Life is grand

Leopard Dock crash

Like this chap the Dock on Mac OS X (Leopard) kept crashing for me this morning. I also could not switch between running applications using the keyboard anymore (that seems to be a function of the Dock app.)

The problem turned out to be a JPG a co-worker had sent. Preview crashed on opening this image file and Finder crashed when generating a thumbnail of the image file. The file was in the new Downloads folder and the Dock was trying to display a thumbnail of it. This crashed the Dock.

This is poor quality from Apple. That a thumbnail feature can crash a fundamental part of the operating system UI is not good. At the least the Dock should ignore the error and not display a thumbnail.

Overall Leopard has been buggy and unstable for me over the past month or so. If Time Machine, the Terminal updates, QuickView and Cover Flow were not so damned useful I’d revert to Tiger.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 6 Comments

neil c 7 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

I'd have to agree. I placed MkConsole (http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/software/MkCons...) on my desktop to keep an eye on logs as they happen. Leopard seems to spew errors compared to Tiger.
You'd be amazing by the amount of invalid image errors and calls to depreciated libraries.
External hard-disks also seem to generate huge amounts of warnings on Leopard. Its like a beta rushed to a deadline.

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

ortho 7 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Ha! I'm so glad i found this when i Googled "leopard dock crash". I had the exact same problem and trashing it from the the downloads folder restored the Dock immediately. Great.

I think i know where the problem may start. Leopard usually renders JPGs fine right? But when i edit one of my lil Canon pix in Lightroom, like changing color and metadata and then Save it in LR, the resulting JPG becomes a Leopard-crasher. If you even point to it in my Finder it crashes it, much less place it in the Downloads folder (which probably shows up in your's and my dock).

Craappy, but thanks!

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

DOCKMASTER 7 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

THANK YOU SAVED MY DAY!

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

http://WWW.APPLE.COM

jaldrich 6 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Thanks for this..... this couldn't have been a more mind boggling problem... I was beginning to flirt with the idea of reinstalling leopard because i couldn't find a solution to this. After recreating my preferences and running the disk utility I thought all was lost. This is really lame of apple to have that big of a loop hole and no reference of a fix on their site. You saved another persons day.

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

http://multiformcreative.com

ash 5 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

cleared out the Downloads folder after reading this and all is well ...

thanx ! ^_^

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

Kate 5 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Thank u so much! I couldn't work out why my dock just disappeared ...a dodgy jpg file, who'd have thought it - so tvm for your posting saved me a lot of time, jpg deleted and dock has returned, nice one

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

Leopard Dock crash

Add New Comment

Viewing 6 Comments

Add New Comment

Trackbacks