Bring back "Save As"

[hmmm]

Is anyone else completely frustrated now that Apple has removed the "Save As" command from many of their applications (iWork, Preview etc)?

Thankfully there are work arounds, but if Apple thinks that having to go into the file menu, manually select "Duplicate" and then save the file is easier than selecting "Shift-Apple-S" then the company's recent success has obviously gone to their head.

So please join this poll and let me know whether I am alone in this thought, or whether Apple needs to take note.

 

[Mightee]

I haven't come up against it yet because I don't use iWork and barely use TextEdit, but I'm still with you.

 

[NicoleRichie]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

2nd.

 

[iGrouch]

3rd on that.

Indeed there are workarounds. I am moving to Lion soon but have been testing it on a spare drive. I have foreseen some instances in my own workflow where this is going to be a nuisance. The options are cumbersome, in the Apple apps where versions has already been implemented. Hopefully serious apps like Photoshop will never implement this paradigm.

Once again I am going to repeat my usual mantra. FEEDBACK! Send your feedback to Apple at:

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

Spend some time, before you do so, to compose a cogent reason for bringing back Save As.....

If enough people do this they really should listen....Or else they're toast.

I just heard some Dutch bloke on the radio called Peter Sims. He has just published this book:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/18/little-bets-the-book/

Apparently, according to him HP spend very little on marketing research and work a lot with user feedback.

 

[Amberfool]

What I think you might not quite understand is the fact that this is not just some random change, it, along with many of the changes made in Lion are the first baby steps towards Apple's '10 year plan' for the OS.

Yes the new way of doing this is a fundamental change, and yes I think they could improve on it, by for instance not adding 'copy' to the title of the duplicate and instead allowing us to change the title ourselves. My main reason for Save As... was to save a file in a different format, and having to remove the word copy from the title is going to be an added annoyance for sure.

But it's not like you couldn't do everything you could do before, it's just being presented in a different way, and is only a few seconds difference.

 

[hmmm]

Hi iGrouch, I'll definitely use the feedback link, and responding to Amberfool, the whole issue here is that Apple have significantly impeded the user experience. How often do you open an email attachment and use the "Save As" command to file the document in a specific location, and how often do you want to save a new revision of say a keynote doc?

Making this very simple and straight forward command that is used dozens of times a days my million of Apple users incredible difficult, really doesn't make any sense.

From searching the Internet you can see that there are a lot of users out there who are having great difficulty with this exact topic. The work around is not intuitive, Apple have provide no or very little help in dealing with this issue, and honestly, this is a step backwards for Apple and no one wants to spend more time or effort having to conduct simple commands such as this.

I stand my ground on this.

 

[xkmxkmxlmx]

I don't know if I hate it yet as I have not had that much experience with it... YET. I am sure something will come up that will make me despise it like a lot of the new "features".

I am looking forward to iCloud, though. I want to see how it works with that. Who knows, it could turn out to be the best thing they have ever done.

But for now, I vote "bring it back".

 

[kuwisdelu]

I just want a way to create a duplicate directly as a new file type (e.g., re-saving a png to a jpg) without having to duplicate, and then save the new copy. With Versions, I can see it making sense if you're only dealing with a single file type. But at least give me a "Duplicate as..." item so I can skip the extra step.

 

[Boo The Hamster]

I'm not using Lion, and the whole 'autosave' issue is just one of the reasons, so I'm definitely in the 'bring it back and make autosave/versions a switch-offable user option' camp.

On a related note, for those who have used it, how would you code a web page in Textedit now? Previously, I would have written the html, and then saved as doc.html. Is there an option for this?

 

[kuwisdelu]

On a related note, for those who have used it, how would you code a web page in Textedit now? Previously, I would have written the html, and then saved as doc.html. Is there an option for this?

It can still work exactly how you're used to. When you save the first time, save it with .html. When you hit Cmd+S, it'll still save a new version; the only difference is you'll have the old versions, too, and it'll autosave as well.

