Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows

Notary Sojak wrote:

Similarly here, Adobe Photoshop, GC, CBV, etc have been creating previews & icons since the last century and Apple's Systems have had no problems displaying them in the Finder.

And what does that tell us ? That only CERTAIN 3rd party software ( perhaps those that do not follow the coding standards as well as the ones you just mentioned ) trigger this effect ..... others do not. If SL caused this to happen with the use of ALL such 3rd party programs, then I agree, Apple would be responsible. SL has been out for a long time .... certainly developers of said software have had ample time to adjust their code and issue patches to correct the issue. If Adobe can do it, why can't others ?

I'l give you that my GM analogy was not the best so let's try another .... if you had an old HP printer that turned out not to be compatible with SL because HP had not issued an update to make it so, whose "fault" would that be ?

Dolphbucs wrote:

And what does that tell us ? That only CERTAIN 3rd party software ( perhaps those that do not follow the coding standards as well as the ones you just mentioned ) trigger this effect ..... others do not. If SL caused this to happen with the use of ALL such 3rd party programs, then I agree, Apple would be responsible. SL has been out for a long time .... certainly developers of said software have had ample time to adjust their code and issue patches to correct the issue. If Adobe can do it, why can't others ?

I encounter this problem on my newly set up iMac27" with SL only, when I do have lots of "icon activity" (e.g. creating new icons, no matter if doing so with "Graphics Converter" or "Folder Icon Maker" or "Icon Builder" or "Iconographer", all of them latest versions) and filing them into icon collection utilities (like "Candy Bar" or "Icon Box" etc.). If doing so, you can almost trigger the stopwatch for the problem to happen and making the next annoying system reboot necessary. Under "normal" circumstances this problem happens rather rarely, only when watching (and scrolling hastily through) lots and lots of folder contents, all of them with individual icons.

Based on these experiences, MY opinion is therefore, that this problem is inherent to Apple's latest system builds (e.g. a flaw in calculating a rasonable size for the icon system cache, as assumed by many other previous posters) and has nothing to do with "3.rd party software" at all.

Apple should really reconsider in attenting to this problem for the sake of people who have already bought something from them, instead of putting more and more effort in making up their minds how to sell other things (e.g. iPods, iPhones, iPads) to other people.

SeBiG wrote

I encounter this problem on my newly set up iMac27" with SL only, when I do have lots of "icon activity" (e.g. creating new icons, no matter if doing so with "Graphics Converter" or "Folder Icon Maker" or "Icon Builder" or "Iconographer", all of them latest versions) and filing them into icon collection utilities (like "Candy Bar" or "Icon Box" etc.). If doing so, you can almost trigger the stopwatch for the problem to happen and making the next annoying system reboot necessary. Under "normal" circumstances this problem happens rather rarely, only when watching (and scrolling hastily through) lots and lots of folder contents, all of them with individual icons.

Graphics Converter, Folder Icon Maker, Icon Builder, and Oconographer are ALL 3rd party apps. If you are using them, and the blurring is being triggered, then how do you NOT come to the conclusion that the 3rd party software is at fault.

In Scientific Theory, every Hypothesis needs to be tested against a control ( in this case the control would be a clean system NOT running any such 3rd party software ). In my tests, the control systems do not exhibit the behavior. Therefore it is logical to conclude that such 3rd party software somehow triggers the behavior ... most likely by not conforming to the latest standards of the current OS ( or in this case SL ). Just because a certain 3rd party app is the "Latest version" does not guarantee that it is 100% compliant with the OS standard ... and it is the responsibility of the developer to make sure the software is compliant and runs well. If any one of these 3rd party programs did not launch in SL, would THAT be Apple's fault ? No ... it would simply mean that the program is not fully compatible with the OS. There are MANY programs that never adapt to newer OS versions and fall by the wasteside ... and Apple is no more responsible for that than Microsoft is responsible for legacy hardware that fails to still run on the latest version of Windows due to lack of new drivers.

