Have you tried disabling [  ] Save in Background in the Preferences - File Handling section?  I don't think that puts up the progress bar, but you can't do anything until the save is done.

To me the new background save seems worth getting used to, but to each his own.

-Noel

Microscopic?  Are you seeing the same behavior I am from changing the UI size settings?  What's your monitor ppi?

Small:

Large:

Since both of the above seem pretty readable, especially the Large size, it's possible people are having trouble understanding your complaint...

Is it just that you're accidentally forging ahead and trying to do things to the file before the save is finished because you're inherently expecting the prior behavior (e.g., you're watching for the big progress dialog to disappear)?  That can be a powerful thing, and it can be difficult to unlearn things you've come to expect over a long period of use.  I can't see how they could have maintained the standard progress bar, though, and at the same time allowed you to continue editing while a save was in progress.

-Noel

You're right to be cautious, but so far I can't say I've had even one little glitch with saving big files from Photoshop CS6.  Occasionally I'll save a big master file, then go to save a JPEG right after and have it inform me the prior save isn't finished yet, but the wait is never very long.  I haven't given continuing to work during the completion of a save a second thought, frankly, and so far (knock on wood) I haven't had that bite me.  Frankly it's very nice not to have to interrupt my train of thought to wait, however few seconds that wait might be. 

I have had some plug-in crashes during astroimage processing (Astra Image Deconvolution is pretty bad) and the times that's happened Photoshop dutifully opened my file back up, so I can confirm the Auto-Save feature is working quite well also.  A hearty THANK YOU to the fine Adobe folks who implemented that.

I don't know about the latest OSX releases, but a well set up modern Windows 7 system doesn't have any trouble powering through a lot of work without any unexpected faults - certainly not like the systems of 5 or 10 years ago that would fall over when an unusual load was applied.  I collaborate quite a bit with someone who has a Mac Pro (my chief engineer at my company), and his OSX setup is utterly stable as well.  My PC workstation gets a reboot pretty much only when Windows Updates require it, and I'm pretty sure it's the same with Bill's Mac.  Of course, we're both career computer engineers, so our systems are likely among the best set up and managed you could find.  I should see if I can get him to write a book on expert OSX setup like the ones I've done for Windows...

And so far, based on my evaluation of Windows 8, it's already quite solid in the Release Preview version - better than any prior Windows version before release - so it seems that we have good things to look forward to.

-Noel

If background save is disabled (OS X 10.6.8), the progress indicator appears after a few seconds. "Small" files save too quickly for the indicator to appear.