Apple Claims Rights to ''Saveless'' Documents

The patent application does not reveal an ingenious approach that would eliminate the need to save documents altogether, but it assumes that technology can save documents so that the user does not have to. The software itself would save document , while the save event would be triggered by an "elapsed time interval, a pause in user input, a shift of focus away from the document, a closing of the document, a printing of the document, pasting content into the document, deleting content from the document, or formatting the document."

Besides saving the document, the software would also automatically maintain all versions of a edited document and allow a user to use content from different version of a document at the same time. According to the filing, a saveless document increases user convenience, as " the user is not bothered by alerts asking what to do with unsaved document changes when closing documents or terminating applications." In fact, the user can completely ignore save events in the way we are used to them today.

The feature set is reminiscent of a document that is edited in the cloud. However, this particular patent does not relate to cloud services, but locally installed software instead. For those who have used Mac OS X Lion 10.7, you should have a pretty good idea of how this works in practice.

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  • Because that's never been done before...
    Reply
  • Camikazi
    So they patented autosave, am I wrong or isn't that exactly what Google Docs does now and Word has been doing for a long time now?
    Reply
  • sixdegree
    Apple is delusional. The ones with the right to claim "saveless" document as a feature would be electric companies. They have offered this feature since 15 years ago.
    Reply
  • Branden
    ummm.... microstation's dgn files have had all this for at least the past 12 years (probably longer, but i hadn't touched microstation before then). every single change was saved in real-time, no need to remember to save it yourself, and every change was logged in the file also - enabling you to potentially "undo changes" all the way to when the dgn was created (even if the file was opened and closed several times by different users since its creation).

    nothing revolutionary here.
    Reply
  • mortsmi7
    They patented the autosave...
    Reply
  • Camikazi
    Brandenummm.... microstation's dgn files have had all this for at least the past 12 years (probably longer, but i hadn't touched microstation before then). every single change was saved in real-time, no need to remember to save it yourself, and every change was logged in the file also - enabling you to potentially "undo changes" all the way to when the dgn was created (even if the file was opened and closed several times by different users since its creation).nothing revolutionary here.No, nothing revolutionary but they will sue everyone who does this anyway :(
    Reply
  • sinfulpotato
    Prior art. If they get awarded this... ugh.
    Reply
  • Shotzo
    Prior art: Microsoft OneNote. =/
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    Filed June 2011? Surely if they ever wanted to exercise this patent, it would be immediately invalidated by all of the prior art? Unless they bought all associated IP from, say, Microsoft...
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky
    Seems like it is just another example of a broken patent system.
    Reply