Anyway to disable Autosave and Versions on Lion GM?

[blackburn]

He didn't ask for resume, he asked for versions.

----------


Tell that to my 200 MB TIFF files.

Tell that for a 50gigs itunes library retag! Instead of replacing just a field and being fast it started to rewrite all the songs wasting my ssd. I'm now in the process of switching to xubuntu since Lion is too intrusive for me. Too bad battery life in linux is crap. But still while my macbook keeps on ticking I will use mac os x.

 

[hayesk]

I'm downgrading to SL. I hate Lion.

Why would Apple ever assume we don't want to control our saved files? I mean if you want that to happen cuz you are too incompetent to press command+S then fine turn it on, but give the rest of us back Save As and an normal saving system.

Oh the irony of you calling people too incompetent to press Command-S and then not acknowledging that Duplicate + Command-S will give you Save As.

What the heck is a "normal" saving system? The one you've been using since the 80s? So what are you saying, we should never try to improve or change the way we use computers because it's not normal? I'm glad not everyone shares your way of thinking.

When I write on a piece of paper, I don't have to "save" the ink. And if I want to make changes without fear of changing the original, I make a copy (a duplicate, if you will). Versions makes sense when you look at it in the proper context. And there's no evidence it makes anyone less productive (anyone who doesn't fight it, anyway), and it sure is a lot safer.

 

[hayesk]

He didn't ask for resume, he asked for versions.

----------


Tell that to my 200 MB TIFF files.

It saves the differences, not the whole file. And if the whole file is different, then it saves, but it auto purges intermediate saves. Go ahead, edit a big file, check it the next day, see how much extra space is used.

 

[hayesk]

Tell that for a 50gigs itunes library retag! Instead of replacing just a field and being fast it started to rewrite all the songs wasting my ssd. I'm now in the process of switching to xubuntu since Lion is too intrusive for me. Too bad battery life in linux is crap. But still while my macbook keeps on ticking I will use mac os x.

That's got nothing to do with versions. ITunes doesn't treat songs as individual document and doesn't activate Versions on them. That would have happened in Snow Leopard.

Come on people, at least try to understand the feature before criticizing it!

 

[blackburn]

That's got nothing to do with versions. ITunes doesn't treat songs as individual document and doesn't activate Versions on them. That would have happened in Snow Leopard.

Come on people, at least try to understand the feature before criticizing it!

I don't use iTunes for tag management.. I use Mp3Tag (using wineskin). And guess what under snow leopard works just fine as under windows or linux.

 

[Azathoth]

It saves the differences, not the whole file. And if the whole file is different, then it saves, but it auto purges intermediate saves. Go ahead, edit a big file, check it the next day, see how much extra space is used.

Too bad that doesn't work over network shares and Lion is too stupid to realise that it's destroying your data.

I maintain that Apple really dropped the ball on this issue. We are no longer buying Macs until this gets sorted out.

 

[softwater]

Aren't they delta differences? From what I read, it's doubtful that you'll ever notice the impact of Versions on your hard drive as far as free space goes. And I do mean "ever".

While it's limited to Pages, Preview and Textedit probably not. But if it becomes a standard feature on large file programs with thousands of revisions - think Word, QuarkXpress, InDesign, FinalCut, Camtasia — it'll be a very different story.

----------

Oh the irony of you calling people too incompetent to press Command-S and then not acknowledging that Duplicate + Command-S will give you Save As.

Replacing one command with two sounds like a step back to me, not a step forward.

 

[gerhard.tinned]

Austo-Save needs a ON/OFF switch!!!!!

You know, this lack of preference for "auto-save" is much more dramatically bad than you would think. For example, I inserted SD card to look at pictures in Preview (sn: IPhoto, No, thanks!). I had turned off auto-save under Time Machine/Options. At first, Preview did what I wanted--specifically, it allowed me to review pics, rotate them, etc. without yelling at me to unlock the file each time I flipped a pic right, or whatnot. This way, I can go back later, after adjusting all the pics I took, and look at them all again, figure out which ones I want to keep and save them. I was interrupted so I quit out of Preview and--FRANKLY UNBELIEVABLE--the program wrote those changes to my SD card with no dialog box, no warning "how-do-you do", nada! That is a horrible, disastrous flaw. I do NOT want Apple to tell me I have to save intermediate versions unless I tell a program I want to, especially when external media are involved, but really any time. No problems if the default behavior is versioning but the user should ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have a choice of what to save, what not to save, to quit and save or to quit and not save. Sheesh.

I have installed Lion and i have exactly the same problems. But it got worse ... I had a pdf where i crop a section and then i wanted to save it in another file. Long story ... as it is not able to say save as, i wanted the original back. I tried it and ... the file was currupted. Preview could not open it anymore - that means, if Preview can not open it, you can not access the backup versions of the file. Perfect - one file lost to Versions and Autosave!!! I realy would like to deactivate it.

Locking is not an option. Sometimes you want to crop maybe an image, copy the result away but you dont want to save it. In the past you simply close the App and hit NO on the save dialog. But now? You have to use the mouse to "revert to saved" to get it back. Who thinks that is faster or easier??

If someone has an idea of bringing the file back (maybe a hint where the versions are stored) let me know. It was an important document!

And by the way, NONE of the settings in the TM options influences the auto-save!!! Please dont give that advice again when the question is about auto-save!!!

 

[gerhard.tinned]

While it's limited to Pages, Preview and Textedit probably not. But if it becomes a standard feature on large file programs with thousands of revisions - think Word, QuarkXpress, InDesign, FinalCut, Camtasia — it'll be a very different story.

Its limited for the moment. But its get pushed to developers to use it!!!

----------

Replacing one command with two sounds like a step back to me, not a step forward.

