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Teacher help? All apps look like A Acrobat, Google is Slowww, and Zoom unstable. What to do?

brobson

brobson

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 13, 2004
512
6
Dallas
I can't figure out what to do beyond upgrading to Catalina, which I am nervous to do right now. I tried 3 times and it kept failing. Which is fine, I started reading what problems people are having so I am wanting to wait for the bugs to be worked out. Especially right now since I need to teach!
I'm using Zoom on my ipad right now but I want to teach Photoshop to High Schoolers on my mac.

All of a sudden, early last week, all my icons changed, which is annoying but not the end of the world.

Then after teaching my classes successfully for almost 2 weeks, I can't teach my students because my computer keeps saying my internet is unstable. Which it is not. My Zoom class keeps going in and out. I ran the First Aid on everything. No clues.

If anyone can help me I'd be eternally grateful.

I have a Macbook Pro Retina 13-inch Early 2015 2.7 GHz i5, 8G memory
I have 15.68 GB storage available.
 
Systems for work or school at home are obviously overloaded now and it's a dynamic situation. On top of that the extra entertainment video streaming people are doing is wonking up the works.

I don't know what the various ISPs here in the US are doing but they should probably be prioritizing bandwidth for teaching and other important work and lowering the priority for entertainment…at least during the day!
 
I feel you on not wanting to upgrade now. I really didn't want to do it because when I tried to upgraded to Mojave I ended up having to take my app to the Apple store. I did upgrade successfully to Catalina.

What are your speeds when testing on something such as fast.com ? (it will show you the upstream speeds if you click "more info")
 
Yeah I’m curious about what that means too. I have FIOS gigabit with an ASUS router, my wife is teaching and my kids are doing classes, we sometimes have 3 zoom streams going at once, and it’s all working surprisingly well, so I don’t think it’s an overall internet congestion issue.

You said you had ~16GB free, out of how many? Seems like you might be worried it’s about running out of storage. Does the machine run faster attached to the charger? Have you tried just restarting the computer? I know that sounds dumb, but it does help!
 
ignatius345 said:
What do you mean "icons changed"? Like, the icons for all your files?
Click to expand...
I
profcutter said:
Yeah I’m curious about what that means too. I have FIOS gigabit with an ASUS router, my wife is teaching and my kids are doing classes, we sometimes have 3 zoom streams going at once, and it’s all working surprisingly well, so I don’t think it’s an overall internet congestion issue.

You said you had ~16GB free, out of how many? Seems like you might be worried it’s about running out of storage. Does the machine run faster attached to the charger? Have you tried just restarting the computer? I know that sounds dumb, but it does help!
Click to expand...
I just wanted to make sure that wasn't the issue (storage) I have overall, 121.12 GB.
I too was surprised how all four of us could work from home too. I did restart.
 
You are strongly advised not upgrade your Mac until you have consulted with your school district's IT department. In fact, they should be the people who help you out since you are trying to do your job.

And yes, you should ask the cooperation from your housemates to minimize leisure usage of the shared residential broadband service while you are teaching class.

If they are not sympathetic to your plight, when this is all behind us find new and more compassionate housemates.
 
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ignatius345 said:
What do you mean "icons changed"? Like, the icons for all your files?
Click to expand...
I tried to upload a png and it wouldn't load, just stuck at 100% or I'd show you. Keynote, Launchpad, Microsoft, you name it, they all look like a sheet of paper with the Acrobat A logo with pencil, paintbrush and ruler we have all seen.
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Its a private school, Im on my own. My husband and two students are here and we have to all be on at once.
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ignatius345 said:
What do you mean "icons changed"? Like, the icons for all your files?
Click to expand...
All my app Icons. But they seem to work fine. I run my cursor over it and I see what app it is. UGH
 
MisterSavage said:
I feel you on not wanting to upgrade now. I really didn't want to do it because when I tried to upgraded to Mojave I ended up having to take my app to the Apple store. I did upgrade successfully to Catalina.

What are your speeds when testing on something such as fast.com ? (it will show you the upstream speeds if you click "more info")
Click to expand...

My speed is 3.8 Kbps
Upload is 0

Latency
unloaded 0
Loaded 2.0 I don't have any idea what that means and I can't upload a file to show you.
 
3.8Kbps? Are you sure? That’s worse than dialup speed. Maybe try ookla Speedtest or another speed check.
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also, the whole changing icons thing is really mysterious. I wish we could see what you were talking about.
 
Erehy Dobon said:
Take a picture with your phone and upload it via the cellular data network.
Click to expand...
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brobson said:
My speed is 3.8 Kbps
Upload is 0

Latency
unloaded 0
Loaded 2.0 I don't have any idea what that means and I can't upload a file to show you.
Click to expand...
Just loaded it from my phone
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I have Avast and it says no virus
 

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Huh. In the old days I would say it looks like a permissions problem. Do you want to try to download onyx and have it run through it’s maintenance routines? Maybe have it delete the icons cache?
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You could also try to boot in single user mode and do fsck

I think that still works. Are you using HFS or APFS for the file system?
 
I'll try anything. The OOkla speed test won't even start. The internet works fine on my iPad, etc
 
I did an Internet search on DuckDuckGo (yes, one of those antiquated behaviors from circa 2010) with the search terms "generic app icon macos" and the top result was this Stackexchange discussion:

apple.stackexchange.com

App icons go missing on MacBook

I've been having this problem for a while now and it really starts to bother me. Every once in a while, a lot of my app icons go missing in the dock, launchpad, finder, cmd-tab switcher, just every...
apple.stackexchange.com apple.stackexchange.com

replete with various screenshots and Terminal command line incantations.

I have no idea about your networking problems. Try a hardwire Ethernet connection.
 
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Can you check activity monitor to see if there’s anything hogging resources?
 
First, I would try what Erehy mentioned above. Look through the comments, there’s a post about fixing the problem on Mojave.
 
Erehy Dobon said:
Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor

Look at the various tabs. Upload screenshots for better advice.
Click to expand...
Erehy Dobon said:
Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor

Look at the various tabs. Upload screenshots for better advice.
Click to expand...
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I got rid of a file that was syncing in Dropbox and a WD discovery app that was open. Still couldn’t upload this pic
 

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Yeah, Dropbox is notorious for hogging network connections. Quit the app and recheck your network speed.
 
OOkla failed. The idea of dragging icons into desktop after removing them didn't work. I'll look through the info again.
 
Wow. Something majorly weird going on there. Did you quit Dropbox entirely? You can quit it through the menu bar.
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Can you show us the cpu tab?
 
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