Is the Save Button Obsolete?

Luther Blissett asks: "I've wondered this for awhile now: why do we still have a Save button? Why isn't it always automatic? Why isn't 'Save As' called 'Name and File'? I understand that in ancient history, when Save was a hit on system resources (e.g. when saving to your 5.25 inch floppy disk), we might give control to the user. Also, the average user then was probably more technically adept (out of necessity) and knew the difference between RAM and storage. But now? Why?"

It's obvious...

[nekoniku]

Since the US is a Christian nation, having a "Save" button helps keep Jesus constantly on our minds. Now if we could only get the "Delete" button changed to "Damn to the Flames of Hell for All Eternity".

And don't even get me started on the obviously Freudian "Cut" and "Paste".

Re:It's obvious...

[SoCalChris]

Jesus & Satan were constantly getting into arguments about who is better on the computer. Finally, God gets tired of the bickering, and offers to have a contest to see who can use the computer better.

The day of the contest comes, and both Jesus and Satan begin working as quickly as they can. Hours pass, with both of them creating many spreadsheets, documents and databases. About 5 minutes before the contest ends, all of the power goes off, then comes back on after a few seconds.

Satan starts cursing at the computer, and how he just lost everything he had been working on. Jesus calmly just restarts the computer, and finishes what he was working on. Satan sees this, and starts complaining to God about how Jesus must be cheating.

God replies to Satan, "Jesus saves".

Re:since day one

[schon]

what the heck is the notion of a "FILE" menu anyway? -- What the heck is the notion of "FILE"? [...] excruciatingly dull detail about the file abstraction [...] blah, blah, blah.)). Users don't care what a file is, they don't want to know what a file is, they just want to do work. [...] end users have enough on their plate without having to incorporate geek-speak to do their work.

What the heck is the notion of a "Steering wheel" anyway? what the heck is the notion of "STEERING"? I've read the owner's manual for my car, but it's just excruciatingly dull detail about why I need to learn how to use the "pedals" and "brakes", blah, blah, blah. Drivers don't care what a steering wheel is, or how the brakes work, they have enough on their plate without having to incorporate gearhead-speak to get where they want to go.

Why do people have to learn how to use a tool? Why can't the tool just be designed so that it can guess exactly what the user wants, and just do it? It all seems so needlessly complicated.