Also, for the record, I would like to recant something I said in my last post, specifically "If SL caused this to happen with the use of ALL such 3rd party programs, then I agree, Apple would be responsible." Now that I think about it, as stated above, even in that case Apple would NOT be responsible.

It's very easy to blame the OS for everything ... it's the biggest target .... but it is the developers of such software as Graphics Converter, Folder Icon Maker, Icon Builder, and Oconographer that need to update their work to function properly here.

Dolphbucs wrote:

Graphics Converter, Folder Icon Maker, Icon Builder, and Oconographer are ALL 3rd party apps. If you are using them, and the blurring is being triggered, then how do you NOT come to the conclusion that the 3rd party software is at fault.

I get your point - you're suspecting, that all in this wide range of 3rd party software products, concerning the same issue, trigger the same error... and that none of their programmers considers the allowed Apple's system standards, is that right?

Dolphbucs wrote:

In Scientific Theory, every Hypothesis needs to be tested against a control ( in this case the control would be a clean system NOT running any such 3rd party software ).

You're perfectly right - we all should run nothing else but the clean system, provided by Apple, when we buy a computer from them. Actually, what else does a serious person need but iTunes, iMovie, GarageSale etc.?

Life can be so easy...

In Scientific Theory, every Hypothesis needs to be tested against a control ( in this case the control would be a clean system NOT running any such 3rd party software ). In my tests, the control systems do not exhibit the behavior. Therefore it is logical to conclude that such 3rd party software somehow triggers the behavior

I have had my iMac 27" for all of a week now, clean system, nothing installed except Photoshop CS5 and Microsoft Word. Pixelation of thumbnails and icons (including on the dock) started about 3 days ago. The .jpegs and NEF files affected in the finder have not been opened or viewed through Photoshop at all, but started pixelating after being viewed by die photo viewer only.

Non of the 3rd party software you mentioned has been installed... No other apps, even SL has been downloaded. Any ideas??

Don't you bother asking Dolphbucs - according to him, it must be all Adobe's / Micro$oft's fault. Apple can't have provided anything else but a flawless system.

To exclude "basics" I'd try the following: Download the open source helper utility "Applejack" here ---> http://applejack.sourceforge.net/ , install it and reboot into single user mode (boot your iMac whilest pressing APPLE + ALT + S - Important: You'll need an USB attached keyboard to do this; an Apple Pro Wireless won't do, beause the bluetooth drivers aren't yet loaded at this stage of the booting process!).

If you have never done this before: Don't be scared, you'll end up in an environment, looking like some old MS-DOS (black screen, white type and a prompt to enter text commands 😢).

What you have to do new, should display in plain language on your screen: Type "applejack" and next you'll have a basic menu with several choices to scan your system for file errors, permissions, corrupt preference files etc. You should run the autopilot (type an "a") to check and repair everything that might trouble your system.

This might take a little while (on my iMac 27" with 2GB harddisk which is used up to 85% it takes about 12-15 minutes); don't you get nervous, when lots of text rushes over your screen - when it is finished, you will get a prompt, asking if the system should be rebooted.

(This tool and it's use provide btw. *very* helpful when you have grave system errors that e.g. prevent your Mac from booting normally - colloquial: when you've f§$ked up your Mac beyond recognition, Applejack is some kind of a basic safety net.)

After you've rebooted into MacOS-X, the problem should appear only, when you really get into excessive icon activity, as mentioned by me 4 postings up. In this case nothing else helps but a compelete reboot, but until Apple corrects this flaw of their operating system (and, as far as I am concerned, I do not expect they'll give a **** about SnowLeopard any longer), I'm afraid, there's nothing better you can do about it.

See this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3641307?answerId=17250695022#17250695022

Short summary: A hidden file somewhere down in your private/var folder called "com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache" (wadd'ya say? a cache file... 😁) should be deleted.

