The Missing Save Button

At work, our corporate network is mainly all Microsoft. Sure there are roles filled by some linux machines and for our ISP services, its almost all unix/linux. But for email, calendaring, document sharing, its Micro$oft all the way.

I’m the black sheep of the office running OSX on a mini. I’m “testing” software, honest =)

Due to the nature of the corporate network, I find it is just easier to run the Microsoft office suite which means working with Entourage on a daily basis. Its not the greatest thing in the world, but it gets me by.

One of the things that I have noticed is when I am creating a todo item or calendar event, ‘save’ is not on the toolbar as an icon.

In theory, I should assume that the application is auto-saving my item and I won’t be prompted.

Wrong!

Yes, you can select the “Always save changes without asking” checkbox and get the following:

But why should I have to jump through that unnecessary loop. Unless I am hitting delete, it should save my meeting right away. Or, give me a save button on the tool bar so I can click that, get the basic meeting there and add more later rather than possibly having the application/computer crash in the middle of my new todo item losing everything.

Normally, this isn’t a big deal. But Apple has a long history of saving without having to hit save. Just check out the System Preferences as a great example of this. Here is a shot of the Energy Saver.

Notice something missing here? I don’t see “Save” or “Apply” anywhere. But when I close the window or hit the back arrow, I also don’t get some ugly ass prompt. It has already saved my new setting automatically. Nice!

Maybe I’m being overly picky on this one, but it seems that Microsoft is missing some of the user experience that would take their application to the next level.