When you’ve made changes to a document, then decide to exit an application, how often do you NOT want to save your work? In my case, I always want to save, and I never care about the “previous version”. Shouldn’t there be an option somewhere to say “always save when I exit?” But instead nearly every application I use insists on asking.
With the Newton or the Palm it’s easy, there is no concept of save – when you edit you edit, that’s it, and stuff is always saved. With a database, when you save a record, you’re done and the computer could crash and you still wouldn’t lose work. (Actually Newton and Palm are databases, so this explains the similarity – except when the batteries in the palm die and you lose EVERYTHING!)
Part of the problem is the lack of what I believe is called a “journalling file system” – that is, for your own files, every time they’re saved, either the original is saved (forever) or at least the list of “changes” is saved. See wikipedia (look at an article, then click “history” (Candiru for example)
I know there are some people who will use a computer to create a document, print it out, then don’t want to save it. Makes no sense to me – I consider my mutant ramblings all to be sacred. One of the reason I tend to keep emails forever; ‘course that’s a whole different rant.