Personally, I'm really looking forward to when autosave and versions get implemented in the apps I use. It's just Duplicate adds an extra step over Save as... for certain things.

 

[paulsalter]

I don't mind the new way of saving things, but would like to get the save as back

but please get rid of the auto saving of documents, this is driving me mad

 

[turbotoes]

I don't mind the new way of saving things, but would like to get the save as back

but please get rid of the auto saving of documents, this is driving me mad

Plus one for this

 

[Amberfool]

Hi iGrouch, I'll definitely use the feedback link, and responding to Amberfool, the whole issue here is that Apple have significantly impeded the user experience. How often do you open an email attachment and use the "Save As" command to file the document in a specific location, and how often do you want to save a new revision of say a keynote doc?

Making this very simple and straight forward command that is used dozens of times a days my million of Apple users incredible difficult, really doesn't make any sense.

From searching the Internet you can see that there are a lot of users out there who are having great difficulty with this exact topic. The work around is not intuitive, Apple have provide no or very little help in dealing with this issue, and honestly, this is a step backwards for Apple and no one wants to spend more time or effort having to conduct simple commands such as this.

I stand my ground on this.

With mail, you quick look to see the files, and then right click save, and save all.. which allows you to choose where you want to save the files. Maybe they could have made more of a big deal to help new users understand how to use the new method, but it really isn't as difficult as you make it out to be.

There are a lot of people on the internet complaining about many aspects of Lion, but like natural scrolling, you just get used to the new way of doing it. It's not intuitive, because you have been doing it differently for a very long time, give it a while and it will be just as intuitive and easy to understand as Save As... is to you now.

 

[chillvisio]

Comment deleted, because it no longer represents my current view on subject.

 

[Skoal]

There are a lot of people on the internet complaining about many aspects of Lion, but like natural scrolling, you just get used to the new way of doing it. It's not intuitive, because you have been doing it differently for a very long time, give it a while and it will be just as intuitive and easy to understand as Save As... is to you now.

I understand what your saying but the question I have is: Why? There are many things I'm loving about Lion despite the bugs and the often appearing spinning beachball but I just don't see a useful reason to change something like 'save as'.

Perhaps Apple is looking down the road to something in the works that will make this a "duh" moment for me (and others) but at this moment it just seems like they are changing things simply to....well, change them! It smacks the face of the idea that Apple stuff is intuitive and simple to use.

 

[chillvisio]

Comment deleted, because it no longer represents my current view on subject.

 

[Amberfool]

I understand what your saying but the question I have is: Why? There are many things I'm loving about Lion despite the bugs and the often appearing spinning beachball but I just don't see a useful reason to change something like 'save as'.

Perhaps Apple is looking down the road to something in the works that will make this a "duh" moment for me (and others) but at this moment it just seems like they are changing things simply to....well, change them! It smacks the face of the idea that Apple stuff is intuitive and simple to use.

Personally stuff like Autosave, Resume and Versions sounds exactly like the first step in Apple's new direction for the OS, as I said in my original post in this thread. It's a shift in the user's perception more then anything else, and while I get that it does take a couple of more seconds to do, I think down the line it will make more sense. The alternative is, is that Apple is changing things in the OS just for the sake of change, which really doesn't sound like Apple to me.

 

[mrklaw]

I like the idea of autosave - I think office apps have been doing it for a while?

But it works best when you are working on one document and making changes to that document. One thing I do a lot is have a template letter and then make minor changes and save it as another document. I'm a little concerned that with this new way of doing things, I'll have to remember to 'save as' (or duplicate, whatever), *before* doing anything to the template, otherwise it can be saved into the template document. It gives me less flexibility to choose my own workflow.

 

[sidewinder]

I like the idea of autosave - I think office apps have been doing it for a while?

But it works best when you are working on one document and making changes to that document. One thing I do a lot is have a template letter and then make minor changes and save it as another document. I'm a little concerned that with this new way of doing things, I'll have to remember to 'save as' (or duplicate, whatever), *before* doing anything to the template, otherwise it can be saved into the template document. It gives me less flexibility to choose my own workflow.

