MacBook Pro crashing Illustrator

tdunn43 · May 8, 2023

My wife has a MacBook Pro, (14 inch, 2021, 16GB memory, running version 13.0 macOS Ventura, 1TB storage,) that she uses for graphic design work. She primarily uses Adobe Illustrator and it will frequently crash the program, as if it just cannot handle the load. I personally know very little when it comes to Apple computers, hence why I am here. Are there any suggested programs to use that can clean or improve the device's performance? I know with my Windows PC I'll use CCleaner from time to time to clean up unnecessary files and such. Overall her MacBook just seems slower than it should for it still being relatively new. We've been putting off getting her a Mac Studio but if what it truly boils down to is that the MacBook Pro is just not capable enough to run heavy workloads of Illustrator, that may be the only next option. Any suggestions of things to check that may be hindering its performance are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

sodapone · May 8, 2023

I'll be honest, my first instincts say it has more to do with it being an Adobe product in the first place--these days pretty much all of them are notorious for being buggy and crashing often. Do you know if it was crashing this much on computers she previously used?

Do you know if it has an M1 Pro or an M1 Max, by the way? Granted, even if it had just the base M1 Pro, I'd be surprised if the MacBook was somehow unable to actually run Illustrator...

As for optimizations, I'm a little green since my MacBook is the first Mac I've used in over a decade, but no optimizations of the sort you're talking about really exist on macOS AFAIK--it's a matter of closing background programs and the like, just like with any other computer.

You should probably also check Activity Monitor--it's basically the macOS equivalent to Task Manager--and see how the CPU, GPU, and RAM are being used while Illustrator is running. An important thing to note with RAM though is that "Memory Pressure" is more important to watch than the actual raw memory usage--if the graph turns yellow or red, that means it's having issues with memory management.

DrMacintosh · May 8, 2023

Update to the latest version of macOS (13.3.1 (a)) and update Illustrator. This issue isn't related to the performance of the MacBook, it's entirely a software issue on Adobes end. You can try running Illustrator with Rosetta to see if that fixes stability. Illustrator could be trying to access things that aren't working with the native Apple Silicon port and that could be causing the crashes. Turning on Rosetta for that app would help in that case.

Illustrator info: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/illustrator/kb/illustrator-for-apple-silicon.html

Enable Rosetta: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861

tdunn43 · May 8, 2023

9 minutes ago, sodapone said:

I'll be honest, my first instincts say it has more to do with it being an Adobe product in the first place--these days pretty much all of them are notorious for being buggy and crashing often. Do you know if it was crashing this much on computers she previously used?

Do you know if it has an M1 Pro or an M1 Max, by the way? Granted, even if it had just the base M1 Pro, I'd be surprised if the MacBook was somehow unable to actually run Illustrator...

As for optimizations, I'm a little green since my MacBook is the first Mac I've used in over a decade, but no optimizations of the sort you're talking about really exist on macOS AFAIK--it's a matter of closing background programs and the like, just like with any other computer.

You should probably also check Activity Monitor--it's basically the macOS equivalent to Task Manager--and see how the CPU, GPU, and RAM are being used. An important thing to note with RAM though is that "Memory Pressure" is more important to watch than the actual raw memory usage--if the graph turns yellow or red, that means it's having issues with memory management.

It's an M1 Pro. I believe it has more to do with it being an adobe product as well like you said. Photoshop on the other hand runs just fine, but is also a seemingly much less demanding program. We don't really have much to compare it to though as far as other computers she's used. She hadn't gotten this heavy into Illustrator until she got this MacBook. I've ran Activity Monitor while she was using Illustrator but unfortunately I didn't really see anything out of the ordinary. I may have her run Illustrator on my PC, which is more than capable of running that smoothly. i7-10700k, 3090, etc.

tdunn43 · May 8, 2023

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Update to the latest version of macOS (13.3.1 (a)) and update Illustrator. This issue isn't related to the performance of the MacBook, it's entirely a software issue on Adobes end. You can try running Illustrator with Rosetta to see if that fixes stability. Illustrator could be trying to access things that aren't working with the native Apple Silicon port and that could be causing the crashes. Turning on Rosetta for that app would help in that case.

Illustrator info: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/illustrator/kb/illustrator-for-apple-silicon.html

Enable Rosetta: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861

Not familiar with Rosetta so I will have to look into that. I'll start the update now though

sodapone · May 8, 2023

6 minutes ago, tdunn43 said:

It's an M1 Pro. I believe it has more to do with it being an adobe product as well like you said. Photoshop on the other hand runs just fine, but is also a seemingly much less demanding program. We don't really have much to compare it to though as far as other computers she's used. She hadn't gotten this heavy into Illustrator until she got this MacBook. I've ran Activity Monitor while she was using Illustrator but unfortunately I didn't really see anything out of the ordinary. I may have her run Illustrator on my PC, which is more than capable of running that smoothly. i7-10700k, 3090, etc.

That seems to corroborate DrMacintosh's theory about Illustrator's Apple Silicon port not being coded properly and trying to access things that aren't there on the different architecture.