Jerky Genie Effect? A Slightly Different Question.

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Level 7

24,194 points

Jerky Genie Effect? A Slightly Different Question.

Occasionally the genie effect will suddenly become jerky.

A few months ago I searched the forums and found that one cure was to log out and then back in again.

Apparently the finder or desktop get "tired" and logging out refreshes everything.

I think my problems are caused because I generally have about 40 items sitting on my desktop, which I believe wastes a lot of computing power. So every now and again I get rid of half of them.

I also have some 50 items in the dock! Will each of these icons be as damaging as the others on the desktop?

In other words, should I keep the items in the dock down to a minimum just as I should keep down those on the desktop?

24" 2.8 GHz (Penryn) 4GB RAM iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Iomega 1TB USB 2.0 HD + LaCie Quadra 500GB HD

Posted on Mar 11, 2010 6:32 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Mar 11, 2010 12:05 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

I have way more items on the Desktop and the Dock and don't see your issue, but, then again, I've disabled all eye-candy stuff like genie effect, preferring scale effect.

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Answer 2

Ian R. Brown Author

Level 7

24,194 points

Mar 11, 2010 2:41 PM in response to baltwo

What brought this to mind was a video I was watching in Final Cut Pro this morning.

It started playing a little hesitantly (something that never happens) and thinking it might be a similar issue, I logged out and in.

Lo and behold the video played perfectly.

It was then I realised I had more things in the dock than on the desktop. So I have pruned both, just in case they are impacting on performance.

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Answer 3

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Mar 11, 2010 4:13 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

You could test the premise by adding more things to either and seeing if that affects it. As noted, I've not seen the issue and no one reported it the past year running SL during the beta-test period or since it was released.

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Answer 4

Ian R. Brown Author

Level 7

24,194 points

Mar 12, 2010 12:31 AM in response to baltwo

I heard it was generally accepted that every item added to the desktop uses a small but significant amount of computing power . . . . . something like every icon being the same as a desktop.

Anyway, I will give your suggestion a test sometime.

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Answer 5

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Mar 12, 2010 1:02 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

I heard that also, but haven't seen any degradation on my machines.

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