.nef files from my Nikon D800 do not display thumbnails in finder

I recently purchased a Nikon D800 and shoot entirely in RAW format. I currently have an imac dual core running Mac OSX snow leopard (software has all been updated). When I try to view my files in finder all I get is just the .nef icon but no picture. These files are on a 3tb drive. I tried copying a file to my desktop and it still does not show a preview. I had a copy of these files on a smaller drive (Passport 160gb formatted to fat32) and when I was over at a friend's place he was able to open them in finder with no problem. We have the same imacs except his is a quad core. Unfortunately we reformatted that drive so I can't see if that would work on my machine. I tried deleting the .com.apple.finder.plist and rebooted but no solution there either. Any ideas on how I can get this corrected?

Under OS X 10.6.8 - the RAW update that includes support for the D800 requires Aperture 3 or iPhoto 11. If you do not have either of those, then that update would not have been pushed to you through software update.

If you're using Adobe software, they push their own RAW updates and I have no clue when support for your camera would have been pushed through, nor if a RAW update from Adobe would add Finder support or not.

edit:
You could try downloading and installing this update - have no clue if it will work without having one of the 2 above apps. 3.11 added support for the D800 - link.

.nef files in Mac OSX from the Nikon D800

Thank you Bob for your help. I just now installed ILife '11 and it had 2 updates for iphoto. Unfortunately neither worked. I then got on another forum where they mentioned to install a separate update that was issued for the latest Canon camera so that raw files could be read by iphoto. The link is support.apple.com/kb/DL1513. Once installed, voila, my Mac now can preview the .nef files in finder. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

Glad you got it working - that's the same link I had above.

I should have read your entire message........lol you had the link right there.....

I probably should have made another post instead of editing just in case you had already read it and didn't refresh the page again - at least you got it working.