This. For some purposes, duplicate and versions and autosave are wonderful. They just aren't a good fit to every task involving file management.
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I don't wan't OSX to be like iOS.
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in ML, at least in Texedit, you do Duplicate using the same keyboard shortcut as the good old Save As
I didn't even look for that in ML. That's good news.
i think ios and os x will always remain different - ios devices are generally for the mass market of people who want to use these devices as a tool and spend the minimum amount of time learning how to use them. os x serves to meet the needs of a much wider range of users - from developers to people who make heavy use of applications to more casual users.
There are differences that will always be there. For example, I don't think you'll ever see windowing systems on an ipad because they simply wouldn't work well, but full screen apps on a mac are a reasonable option for those that want to work that way. So there are differences and some common ground.
But what I dislike is the dumbing down of some features (particularly expose and spaces) in Lion. At least give me the choice of whether I want to have a massive change in the way I work rather than enforcing it on me.
Of course, at the end of the day, if you look at the film Alien, set in 2087 or thereabouts, the computer Mother has a green screen text only interface using capital letters. My guess is that that's the future of all computer interfaces.
There are differences that will always be there. For example, I don't think you'll ever see windowing systems on an ipad because they simply wouldn't work well, but full screen apps on a mac are a reasonable option for those that want to work that way. So there are differences and some common ground.
But what I dislike is the dumbing down of some features (particularly expose and spaces) in Lion. At least give me the choice of whether I want to have a massive change in the way I work rather than enforcing it on me.
Of course, at the end of the day, if you look at the film Alien, set in 2087 or thereabouts, the computer Mother has a green screen text only interface using capital letters. My guess is that that's the future of all computer interfaces.
The difference is, before, if the file modification time got saved, you were basically screwed unless you had the original on Time Machine.
With Versions, you can just grab the original back at any time.
Duplicate and Save As are the same thing btw, no matter how much people don't want them to be. Versions takes nothing away of manual file management, you can still do it.
And it's still quite possible for a developer to give you both Autosave/Versions with Duplicate and the good old "Save As" button, there's nothing preventing it in the Apple frameworks. Ask your software vendor for the option, but really, he'll just tell you "Duplicate and save does the same thing
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I have yet to see a task involving File Management that can be done under the old paradigm but can't be done under the new one. And in fact, done better.
Duplicate and Save As are not the same thing, no matter how much some people here want you to think they are.....Here's why (again).
1) Open a file
2) Select duplicate.
At this point: Ask yourself....Has anything been saved? Answer is a resounding "No". In order to mimic Save As functionality, you need to perform the following three steps:
3) Select "Save" in the new document's file menu
4) Choose a new name (myfile_01 or whatever)
5) Close the original file that you duplicated.
This is counter intuitive, and awkward compared to:
1) Open a file
2) Select Save As.
3) Choose a new name.
Duplicate requires two more steps, plus the added confusion of having to deal with two identical documents being open. Not a big deal if you only save once in a while, but if you like to iterate a document frequently and don't want to rely on versions which is buggy, clumsy & proprietary then it's a pain in the backside.
Versions, duplicate and Apple's idea of file management in Lion need to be taken round the back and shot in the head, twice just to make sure....And I'm known for being quite a laid back person.
It should at least be something the user has the choice to use or not.
1) Open a file
2) Select duplicate.
At this point: Ask yourself....Has anything been saved? Answer is a resounding "No". In order to mimic Save As functionality, you need to perform the following three steps:
3) Select "Save" in the new document's file menu
4) Choose a new name (myfile_01 or whatever)
5) Close the original file that you duplicated.
This is counter intuitive, and awkward compared to:
1) Open a file
2) Select Save As.
3) Choose a new name.
Duplicate requires two more steps, plus the added confusion of having to deal with two identical documents being open. Not a big deal if you only save once in a while, but if you like to iterate a document frequently and don't want to rely on versions which is buggy, clumsy & proprietary then it's a pain in the backside.
Versions, duplicate and Apple's idea of file management in Lion need to be taken round the back and shot in the head, twice just to make sure....And I'm known for being quite a laid back person.
It should at least be something the user has the choice to use or not.
The difference is, with enforced saving of any changes I make, I am automatically screwed, every time I, or my cat, make a change to a document. If I know about the changes, and I want them to be temporary, I can now go back and recover the version I want, but that doesn't change the fact that the OS itself now tries to mess with my file in a way I didn't want.
