Update 02/22/07: Loweded Wookie was kind enough to reply to this post and provide me with a explanation as to why this issue exists. Apparently, the Finder writes out a file named .DS_Store in each directory that it touches. According to this site, the .DS_Store file serves the following purpose:
The .DS_Store files are created by the Finder during its normal course of operation but they are invisible by default. The Finder will automatically put a .DS_Store file into every folder you have opened. These files are used to save the positions of icons, the size of the respective Finder window, the window’s background, and many more view options. While professional users consider the .DS_Store files to be a design flaw of the Mac OS X Finder, a mechanism like this is necessary when opening Finder windows for exchangeable disk media to give former users of the classic Mac OS the same user experience they had in previous operating system versions. If you don’t like to see the .DS_Store files, replace the Finder by a better file management application
This explains why I am unable to open a file if other files are being copied into the same directory. I really appreciate the fact that Loweded took some time out of his day to research this issue with me. It truly was driving me nuts. I don’t necessarily agree with how OS X does this however, at least now I understand why I received the error mentioned below.
Just today I noticed that OS X doesn’t seem let me open a file that I just copied if there are more files that still need to be copied. For example, I tried to copy ~ 280 Megs worth of videos off of my computer upstairs.
When I tried to open one of the files which was already copied I received the following error:
Am I doing something wrong or has Apple just not figured this one out?
Update 2/19/07: Somebody over at digg didn’t believe me that this was a problem so I decided to try it out again when I got home from work. As you can see from these screenshots it is a problem. When I tried and open an image which already had a thumbnail generated for it, OS X told me it couldn’t access the file. This is driving me nuts. Am I doing something wrong?
For this test I copied six JPEGs:
I then tried to open one of the JPEGs which already had a thumbnail generated for it:
February 20th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Heya all,
l’ve just bought a macbook and have no problems with it, l’ve heard the 1st genereation Macbooks had heaps of faults but they have fixed those probs.
DOes anyone know of a website that l can download software so l can download movies and music (for free) kinda lika a sharing file with others thingy, l know they have heaps for PC’s but l can’t anything for macs.
Cheers!
Anne
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
One thing that needs to be asked is this:
Does the icon show the application logo. e.g. an MP4 movie displaying the QuickTime logo, or is the logo completely white?
If it’s white it hasn’t actually copied the file across despite the fact that the icon shows up. It’s only when it’s got the logo of the application that is used to open it that the file can be opened.
However I’ve just tried it and can replicate it on my machine.
The other thing is that it appears when you copy a file to a directory the .DS_Store file is updated to include this information. As this file would not have been updated until after EVERY file has been copied across this would explain why you get the error message about the file being in use.
The .DS_Store file is a hidden file (go into Terminal and type ls -la and you will see all the files including hidden files) that stores the information for that window including files, window layout, etc.
I know this can be a pain but in many respects this can also be a good thing. By opening a file that is part of a larger collection you could run the risk of corrupting the rest of the files.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for replying. I really do appreciate it. As you can see from the image above, I tried to click on a file that had a thumbnail generated from it.
I’m glad to see that somebody else was able to reproduce this. Several people over at digg told me that they didn’t know what I was talking about. Thanks for taking the time to look into this.
I didn’t know about this file however, now it makes sense why I can’t open a file while others are being copied. To be honest, this seems a little weird to me. I’ve never seen something like this before. What do you do if you are copying a gigabyte worth of data. Do you have to wait for everything to be copied before you can open any of the files? This just doesn’t seem right.