Any way to turn OFF that stupid saving of multiple copies of documents?!

Question

I would love to know who thought it was a good idea to add this WITHOUT a way to turn it off!! So when you're in a text document (or any other kind of file that you can make changes in) you can go into the Time Machine icon on the status bar, select "Enter Time Machine" and there will be multiple versions of your document from various states auto saved so that you can go back to a previous version of your document for whatever reason. This can be a great thing, EXCEPT when you have no choice in that matter!
I DO NOT NEED a hundred copies of every single document I have on my computer because I happened to do a lot of tweeking to minor lines of text or make numerous very minor changes. And before anyone asks (because I am SO sick of answering this question twenty times a day) I DO NOT have a time machine hard drive OR Time Capsule connected to my computer in any way at all, (under normal usage. I do have a Time Machine hard drive I manually connect every few days to back up my computer, I just don't ALWAYS have it connected because it's a laptop) these multiple copies are being saved into my computer and taking up valuable hard drive space and there's no way to shut off this feature. I just called into Apple and the only thing they said was "Well it doesn't take up very much hard drive space" completely failing to see the point that I don't want it to take up ANY space because, again, I DON'T NEED A HUNDRED COPIES OF EVERY DOCUMENT IN MY COMPUTER!!!
Does anyone have any idea how to shut off this "feature" because it is utterly stupid. in System Settings -> General I checked "Ask to keep changes when closing documents" and I selected "None" in the "Show Recent Items for Documents, Apps and Servers" but it still saves multiple copies of my documents. Can anyone  help me figure out how to shut this off and delete the multiple copies? Not all of us are hysterical computer users opening up random documents and slapping the keyboard with our open palms requiring the ability to go back to multiple pages of the same document, some of us actually KNOW how to open up something, make a change and save it. We don't need the computer to constantly save multiple copies of everything we do so there needs to be SOME way to shut this off. What about my final cut, Aperture, Motion and any other program that make files? Am I going to have a thousand copies of every single video I ever edit from this point on? (cause anyone who does video editing knows there will be MANY tweeks and changes to those) What about Pages, Numbers or Keynote? How much room on my hard drive is going to be wasted storing hundreds of copies of hundreds of documents every time I wanted to change a graph colour slightly, or add tax into a spreadsheet, or change a decimal point in a presentation? Adding this without a way to shut it off was the most ridiculous thing I've seen! Thanks to anyone that can help.

Answer 1

Actually, there are two mechanisms by which Mountain Lion does this, both of which are on by default (for laptops; only one of which is on by default for desktops).
You mention going into the Time Machine icon in the menubar? Good news - that one's easy to turn off.
To do so, you need to open Terminal.app (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and copy/paste this line into the Terminal window:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
press 'return' on your keyboard and enter your Admin password. Note that the password does not echo to the screen, so type carefully.
The second mechanism is what Apple call 'Versions'. The bad news is you can't turn Versions off; the good news is it's only enabled on certain Apple apps like Preview, TextEdit, XCode, Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc. The only way to avoid Versions, therefore, is to use alternatives such as Skim (for Preview), Tincta (for TextEdit) and LibreOffice for Pages, Numbers, Keynote (alas, I don't know of an alternative for XCode).