That's why there's Versions. You can always revert back any saved changes, whether they be by your cat, your dog, yourself, your spouse or anyone.
What happened before Autosave/Versions if someone overwrited your work ? You had to use the touch command to revert the modification time. Now you can simply navigate back to the right file in Versions.
You're never screwed. Autosave does not exist in a vaccuum. You people need to stop portraying it as such.
Versions is why the OS feels free to modify my documents without my consent, and possibly without even my knowledge?
Nope, I don't buy that.
Automatic and faceless saving of changes when a document is closed will likely be a larger source of trouble than intentional and erroneous saving a corrupted document ever was. Versions will make it easier to recover from having saved 'the dissertation the cat slept on', but the autosave will ensure that if something bad happens to your document in memory, it almost always ends up on disk.
Of course, if you copy that file to a memory stick, or anything else that doesn't support versions, you'll be in the same state as a pre-versions user, except that it wasn't anything you did that messed up your file, it was the Mac itself.
apple wants to have one single os across all devices. if you feel that is bad for you, go back to microsoft
I'm so glad this got downranked 51 times.
No wait, 52 times... -1 from me.
Just installed Mountain Lion.
As I feared, the thing I hate most about it is the new Safari.
I despise this new tab width. It's throwing me off quite a bit. I also don't like the unibar.
The worst part is, there's no option to revert back to the classic interface!!
Second comment is, the Notification Center gesture cannot be modified, nor can the menubar icon be removed.
Third, it's laggy and unstable, as expected of a DP.
Fourth, to enable Notification Center in applications, you have to open them at least once. After the upgrade, you must open Calendar (iCal has been renamed to Calendar!!) to enable Notification Center for it.
Fifth, iCloud is still buggy.
Sixth, there's no dedicated Gatekeeper setting. It's spread throughout the Security & Privacy prefpane.
Seventh, software updates via MAS is very, very laggy.
iOSification of Mac OS X has soiled a perfectly good OS. It feels very, very dumbed down.
As I feared, the thing I hate most about it is the new Safari.
I despise this new tab width. It's throwing me off quite a bit. I also don't like the unibar.
The worst part is, there's no option to revert back to the classic interface!!
Second comment is, the Notification Center gesture cannot be modified, nor can the menubar icon be removed.
Third, it's laggy and unstable, as expected of a DP.
Fourth, to enable Notification Center in applications, you have to open them at least once. After the upgrade, you must open Calendar (iCal has been renamed to Calendar!!) to enable Notification Center for it.
Fifth, iCloud is still buggy.
Sixth, there's no dedicated Gatekeeper setting. It's spread throughout the Security & Privacy prefpane.
Seventh, software updates via MAS is very, very laggy.
iOSification of Mac OS X has soiled a perfectly good OS. It feels very, very dumbed down.
Uh ? Autosave/Versions doesn't play around with your documents when they are closed, what are you on about ?
Are you making stuff up ?
Complaining about bugs and incomplete features in a developer preview in a forum is just silly.
Every time someone makes this statement, I ask the following question. What features have been brought from iOS into ML that are bad for a desktop OS?
I haven't got a single answer yet. Makes me think people are just repeating some propaganda they heard without think it through.
Are you not seeing the problems for the newness?
Try this:
Open a Pages document.
Type a few letters at the end of the sentence.
Close the window.
Quit pages or not, it makes no difference.
reopen the Pages doc.
The letters you typed are there. Saved with no warning to the user whatsoever.
If I make a duplicate of the doc after opening and then type a bit, it does supply a "do you want to save changes". dialog.
That's not good enough. There needs to be at lest an explicing warning, or a way to turn off the faulty behavior.
As implemented, editing an original copy of a doc in Pages is a lot like editing an application's resource file in the old ResEdit. Documents are hot, any and all changes will be saved, and precautions need to be taken to protect the document from change.
ResEdit warning from 2007:
Try this:
Open a Pages document.
Type a few letters at the end of the sentence.
Close the window.
Quit pages or not, it makes no difference.
reopen the Pages doc.
The letters you typed are there. Saved with no warning to the user whatsoever.
If I make a duplicate of the doc after opening and then type a bit, it does supply a "do you want to save changes". dialog.
