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Comment by qjz | Hacker News Reader

Note that what they refer to as "Versions" isn't really version control. It would more accurately be referred to as snapshots, as it simply performs a backup when opening a document, then an hourly backup while it's open. This is a bit to arbitrary to be considered version control. Nonetheless, it might be useful to undisciplined users, if the snapshots are easy to access and the feature isn't well hidden. Also note that apps must be updated for Lion in order to take advantage of the feature.

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It may not be 'real' version control, but remember that huge percentage of people have no idea that such a thing even exists. If you've ever explained version control to a non-developer the second they actually grok what it is, they instantly see the value.

This seems like a great way to introduce your average user to the powers of version control.

Hopefully it works better than XCode snapshots

Basically, Versions looks like a better and simpler application-level Time Machine integration (TM can already be integrated into applications, though that's now widely known and almost never used. Apart from Finder, I only found out Mail and iPhoto using it)

The API for that is still private and undocumented, though.

It might be the case that simply saving the document creates a new version. Not exactly version control but quite good compared to nothing. Apple tends to omit details like that.

The guidelines say that apps should auto-save their documents on Lion, and you can bet Apple'sown productivity suite will. So snapshotting every 2 seconds might not work out too well.

I was obviously referring to saving manually. If that’s no longer possible they could just replace the the save command in the menu with a “Create Version” command and Command+S could create a version instead of saving.

Absolutely not true version control, but if it covers everything on the HD and does so automatically, that's pretty awesome. There was an app called TimeDrawer that I was using for a while that did exactly that, and it saved me more times than I can count - "Automatic" and "Everywhere" are pretty powerful where versioning is concerned.

> if it covers everything on the HD and does so automatically, that's pretty awesome.

It doesn't. "*Available with apps that have been developed to work with Lion."

Too bad really, at first I wondered if it was versioning built into the filesystem, like VMS used to do, but more transparent. We'll just have to wait for apps to take advantage of the functionality.

I wonder if there is any kind of copyright infringement with http://www.versionsapp.com/?

Copyright sounds unlikely, trademark perhaps. Looks like Sofa is dutch, I wonder if they took the time/effort/money to register trademarks in the US.

I don't see anything for either Apple or Sofa for "Versions" after a brief search at uspto.gov.

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