require manual syncing. My friend and I use it to collaborate on our business documents all the time and I never have to do anything to make sure my files are up to date. There isn't even an option to manually sync Dropbox, it's completely automatic.
There's not really a compelling argument against Versions, in the sense that they should get rid of it. It is after all rather better than what it replaced, and doesn't actively do any damage.
It is however not good enough to be relied upon as a solution for backing up documents, or changes in documents. Of course you can say "well anyone with half a brain would find a comprehensive backup solution", and "Actually versions isn't really meant to be a backup solution anyway". They're both true statements, but irrelevant.
In reality most users, if told by their Mac "I'm automatically saving copies of all your files as you edit, isn't this great", will think that's the end of story. The line between version control and backing up is basically nil in their mind, especially in the way OS X presents it.
"I don't need backup software, versions already saves all my previous copies for me". Have you heard that from your customers yet? I have. Apple should have been a lot more careful in their marketing and documentation, they were so eager to sell it as a headline feature it started to look like something it's not.
Now what? Structurally Versions can't become a backup and iCloud is going a completely different route. Sell everyone a Time Machine? First you'll need to convince them they need it. Fix up the advertising, make the documentation much clearer and stress, very strongly, that Versions is just a casual 'whoops' button, not something to protect your important documents.
Edit: I should add that as 'whoops' buttons go, it's pretty decent. I have found several worryingly simple ways you can accidentally wipe the Versions history. Still, since most use cases (I expect) are the kind where you revert straight after saving, I don't expect they'll be common.
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Good, glad we've got that settled, now if we could only convince some of the "End of the world because of autosave/versions!" people, it would make for a much better forum experience.
I don't see anyone having claimed it as such so your rant about backup solutions was quite uncalled for. No one stopped backing up their file servers because of Volume Shadow Copy, no one is going to stop backing up their Mac because of Versions.
Apple did, which was kind of my point
And if by 'no-one' you mean you wouldn't, then yes, you're right. But, there's a lot of less technically savvy users out there who can easily get these things confused if it's not presented properly. I have to deal with this all the time, so perhaps my rant was born out of experience and frustration at these companies continually putting marketing ahead of education and their customer's data.
Apple did, which was kind of my point
When did they do this ? They even list new stuff they added to Time Machine in Lion :
http://www.apple.com/ca/macosx/whats-new/features.html#timemachine
Doesn't sound like a company that is abandoning backup solutions because they added in Versions.
Again, no one claimed Versions was a backup solution.
How less-technically-savvy are we talking here? Because most of the less-technically-savvy probably didn't have a backup solution before Versions existed. Except for Time Machine, so the only problem I'm seeing here is people not buying backup drives because they think "it's all saved internally anyway".
Edit: Actually, I wonder how many people do that, and how it would affect the free space with Lion if you never even get a backup drive.
http://tidbits.com/article/12483
Versions is a half-baked feature. The lack of a proper System Preferences panel is evidence of this. At a bare minimum, we should be seeing a panel similar to that of Time Machine, except with a list of volumes and the ability to navigate through those volumes to determine which application has active Versions chunks sitting around, so that the user can purge them if they want to, or turn Versions off entirely.
The whole thing is a gigantic stop-gap for a proper filesystem with actual versioning built-in. HFS+ is so outdated and it's literally held together with duct tape at this point it's not even funny. Instead of Apple replacing HFS+ with something modern that has the equivalent of Versions built-in and allowing us to access revisions through Get Info on the file itself, we just get this horrible *thing* forced upon us with absolutely zero say in the matter nor any controls to manipulate how it works.
If you're honestly going to sit there and tell me that Versions doesn't need any options, then I'll say this- nothing else in Mac OS X does either. I challenge you to use 10.7 without modifying a SINGLE option ANYWHERE. Not in System Preferences, not in any of your applications. Use the defaults Apple has given to you, treat them like Versions and assume that nothing has settings anywhere that you can change, because the defaults are good enough.
You won't be able to do it.
-SC
That's not really a problem with Versions, though - that's a problem with AutoSave, and it shows exactly that Versions is good, because AutoSave without something like Versions is a really bad idea.
You have a point with the preferences though - though I don't see a need for a System Preferences panel. I mean, you can already delete Versions in the Star Wars interface, they could just show the space the versions take up and maybe add a feature to not save versions for a specific file - or, ideally, not use AutoSave OR Versions for this file. Though that could get kinda confusing.
Versions doesn't save your versions on your Time Machine drive when space gets low, does it?
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Oh wait, I misread that. That does sound really useful. Then I wouldn't have to use Terminal or launch a Finder instance with root privileges in order to find out how much space all versions take up.
Semi-OT: how can I get the size of a whole folder with Terminal?
No, it's a problem with Versions. Autosave worked fine in 10.6 and was perfectly safe.