No. Make your template and lock it. If you try to edit the file, your will get a dialog presenting you with options to "Unlock", "Cancel", or "Duplicate".

Scott

 

[MartiNZ]

I like the idea of autosave - I think office apps have been doing it for a while?

But it works best when you are working on one document and making changes to that document. One thing I do a lot is have a template letter and then make minor changes and save it as another document. I'm a little concerned that with this new way of doing things, I'll have to remember to 'save as' (or duplicate, whatever), *before* doing anything to the template, otherwise it can be saved into the template document. It gives me less flexibility to choose my own workflow.

Exactly. Office apps have been doing auto-recover saves for a while, which are quite different and far less destructive - they only hide away in case of a crash or similar, they don't constantly replace the file you're working with no questions asked, which is the new Lion way. Duplicating beforehand is indeed the new safe approach, but it's a pretty weird one IMO.

 

[2499723]

I'm in agreement with all those who support bringing back 'Save As', or at least making 'Duplicate' a bit more sensible. I've posted this message on the Apple feedback website:

Apple must have had its reasons for changing up the save system within documents. Versions are pretty cool things to have access to, but in some ways things have been complicated beyond reason with the new save process. Sometimes, we need to make quick, multiple versions of documents that have only slight variations (think of creating student awards certificates where only the name changes). 'Save As' is a much better approach, because you can quickly make a second copy with that small change and continue forward. There is something clunky about the new 'Duplicate' procedure and I find myself spending way more time opening a new duplicate, then having to 'Save' it (which is 'Save As' anyway). There's an added, unnecessary step that makes little sense. The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no hotkey combo for 'Duplicate' as there exists for 'Save As' (in MS Word, it's SHIFT-COMMAND-S). If Apple decides not to bring back 'Save As', at least give us the key combo for 'Duplicate'. It will save a lot of headache and bring back a modicum of efficiency.

 

[tkermit]

Make your template and lock it. If you try to edit the file, your will get a dialog presenting you with options to "Unlock", "Cancel", or "Duplicate".

Exactly. While it would be nice for Apple to offer us a keyboard shortcut for the Duplicate function, locking the original document achieves almost the same thing. Pressing any key and then 'Enter' gives you almost the same workflow as before, only that you don't run the risk of ruining your template document.

There are definitely still some details Apple will have to improve on though. For example, at least in Textedit, when you start typing at some cursor position in a locked document and after being prompted and agreeing to duplicate the document, the cursor position is reset to the beginning of the document, even though it is highly probable that the user would want to continue editing at that same position he was on before.

 

[Amberfool]

I like the idea of autosave - I think office apps have been doing it for a while?

But it works best when you are working on one document and making changes to that document. One thing I do a lot is have a template letter and then make minor changes and save it as another document. I'm a little concerned that with this new way of doing things, I'll have to remember to 'save as' (or duplicate, whatever), *before* doing anything to the template, otherwise it can be saved into the template document. It gives me less flexibility to choose my own workflow.

Well there is the revert to last opened option from the arrow key in the title bar, which should help you out in that case. So either duplicate and close the original, or duplicate then revert to saved.

 

[robgendreau]

Some of the complaints here stem from the fact that it takes some getting used to. But check with a new user; some of them find the new system more intuitive.

I've seen many folks who want to export get flummoxed by a File menu that doesn't include export, but only save as..., when I explicitly instructed them to export in Word format, for example. Or when they really want to save a copy but remain focused in the original document rather than find themselves in a new one.

Actually think the menus make more sense; each does what it says. The duplicate is cool because although the focus goes to it, the original is right there, rather than disappearing. So it's easy to have several amended documents right there rather than have to go back and re-open them. THAT was a big waste of time for me.

So it sorta depends on your workflow, but I think it's for the better.

Rob

 

[*LTD*]

It all depends on what the market at large thinks.

MacRumors polls are cool and all, but they're an inaccurate sampling of the market. And I'm being kind here.