Save No More.
It’s Apple-computer-geek time again. Brace yourself accordingly.
Apple’s been on a tear this month, with 3 “special event” announcements within weeks of each other. Their latest event was held yesterday at the PhotoPlus Expo in NYC, where they announced new hardware and software.
On the hardware side, Apple announced an upgrade to their “pro” line of computers, the most impressive of which was the introduction of the Power Mac G5 Quad - a dual, dual core system or, umm, Quad. Irrespective of my description, she’s going to be fast. Really fast. The Powerbooks got an update as well. We’re looking at better screens and mild speed increases, but nothing too major. With these updates out of the way, there will be no further updates to their pro lineup until Apple transitions them over to Intel processors in 2007.
Beyond the hardware upgrades, Apple introduced a new “pro” photography application called Aperture. The most basic description of Aperture would be iPhoto on the juice - but in reality, it’s so much more than that. There are a number of rather impressive features that any pro, or aspiring photographer (aka me) would be interested in. At $499, it’s not particularly cheap, but I think it’ll sell by the boatload. Now, I’m not going to bore you with the finer details of the application, but if you’re interested in photography, check out the website for all the non-desctrucive-RAW-handling goodness. That said, there was one feature that I did want to mention, and ironically it has nothing to do with photography. With the release of Aperture, Apple introduced a feature that I’m hoping will find it’s way into every application on the platform.
The removal of the Save Button.
That’s correct, in Aperture, you no longer save your changes. And it’s a beautiful thing. Every change you make is stored in a SQL database, and at any point, you can undo every one of those changes. Open a document that’s 6 months old, and you can revert back to it’s original state. This sort of feature won’t really matter to the general public, but in my world, it would be a blessing. In advertising, you’re forever creating documents (v1), sending them to the client, revising them (v2), sending them again, and so on (v3). It’s not uncommon to go back to an older version to leverage something you’ve previously created, and it’s also not uncommon to make changes… and somehow send off an older version by accident. Try as you will, but it happens. On the programming side, you often have to roll back to an earlier version as you’ll inevitably end up writing something new that breaks something old. And let’s not talk about the ever popular Application Crash. Over the years, I’ve easily lost 1000 of hours when an Photoshop or Flash crashed before I had saved my document. Sure, you learn to hit save every 10 minutes, but still. You shouldn’t have to.
I hate to use a description as clichéd as this, but automatic saving is something of a paradigm shift. And I welcome it with open arms.