In Snow Leopard, auto-saved files would show up as a separate file entirely. If the file already exists on the disk drive, then you'd get an autosaved temporary file in the same directory as the one you're currently editing. Once you saved the file, that file would replace the one on-disk. If you quit, the autosaved file was erased, and the original was left untouched. If the program crashed, both files were left- the autosaved version, and the original. NEVER under ANY circumstances would ANY program ever overwrite the original file without user confirmation (saving that file).
In Lion, "Versions" insists on forcing the programs that are compatible with it to save every so often without user permission or action. Apple assumed that Versions would be infallible, so Versions (or rather, by using Versions) always overwrites the original file automatically every so often. It'll also save a file the moment you press CMD-Q or exit the application.
This is an extremely dangerous and unexpected way of handling file saving when you're operating in a situation where Versions doesn't work 100%- like on a network share or a non-HFS+ volume.
As I said before, this is a feature that belongs at the filesystem level where it can be extended to ALL applications WITHOUT using a dedicated or different API. Then, if you're ever dealing with a network share- programs just continue to work the way they always do. It makes no difference to them because they don't need to know how the underlying filesystem operates- they just need to read and write data. If you're running locally, the filesystem gives you the benefits of versioning support. If you're working on a NAS, then unless your file sharing protocols support versioning (I'd presume through some sort of "metadata" tunnel) and the remote FS supports it too, nothing happens. Things continue to work as expected.
There's no reason why Apple couldn't have baked it into a proper filesystem, then gave us access to viewing and navigating the files through a Quicklook powered UI (apart from your application). Browse through time, pick a file, and launch the application that it belongs to. If they'd have done things like that- every single application on the Mac would have instantly supported versioning without being recompiled. Things like Photoshop would gain the benefits of Versioning (if you wanted it) without actually having to know about it. From the point of view of the application, it's still saving data as usual. But the file system is keeping track of changes and making sure that you're never actually overwriting (losing) information.
Be careful with this. If you erase Versions' storage directory to reclaim space (".DocumentRevisions-v100" in the root of the drive) , you will cripple Versions. For some reason, manually removing that folder does NOT guarantee that the system will properly recreate it. I've heard that you have to go and repair the entire disk in the Recovery HD (not repair permissions, repair disk) in order to have it recreated properly. Otherwise your Versions applications will stop working or otherwise malfunction. Just another pitfall of this wonderful technology.
-SC
Yeah, the reason for that is probably that the folder is hidden and not meant to be dealt with. I suspect they would have to update the database automatically every time someone deletes files in there, though it would probably be easier to enable you to delete the entire folder, but I don't see how not supporting messing with hidden system files in Terminal is a pitfall in a wonderful technology.
Time Machine backup folders, for example, are visible. I don't know if you can safely delete those, but chances are that you can - at least with Finder, probably not with Terminal because they use symlinks to point to unchanged files.
Thanks for the warning, though.
Anyway, I still think AutoSave is the part that *saves* and Versions is the part that *keeps old versions*, so if anything, they made the auto-save feature "worse" (or took out the "good" Snow Leopard auto-save feature and replaced it with a "bad" one). You could argue that Snow Leopard's auto-save feature would be perfect if it also auto-saved files that haven't been manually saved - though I think it would be even better if it also contained Versions
I would say there is a reason - creating an entirely new file system just to include versions sounds like a lot of effort. And I'm almost sure they would have had to reformat everyone's drive when they install Lion.
Also, they beauty of how they implemented Versions is that it doesn't have to save the entire file every time. That's what Time Machine does, so Photoshop does, in a way, support a versioning system built into the OS where you can quicklook each version to find the one you wanted, and if you want, restore it to a different location and copy single layers into the current version.
This tidbit (from tidbits) is quite hilarious :
Ok. Imagine you're prior to versions and just ran through the same scenario ? Oh right, you'd be screwed.
So this Versions bug simply puts you back at where you were with Snow Leopard. Isn't that what some of you are asking for anyway ?
So there's a bug with Autosave/Versions. Provide feedback to Apple, and it'll get fixed.
The tidbits article is a bit outdated now. The main complaint from the article as quoted above was that there was a way to save your file on a Non-HFS+ volume but you had no way of knowing that Versions wasn't supported.
Apple has since corrected that bug and you are now alerted in this case as well that you are saving onto a volume which doesn't support Versions.
I feel a big problem is people thinking their Mac's will never die and don't bother ever backing up there Mac's even when apple makes it so easy. It's people like my mom, who didn't even know how to use versions and one day I had to show her and she was like wow that helped because she needed an older version of a document, and still has no clue what time machine is or that she should back up her Mac just in case something was to happen. But no trying to explain it to my mom it just goes over her head. lol.
lol, I don't think I have ever used Versions. At the top of my head, I don't know how to but I could feature it out, last time I saw it used was Apple's keynote. I use Time Machine with my Time Capsule all the time.