Some feedback at the bottom the page suggests, that the problem returns after a few weeks or so - but that's way better than 2-3 times a day, of course...

Since the blogger described very elaborate: "I noticed that in my case, the thumbnails.data file was almost 370Mb in size before I deleted it. The new thumbnails.data file that OS X has created for me is under 35Mb and that’s after 5 hours since a reboot and with me exploring every folder I can think of to check on my custom icons." that's all, what Apple apologists like Dolphbucs need to know about that "this surely is no problem of the 'big target' MacOS, instead at a 100% security due to incompliently programmed 3rd party software", I guess........

Conclusion: Apple should finally do something about this.

Expectation: Apple won't do something about this (at least not for SL users; instead they'll insist on updating to Lion, thus losing all compatibility to Rosetta compatible apps... ;-P).

I certainly agree it's not a "fix" for the typical user. That one requires digging down into hidden system folders. But it's just a suggestion. I've never seen this myself, so can't offer anything based on personal experience.

If the subfolder's name in private/vas wasn't encoded individually, a script might do the trick easily.

Anyway, since problems like these best are cared "from the root upwards" the best solution might be, if Apple would finally get involved and care about it (as I might have mentioned 1 or 2 times before... 😉).

That's precisely what my utility a few pages back does. :) Except, instead of looking in a folder with a randomly encoded name, it looks in the folder above it (I can't quite remember what the path was, it's been quite a while), then recursively searches through all the directories looking for any com.apple.QuickLook.*cache files, then removes them. It then restarts Finder to rebuild the cache. (plus it's wrapped in a nice shell using Automator!)

--KAN

Apologies for the double post, I couldn't find the "Edit" button using MobileSafari.

Anyway, I forgot to reference the post in my last post, so here's a link directly to the download. http://bit.ly/nsUFw7

Good luck!

KANahas wrote:

That's precisely what my utility a few pages back does. 🙂

And also precisely, me and other posters noted, that your utility doesn't work flawlessly (even the non-growl version) - please take a look @ my posting here ---> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2132399?answerId=16704822022#16704822022 for detailed error reportings - maybe, this might help you to fix the problem.

SeBiG wrote:

Don't you bother asking Dolphbucs - according to him, it must be all Adobe's / Micro$oft's fault. Apple can't have provided anything else but a flawless system.

*** Sigh *** I'll try this one last time. SeBig, would you care to explain if it IS Apple's fault, why a pristine system ( without even CS5 or MS Word installed ) does NOT have this issue ? This is the key. If it were indeed the fault of the OS, then a fresh install on a wiped system would exhibit the behaviour sooner or later. This is the only logical conclusion.

I have been posting here to try and save people time "barking up the wrong tree" ... pointing them in the correct direction ... but if people wish to waste their time pursuing erroneous theories that's their business I guess.

I won't bother anyone again in this thread I assure you. I'll just spend my time working with MY system which no longer has this issue because I followed the logical path ( I've eliminated all 3rd party software I was using that caused the issue and replaced it with alternatives that don't )

Dolphbucs wrote:

I won't bother anyone again in this thread I assure you. I'll just spend my time working with MY system which no longer has this issue because I followed the logical path ( I've eliminated all 3rd party software I was using that caused the issue and replaced it with alternatives that don't )

Thank you very much for not bothering us any longer - enjoy the stay in your pristine iVory tower, whilest the rest of us grunts try to cope with our dirty daily work, for which we need AdobeCS, MicroSoft Office and maybe even some other (minor) 3rd Party Apps.

The contributions of oh-so-many posters straightened out, that this problem arises under many possible circumstances, under which persists the only one conclusion: If Apple would simply take the effort to modify their buggy OS in a reasonable way instead of letting their apologists (like you) insist, that all the rest of the world must dance to the i-Tune of their flute, their customers would be way better off then they are now.

Point.