I totally agree, its a step back! And additionally you have no control about your files! I lost one file completely with that! :-( I think the user should have the control over his files. If autosave would save a version when i press Save. Then it would be nice and helpful! But as it is now, i am afraid of loosing files.

I am really thinking of changing back to 10.6 because of this horrible thing!!!

 

[gerhard.tinned]

Versions and Autosave Details

Hi!

I have found details some of you have asked for.

All the details i have found during try and error in the file system. So it might be that there are information's missing. Or that this might o0nly be a part of the whole thing.

As a point often discussed, The incremental version. It seems that at least with Images, there are no incremental backups!!

It seems that versions stores the saved versions on a per hard disc partition base. I have found a directory on every HD called ".DocumentRevisions-V100" This directory contails everithing you need. It contains a database (sqlite) in "db-V1" where all versioned files are are listed. It contains then the path of the file's versions within the ".DocumentRevisions-V100" directory.

I still have no clue how to disable the auto-save but it might give one of you a hint where to find the storage of the versioned files. To access the files in this directory, you need to have root rights. So use "su - root" or "sudo ..." to do that!

 

[MartiNZ]

It is fun watching as everyone encounters the same problems I ditched Lion because of in the first two weeks. Told you all not to say I didn't warn you .

Anyway, some content to maybe avoid too many downvotes: it does seem that the suggested new methodology of always duplicating a file first should let you keep the original version, corruption notwithstanding. I just feel like the new system needs to come with a hardout tutorial - how is any user that doesn't know about the features supposed to work out why unintended changes were saved and how to revert them? I remain afraid of this big cat.

 

[nubero]

I have installed Lion and i have exactly the same problems. But it got worse ... I had a pdf where i crop a section and then i wanted to save it in another file. Long story ... as it is not able to say save as, i wanted the original back. I tried it and ... the file was currupted. Preview could not open it anymore - that means, if Preview can not open it, you can not access the backup versions of the file. Perfect - one file lost to Versions and Autosave!!! I realy would like to deactivate it.

Locking is not an option. Sometimes you want to crop maybe an image, copy the result away but you dont want to save it. In the past you simply close the App and hit NO on the save dialog. But now? You have to use the mouse to "revert to saved" to get it back. Who thinks that is faster or easier??

If someone has an idea of bringing the file back (maybe a hint where the versions are stored) let me know. It was an important document!

And by the way, NONE of the settings in the TM options influences the auto-save!!! Please dont give that advice again when the question is about auto-save!!!

Please people, complain here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I did. And if you all do that too, we might just be able to get those idiots to act.

 

[thaiman]

How To Disable Auto-save?

Take my advice, you do not want to disable Autosave! It wastes hardly any space (these are delta updates) and this feature will save your life many times.

Give it a year (less) and you will think the old way of saving files was hopelessly archaic. Apple have pulled a blinder with this. Best feature in Lion IMO.

You make assumptions with that statement. I am working with a beta version of a 3D CAD program and everyone is getting troubled with how this is creating massive files. So until this is fixed by the programmers I need to know how to turn it off when working with it.

You say 'don't disable auto-save' but I still have no idea how to turn it off!

 

[lukemcurley]

Pixelmator is the first main stream program I have used with autosave and it's driving me bonkers. I have lost data due to this "feature", the whole point of this was that we never loose data.

Apple really need to allow us to disable this, keep it there as default for home users, but for professional users who do destructive work and want to save as for internal version controls please give us an option.

Pixelmator support provided me with this solution by the way:

To avoid saving over the original file, I'd recommend duplicating it first. To retrieve the original file try browsing version.

How is this a more efficient work flow.

I did find this article that sums it up, how awful this feature is for professional users:
http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=281

----------

Nope.. you just don't understand how it works technically. Every HFS formatted volume gets its own DocumentRevisions folder (where the versions are stored), once you create a document on it with a version enbeled app. If you then move or copy the file to another volume, after you made some changes, it's connection to the attached versions will be lost, as they are tied to the file via inodes in the database of the DocumentRevisions folder on the original volume.

If you want versions on an external volume, you have to move the file to that volume before you make any changes, then the versions will be safed in the external volumes DocumentRevisions folder. However… they will be lost again, when you move the file back to your internal drive.

It's still a bit beta, that whole thing.

And beware… versions will not work at all on FAT32 volumes.

FAT32/NTFS is what the rest of the world use, so as it doesn't work with exFAT or FAT32 it's a real problem in a professional environment.

 

[fat jez]

FAT32/NTFS is what the rest of the world use, so as it doesn't work with exFAT or FAT32 it's a real problem in a professional environment.

As I understand it, it doesn't work when copying files with history across HFS partitions either.

I ended up copying over Textedit and Preview and their supporting library files over from Snow Leopard and use them - no autosaves and versions Fortunately they are the only apps that I use that support autosaves and versions.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

How did you get the Preview.app from SL to work on Lion? I remember trying at one point and having the program tell me that it was not compatible with this OS version.

 

[fat jez]

How did you get the Preview.app from SL to work on Lion? I remember trying at one point and having the program tell me that it was not compatible with this OS version.

The key was to copy over the required libraries (they are only used by SL, not Lion).

Follow this guide:

http://www.formaceyesonly.com/2011/...review-and-textedit-to-snow-leopard-versions/

 

[raftr]

It looks like Apple finally sees their new file system paradigm is bonkers and began patching…

http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=486

Now if we only could find a way to mark startup drives as "not supporting permanent version storage" and there is a chance we stop the OS from saving files without permission… am I right?

 

[blow45]

It looks like Apple finally sees their new file system paradigm is bonkers and began patching…

http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=486

Now if we only could find a way to mark startup drives as "not supporting permanent version storage" and there is a chance we stop the OS from saving files without permission… am I right?

in principle it sounds like you are right.