That's not good enough. There needs to be at lest an explicing warning, or a way to turn off the faulty behavior.
As implemented, editing an original copy of a doc in Pages is a lot like editing an application's resource file in the old ResEdit. Documents are hot, any and all changes will be saved, and precautions need to be taken to protect the document from change.
ResEdit warning from 2007:
ResEdit retired with System 9, but the 'always work with a copy' caveat has become relevent again because of Apple's implementation of autosave and versions. It's a pain in the ass to remember to always work with a copy, even if I'm only looking.,
Yes, I'm seeing the problem for the newness. Newness brings a lot of whining and complaints about things that changed, but are now better. The actual steps to achieve a result are now different, but the process is more flexible and permissive of error. Some users don't tolerate change, even for the better though and are quite vocal about it, 6 months later. They will probably never get over it and their lives are forever ruined if you believe what they say.
Hum... how is that a problem ? It would be without Versions to rollback those automatically saved changes. With Versions, if you really didn't want the changes made, you roll it back. Simple as that.
Prior to Versions, if you had accidently hit "Yes" on the dialog upon quitting, guess what, you were screwed unless you had a backup. Prior to Autosave, if you hit no upon quitting, you were screwed unless... well no, you were just screwed and had to do the modifications over.
Now I see I mistook your "closed". Autosave/Versions doesn't mess with closed documents, but you weren't talking about that, you were talking about when you are closing a document after some changes you didn't want. Now you have to revert those changes instead of just closing the window. It's an extra step, but one that provides much greater resiliency against data loss.
In the end, the same result is achieved.
It's a problem because when I open and modify a document, purposefully or accidentally, I don't always want to save those changes.
The system now insists that I save any changes that are made to a document. Sure, Apple implemented document locking to cover up this problem with older files, but they left new files vulnerable. Heck, you can even set document locking back to a year after last changed in Time Machine prefs. Ever wonder why you can't turn off locking easily? This is why. It'll leave your files open to automatic changes every time they're opened as documents.
That's a year during which your files are open to corruption by the simple process of moving, not copying, the file to between hard drives. As we should all know, versions don't live through that process.
IMHO, this is not a feature, it's a bug, and one we didn't have before Apple enforced autosave.
Maybe your files aren't important enough to care about such things, but mine are.
Shiny-newness aside, the new system does not protect file content as well as the old.
Spend a little time trying to understand why autosave didn't become universal in the 80's. It's always been easy to implement on a Mac. A journalling file system covers up some of the problems for autosave, but as currently implemented it's an inadequate substitute for user intent and action.
At the end of the day, it really all boils down to some people just not able to adapt to change all that well even if the changes are better.
If the way things are in Lion are the way things had always been and then Apple introduced the SL behavior, these people would still be pretty upset.
In other words, if Apple introduced a new OS saying, "although your Operating System has been performing autosaving and versioning tasks for you for decades, we now are going to make you remember to save every few minutes. We are also going to make you have to keep your own versions. We are removing all of these smart features that you are accustomed to the OS taking care of for you and forcing you to do them yourself for now on with no other options."
I can guarantee you that if that was the situation, these same people would be complaining about that being a step backwards. But then at least they would have a point.
So it's really all about some people not having the ability to adapt to change. The sad thing is I bet many of them complaining are quite young. I can see someone in their 70's not wanting to adapt to change (even for the better) anymore. But someone in their 40's or 50's and supposedly professional?
You must really be looking forward to be pushed out by the younger, more efficient and productive people coming along who aren't attached to old computing paradigms.
But of course this is how things have always worked in history. There are people who said they would stick to horses instead of cars, people who said a GUI was a "step backwards", and people who laughed at the thought of graphic design, typography, and layout going digital.
But technology keeps moving forward, some people get left behind, productivity increases, and history continues to repeat itself.
If the way things are in Lion are the way things had always been and then Apple introduced the SL behavior, these people would still be pretty upset.
In other words, if Apple introduced a new OS saying, "although your Operating System has been performing autosaving and versioning tasks for you for decades, we now are going to make you remember to save every few minutes. We are also going to make you have to keep your own versions. We are removing all of these smart features that you are accustomed to the OS taking care of for you and forcing you to do them yourself for now on with no other options."
