From the boneheaded design file: Browsing Versions in Lion

I hate to cherry pick native apps from OS versions, but the easiest way I can find to do routine text editing in Lion is to ditch TextEdit 1.7 and use TextEdit 1.6 from Snow Leopard. Doing this kind of thing is always fraught because you need to remember things you would rather not manage and of course, stuff is subject to breakage.

Maybe it's because I'm working with an Early 2008 MacBook Pro but when I go into Versions it doesn't work as smoothly as I'd like. Works okay when I only have a few applications open but if I'm running QuickTime, iTunes, Safari and a few other programs it stutters and even locks up.

As for this feature being hidden, you're spot on. It would be nice if they at least included it in the menu bar but maybe this suggests that at some point we'll lose the menu bar and everything will be available through the application's window. You know how Apple likes to break conventional interfaces.

Amen! These are stupid UI decisions. I hope Apple will reconsider them in future software versions.

Isn't there something in Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines which says any action available by means of a menu attached to a window should also be available from the regular menu bar?

That said, since OS X hit the scene, Apple have always played fast-and-loose with their own guidelines.

Aside from the starfield and location of buttons (which I must admit do not bother me that much), I do struggle with the workflow change Versions introduced.
Before Lion, any changes to a doc were not automatically saved, which was fine if I decided in the end I didn't want to keep my changes. And if I did want to keep my changes I could decide at the end whether to save or replace the old document.
Versions makes this whole workflow different, but not necessarily easier.
Also, I haven't quite figured out how to keep track and save and store the various versions of my document that I send to others for review during my editing process.
Hopefully I'll get used to the new routine, but for now, it is a struggle.

Personally, I'm not expecting to use the Versions feature until it is supported by Office:mac 2011. However, when it does so then I think I'll likely have the same issues as described in the article, although that's mostly because I've never liked the silly Time Machine star field. That said, I can see some degree of value in hiding this feature because it has the potential to be quite confusing to users who have never encountered version control systems before.

Never been one for change for the sake of change, which seems to happen a lot in the software business...

Between Intuit abandoning the Mac because of Lion, and some of the not-so-smart changes I've been reading about here, I think I will wait quite a while before trying out Lion

lets call it right .. Apple is trying to combine everything into iOS ... but MacBooks run off a keyboard and iOS is touchscreen ... the attempt to rectify this with gestures is Microsoft like ... Apple the king of usability laid a huge egg with Lion ... Mission Control, Versions and Resume are the least efficient process designs Apple ever invented ... Lion is poor and Apple should be ashamed ... only MobileMe surpasses it in bad performance ... I love Apple and expect much, much more ... bring back spaces for crying out loud and cut out the gestures which fits Vista better than Lion

The time machine interface is not really a problem for me or others I have shown this functionality to. I 100% agree that the versions should be found in the help and accessible from a menu.

I would say one of the recurring complaints (in these comments and elsewhere) is about losing "Save as . . ." - which has really been replaced as "Duplicate."

I think it is actually better once I can train myself to use it. When most of us used "Save As. . ." it was to duplicate a file for modifying or for renaming. In the case of renaming, you have only 1 extra step (many are claiming multiple steps) - You duplicate (instead of Save As . . .) and then hit "Save . . ." The only thing that is really missing is that there is no keystroke for Duplicate.

I know people that used "Save As . . ." instead of "Save" and would end up either with multiple copies of the same file they confused later or having the dialog box popup to tell them they were replacing an existing file with the same name.

"While some knew of the feature, and were anxious to use it, they couldn't find it."

DId you mean "eager" or "anxious". I know I sound pedantic, but they do give a very different overall tone to the article: the former shows that people want to use this feature, and then contrasts that against the poor UI design, and the second indicates people are afraid to use this feature, and the poor UI is the icing on the cake that will cement its death as a used feature.