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movabi · Dec 18, 2003, 07:44 PM

anther & Finder

Does anyone else think the finder blows?
If not, I need help.

Here is my scenario:
Today I had a folder on my desktop of various graphics files. There are 4,182 items and the folder is 300 mb. I accidently let go of the mouse while trying to drag the files into the trash. It started moving all 4000 some files to the desktop. I tried to stop it from happening by trying to click stop, but the finder became unresponsive. Its like it had to finish moving every single file before I could have any control of the finder. The dock became very unresponsive... bobing up and down very choppy. I can't access the apple menu and switching between apps is very slow. I waited for minutes. It finshed and I did an undo copy from the menu. That was at 2:52. It is now 4:26 and i still have a dialogue box on my desktop saying "Preparing to Undo move to pix2". Is this the way the finder is? Does anyone esle have crap like this happen? Is there a maximum file size for folders?

I mean, I have it in my head that this should be a fairly instantaneous event. Its not like i'm even copying them... i'm just moving them. I have 67gb free on the startup drive... I HAVE 1.5 gig of ram... I have 2 one gig processors. I feel like i'm on a mac SE30 running system 7.

I'm running OS 10.3.2. Does anyone have any answers for me? I'm beginning to have serious doubts about apple... unless this problem is happening to me only. Once again, its not like i'm calculating pi or trying to render some animation. Its just moving files. And it does this doggy behavior all the time for me.

If you have some advice let me know

PS also I've discovered that in list view in the finder, you can no longer crosshair marquee files to select and shift select like in jaguar and also OS9...

CharlesS · Dec 18, 2003, 08:49 PM

Well, I can't really say about the first part, but:

Originally posted by movabi:
PS also I've discovered that in list view in the finder, you can no longer crosshair marquee files to select and shift select like in jaguar and also OS9...

I most certainly can drag-select and shift-select in list view. Maybe your Finder is messed up and in need of a reinstall?

arekkusu · Dec 18, 2003, 09:27 PM

Yes, Finder blows. It blows worse in 10.3 than in 10.2, too.

movabi · Dec 19, 2003, 11:26 AM

about the dragging... however, its now command drag... and there is no marquee now

dru · Dec 19, 2003, 12:32 PM

It blows like a Category 5 hurricane.

It's not just when trying to move items. There's also how it'll crash if you're using show item preview with a lot of graphic files.

I hate the new list view selection mentioned above.

Oh, and beware trying to Secure Empty Trash when there's one large item... seems there's no progress dialog.

m a d r a · Dec 20, 2003, 07:22 PM

yes, the finder is crap. but i think your experience shows up one of my own particular bugbears with OSX.

it's long been one of my major gripes that, under X, there disnae seem to be any happy medium between letting an app do it's thing [no matter how long it's gonna take] and force quitting it. in the olden days apple+"." would fairly often make an app stop what it was doing, if it was in the middle of some process that was taking too long. but that particular remedy seems to have gone by the wayside under X. it seems to me that developers these days, safe in the knowledge their app can always be force quit with 'apple+alt+esc' as a last resort, are neglecting to allow for the fact that the user might want to interrupt the apps current task without 'bringing the whole house down'.

MushroomPrince · Dec 20, 2003, 07:51 PM

I never used finder back in the days before os x but in your case I would have just relaunched the finder.

Did you try that ?

aaanorton · Dec 20, 2003, 08:05 PM

Command + Delete.
I have no problems with drag, command or shift selecting in List view. I use them all the time.

RooneyX · Dec 20, 2003, 08:34 PM

Finder does its job well enough. I just hate the spinning wheel when its busy.

TheTraveller · Dec 21, 2003, 02:47 PM

Yeah, I don't have any problems with the 10.3 Finder. It seems pretty responsive to me.

besson3c · Dec 21, 2003, 03:57 PM

when you have to move a ton of files, I would suggest using the Terminal. It would be *much* faster, and easy to pick just the file extensions you need (e.g. mv *.jpg ~/Desktop)

movabi · Dec 22, 2003, 12:01 AM

I've been having a very annoying problem pop up related to my other problems where the forcequit window freezes making it utterly impossible to relaunch the finder or quit an app making in necessary to hard crash my machine... I still think this is a bug problem with the finder. Call apple tech yesterday, and as i figured, absolutely no help and a lot of 'tude.

Big Mac · Dec 22, 2003, 04:48 AM

The large file quantity dragging issue isn't specific to Panther; it has always been a shortcoming of OS X's Finder. That isn't to say that the classic finder would do a better job, though. There was a huge thread on this subject a few months back.

addiecool · Dec 22, 2003, 11:05 AM

Try copying a large file over Airport and you will see how the finder sucks. It takes control of the entire computer for 10-15 mins. Everytime I copy a file >200MB this happens. This just plain sucks. I would have loved to have a better and stable finder then having all this eye candy and extra features some of which are not much useful.

When we are having problems with finder since 10.0 and it forms the main part of the OS cant Apple put developer resources to improve the finder rather than developing new eye candy. I love the new eye candy, but would rahter have prefered a better finder.

lenox · Dec 22, 2003, 12:20 PM

The Finder is definitely the curmudgeon app of os x. I mean, it's carbon, and just about every other problem with the Finder is a symptom of that statement.