I can guarantee you that if that was the situation, these same people would be complaining about that being a step backwards. But then at least they would have a point.
So it's really all about some people not having the ability to adapt to change. The sad thing is I bet many of them complaining are quite young. I can see someone in their 70's not wanting to adapt to change (even for the better) anymore. But someone in their 40's or 50's and supposedly professional?
You must really be looking forward to be pushed out by the younger, more efficient and productive people coming along who aren't attached to old computing paradigms.
But of course this is how things have always worked in history. There are people who said they would stick to horses instead of cars, people who said a GUI was a "step backwards", and people who laughed at the thought of graphic design, typography, and layout going digital.
But technology keeps moving forward, some people get left behind, productivity increases, and history continues to repeat itself.
Files are not vulnerable thanks to Versions. Autosave on its own would definately be evil. With Versions it's a big non-issue.
You again don't have to deal with the changes, you can always revert the document thanks to Versions. A point you keep ignoring.
Again, the steps have changed, the result is the same, the added protection and functionality is much better than it used to be without nothing lost.
Exactly. It's like people whining that their old screw driver set is better than the new fangled multi-bit electric screwdriver, because you didn't have to charge the battery or mess around with head bits.
I just showed you how new (not yet locked) files are vulnerable to silently being changed by the OS via autosave, with or without versions. Are you deliberately not paying attention to a real issue, or do you just not care that your files are more vulnerable under the new system than the old?
-An uncaught version save, plus a file transfer between disks -> a damaged file you may not even know about until it's too late.
That's not innovation or progress, it's a new way to screw up that people should be made aware of.
You showed me nothing except your failure to grasp the changes can be reverted with Versions. You'll always have that original. Something that can't be said if you hit "Save" by accident in the past.
Your scenarios are becoming more and more imaginative I'll grant you that.
Though I think it's quite time we put this discussion to rest. Obviously, 6 months later, I'm not the one who's going to convince you to let it go. This has definately ruined your life.
Not when you move that file to a different disk.
How often did you actually lose files before versions came along?
Every few years, or were you not competent to handle your own file system?
Versions is nice, it offers a convenient recovery from accidental error.
However, the implementation of autosave practically gaurantees a higher incidence of erroneous saves. The end user is unlikely to even know about some of those saves until perhaps months pass, and the files have ported off to some secondary drive, and thus permanently damaged.
Do you not grasp that versions is not universal?
That leaves autosave functioning on non-autolocked files in exactly the way you proclaimed was 'evil' a few posts back.
With users of any competence, we're talking rare events here, but that doesn't mean we should meekly accept Apple's decision to expose our data to an entirely new and unexpected source of corruption.
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I'm done here. You go ahead and post 4 or 5 times. I think anyone willing to listen understands my point about autosave/versions opening a new avenue to file corruption.
If not, they can find out for themselves when a critical file they backed up somewhere in a safe place turns up corrupted when they need it most.
So what happens if you forget to save changes you want, move the file to a new disk and never notice and delete the original in the old way ? Same thing.
The fact that Versions/Autosave is not full proof doesn't mean the old way was. You can stretch and come up with scenarios all you want, there's probably dozens more on the other side since Autosave/Versions brings a lot of goodness on top of duplicating (pun intended) the functionality of the old way.
It's just how computing is. Either you learn to adapt, or you get to switch platforms/stick with old versions. Personally, I'd rather adapt and learn new things.
Now I'll just move you to the same place Gomff is, my ignore list. People who refuse to move on and just want to gripe belong there.
Some people just feel the need to complain about something. That must be a tiresome chore.
What I believe you are missing is that knowing the way it now operates, you simply won't edit a file if you don't plan on keeping the changes. Or if for some reason you do decide to edit a file without planning on keeping the changes, you will just revert to the previous version afterwards.
That's just an adaptation in workflow. That's all. But the beauty of Autosave/Versions is that you can make multiple changes and have multiple versions to compare against and can do it side by side with full copy and paste ability and STILL have the opportunity to go back to the original when you are done. That is more powerful than the current workflow of testing some changes on a document.
But still if you already know you don't plan to keep some changes, the new workflow is to duplicate the file first rather than working on top of the real one. That makes a whole lot of sense in my book and gives you more options as well due to Versions allowing you to make comparisons between multiple tests.