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Comment by artursapek | Hacker News Reader

When I saw the previews for Lion I thought autosave seemed like overkill. When I'm working on anything I "autosave" by reaching over slightly and hitting CMD-S every time I make any small amount of progress. The last time I experienced significant data/progress loss was probably about 3 years ago before I developed this habit. I don't see what problem they're trying to fix.

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The problem is: Most people don't do that, especially new computer users. (Or, these days, people who are used to web apps, which don't use command-S.)

They don't learn until they've been burned, probably quite badly. If the computer doesn't HAVE to burn them in the first place, why should it?

> When I'm working on anything I "autosave" by reaching over slightly and hitting CMD-S every time I make any small amount of progress . . . I don't see what problem they're trying to fix.

Um, that?

The concept of "save" was good for a time, but having everything autosave is absolutely forward progress.

My Macbook Air just kernel panicked about 20 minutes ago (which, admittedly, shouldn't happen). I had to hold down the power button, and then turn it back on. Less than one minute after the crash my laptop's state, opened programs, tabs, files, unsaved progress, was restored.

Like you, I also have a tic of hitting command-S. However, I don't think requiring the user to develop a tic to keep their data safe is very good usability.

Well, then you haven’t met my parents. (I also hit Cmd-S frequently but sometimes I honestly forget.)

Auto save is an obvious improvement. The whole saving paradigm sucked and I’m so happy that Apple is tackling it.

"When I'm working on anything I "autosave" by reaching over slightly and hitting CMD-S every time I make any small amount of progress."

I would say this is exactly the problem they are trying to fix.

Hahah, maybe, but I'm happy doing it. I have control that way. I can't tell the computer to stop auto-saving can I? That way I can take risks when I'm coding etc and always revert what I did if it was a mistake.

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