Quitting with the close box on Mac

[Igor de Oliveira Couto]

On 28 May 2014, at 12:39 pm, Peter M. Brigham <pmbrig at gmail.com> wrote:

> Another reason for me to delay running Mavericks as long as I possibly can. Is this true for apps like Word and TextEdit, too??? 

I have been using Mavericks exclusively in all my Macs since it came out, and have now upgraded several server machines to use it as well. My experience is that it is a highly likeable and reliable system, with a workflow that is easy to learn and adopt for new users - more so than previous ones.

The current iWork apps - Pages, Numbers and Keynote - do not quit when you close all documents. They stay open, like before. This does not mean that there haven’t been some radical changes in the latest versions of OS X - indeed, there have been many.

For instance: because of pervasive auto-saving - all Apple apps now auto-save your work in incremental steps as you go, whether it’s work that is being stored in your local HD or in iCloud - the usual Save/Save as.., etc. File menu items have been reworked, and follow a different workflow philosophy. You are no longer expected to open a document  and ‘Save As…’ before you start making changes, in fear of overwriting the old file.

If you accidentally save changes to a document that you shouldn’t have, you can "Revert to" previous versions, so there is no need to always work on a ‘safe copy’. If you want to work like before, and make a copy of the document before making any alterations, you can use the “Duplicate” command first, and then save that duplicate as you wish. If you simply want to change the name of the document, you can use the ‘Rename” command. "Save as”, therefore, in now unnecessary.

For those of us who have been following the ‘old way’ of working with documents, this new way of working, and these new commands, seem like an unnecessary annoyance. But I have to admit, that after watching new users play with these features, they ARE easier to learn - all the confusion about when to use ‘Save/Save as…’ is gone, and they find using Duplicate and Revert quite intuitive, requiring a lot less explanation.

AFAIK, Apple does not make changes to long-standing GUI conventions very lightly. They are, however, constantly conducting research on usability, and sometimes this research shows that in order to keep improving, they have to break their own convention, and rewrite the rules.

I hope this information helps.

Kindest regards to all,


--
Igor Couto
Sydney, Australia