"With the new model, if you want to edit a copy of a file instead of the original file, you need to Duplicate first. "
And this is why I think it's broken. There are times when I don't know ahead of time if I want to keep the edits in the document I've worked on, or 'fork' it and give it a completely separate name. Making me decide up front is forcing me to do more of the work instead of the computer, which is not how it should be.
I will probably bite the bullet and upgrade to ML this year - still on Snow Leopard right now, because I really don't like these sorts of mental model changes.
Apple's answer to this is that you if you made changes you don't want to keep, you should revert them. In Lion you had to use Versions for this, but Mountain Lion can revert to the last opened version.
That's an answer to the wrong question. I want to keep the changes I'm working on, under a new name, and keep the original untouched. Or maybe I made 5 edits to the original but the 6th edit I want in a new file (happens all the time). It just seems unnecessarily complicated. Having documents automatically save is great but it should require taking away so many other features.
You think the question is wrong because you aren't in the new model. Again- everything is continuously saved. There are no "in-flight" changes.
What you want to do is keep your the changes you made today and save a copy of an old version from earlier today. The way you do that is to revert the file to the beginning of the day, duplicate this "original" version, then revert back to the version with all your changes from today.
It's more steps, but hey, you retroactively decided a past version was important enough to save a copy of.
The problem with both the new model and the old model is they combine two concepts: storing your work so it isn't lost by act of God or stupidity and permanently committing those changes to a specific named file and version.
I want my work continually saved so that I never lose anything but that doesn't necessary mean I want it committed every minute. What I really want to do is commit my current work to a new name leaving the original document unchanged. Duplicating then reverting achieves the same result but feels much more like I'm doing something to please the machine instead of the machine fitting to what is a common work style.
Well put. Again, we're being forced to do the work for the machine. Having multiple automatic commits happening in another area that is something we can pull back in between actual manual 'commits' ('saves') would have been a much better alternative.
Once I 'save' to a different file name, from what I understand, automatic saves are still happening to the original file and filename - why? That makes no sense however you slice it.
And this is why I think it's broken. There are times when I don't know ahead of time if I want to keep the edits in the document I've worked on, or 'fork' it and give it a completely separate name. Making me decide up front is forcing me to do more of the work instead of the computer, which is not how it should be.
I will probably bite the bullet and upgrade to ML this year - still on Snow Leopard right now, because I really don't like these sorts of mental model changes.