Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Auto Save and Versions

In the beginning, Jobs created the Save command—because computers were slow. Every time you saved, your work was interrupted for a few seconds as the very slow program on your very slow computer saved your work onto a very slow floppy disk.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why most programs still don’t autosave: because the interruptions were just too annoying.

Apple figured it was time the world revisit that scenario. Computers now have plenty of horsepower. They could be saving your work continuously , and you’d never even know it. Why shouldn’t all programs save your work as you go, automatically and invisibly?

And so, in OS X, Auto Save is here. Unfortunately, it’s available in only a few programs, Apple’s showcase programs: Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Preview, and TextEdit.

In these apps, your document is saved in the background. No progress bar, no interruption. If you quit or close the document without remembering to save, no problem: Your work will be there when you open the document again later.

Note

“But wait a minute,” cry the masses—“I like being able to close a document without saving changes! Sometimes all I wanted to do was fool around, play ‘what-if’ games—and then close it without saving changes!”

Just for you, Apple offers a pair of sneaky little checkboxes in System Preferences→General. First, “Ask to keep changes when closing documents.” If that’s turned on, then when you close a document with unsaved changes, the Mac asks if you want to keep the ...