File Save No More

The new world of mobile/cloud is breaking many conventions of computer applications.

Take, for example, the long-established command to save a file. In Windows, this has been the menu option File / Save, or the keyboard shortcut CTRL-S.

Android apps do not have this sequence. In fact, they have no sequence to save data. Instead, they save your data as you enter it, or when you dismiss a dialog.

Not only Android apps (and I suspect iOS apps), but Google web apps exhibit this behavior too. Use Google Drive to create a document or a spreadsheet.

Breaking the "save file" concept allows for big changes. It lets us get rid of an operation. It lets us get rid of menus.

It also lets us get rid of the concept of a file. We don't need files in the cloud; we need data. This data can be stored in files (transparently to us), or in a database (also transparently to us), or in a NoSQL database (also transparently to us).

We don't care where the data is stored, or which container (filesystem or database) is used.

We do care about getting the data back.

I suspect that we will soon care about previous versions of our data.

Windows has add-ins for retrieving older versions of data. I have used a few, and they tend to be "hacks": things bolted on to Windows and clumsy to use. They don't save every version; instead, they keep snapshots at scheduled times.

Look for real version management in the cloud. Google, with its gigabytes of storage for each e-mail user, will be able to keep older versions of files. (Perhaps they are already doing it.)

The "File / Save" command will be replaced with the "File Versions" list, letting us retrieve an old version of the file. The list will show each and every revision of the file, not just the versions captured at scheduled times.


Once a major player offers this feature, other players will have to follow.