Snow Leopard quirk prevents opening groups of recently downloaded files

Reports of an odd bug affecting downloaded files in Snow Leopard have been circulating Apple's discussion boards recently. As reported by TidBITS, the issue appears to be affecting all computers running Snow Leopard.

While different users have reported varying symptoms and differing circumstances, it essentially boils down to this: if you download a group of files, and then attempt to open the entire group of files at once (rather than opening each file individually), chances are either some or all of the selected files will not open.

My initial response to this was that it could possibly be one of those "it's not a bug, it's a feature" ordeals. We have already seen some indications that Apple is working on enhanced security and virus protection in Snow Leopard, so it stands to reason that the operating system may be simply trying to prevent what it thinks is malicious activity by imposing restrictions on what you can and can't do with a newly downloaded file.

Of course, that's just my theory, but I'm apparently not the only one who has explored that possibility -- a reader on the Mac OS X Hints forum discovered some hard evidence supporting that theory. In OS X, newly downloaded files are flagged with a "quarantine" attribute, which remains until the file is opened. If this attribute is set when the file is launched, and the file is an application, you would receive the typical "This application was downloaded from the Internet" confirmation before the application is allowed to continue launching. This is nothing new in Snow Leopard, but it would seem that the additional protections and scanning that were added to Snow Leopard most likely prevent opening multiple files so that each file can be individually checked before it is launched.

Whether or not this is a serious bug or a minor inconvenience depends entirely on your workflow. Personally, I find that I don't often open multiple files from Finder, as most of the applications I use have the ability to select multiple files from their Open dialog. I can easily see where this might pose significant problems, however. For example, if you do a lot of work with graphics, you might download a several photos from a client, highlight them and open them with a custom tool that automatically resizes and processes for you. With this bug in play, that task would become much more difficult if you had to open each file individually.

So what about you? Is this bug bugging you, or is it a non-issue? If you are affected, feel free to chime in with your experiences on the discussion boards, and be sure to let us know in the comments!

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Source: http://db.tidbits.com/article/10712

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Snow Leopard

Reports of an odd bug affecting downloaded files in Snow Leopard have been circulating Apple's discussion boards recently. As reported by...

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Randy G

Wow this is frustrating me. I often use Preview to view photos I've imported and find it easy to see them quickly and delete duds before importing to Lightroom. I want to continue to be able to do this; if I'd known I'd lose this feature by upgrading to Snow Leopard (and I'd lose the old Quicktime that I liked better) I would have waited!

November 07 2009 at 7:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Payne

I teach online courses and download the assignments, open them all to read. I noticed lately that when I finished grading them, I had missed several. Now I know why. Annoying, but not critical.

November 07 2009 at 12:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Simon Arch

Yeah, this is aggravating. I'll download a few torrents, select them all and open them but only one shows up in Transmission. So I have to add them one. At. A. Time. Not the end of the world, admittedly, but a bit of a PITA. *shrug* Still beats the hell out of Windows.

November 05 2009 at 9:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Thayne Miller

ABCNEWSER: stop trolling. And uh... check your math there buddy.

November 05 2009 at 12:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dannybuoy

I've noticed this when dragging and dropping multiple files on to the Photoshop icon in my dock. If you just drop them on it, it only open up 1 or maybe sometimes 2 of the files. VERY ANNOYING! But if you drag and hold over the icon until it goes in to the new view all open windows view and then let go of the mouse they seem to open. So i guess there is some sort of conflict going on there. Whatever, Apple please fix it!

November 05 2009 at 6:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

alansky

I have a different Snow Leopard bug that also affects downloaded files. Sometimes I can't delete files that were recently downloaded. Sometimes only one or two files in a folder of files is affected. When this happens, I have to log out, then log back in before I can empty the Trash.

November 05 2009 at 2:35 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

FortNinety

Thank God this issues has been somewhat isolated. The inability to open up a large number of files has been driving me up the wall. Didn't realize the key attribute was that they were freshly downloaded (just selected all the files in a folder that wouldn't open before, and now they magically do).

And yeah, this is by far one of the stupidest new "features" that Apple has ever come up with. I was hoping it was a bug that would be fixed in 10.6.2, but if this is the way it's going to be... might have to downgrade to 10.5 after-all. Splendid.

November 05 2009 at 1:39 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

gtdavemac

Funny... I noticed this yesterday when I downloaded 60 photos and then dragged them all to Preview to open them for a slideshow. Only two or three opened. Tried a couple of times, then I shrugged it off.

Now i guess I know what happened.

November 05 2009 at 12:26 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Katalina

This is a security feature. It makes total sense. It could say, "There are five files you've recently downloaded. Would you like to review them?"

But beyond that, I don't see a solution.

--Sam

November 04 2009 at 10:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

cheetahkayak

opps sorry for that previous comment. I am getting the same issues you all are having with preview.

November 04 2009 at 9:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply