Brand New Mac Studio M2 Ultra (maxed out stats)... Illustrator 27.7 is laggy and slow.

[Seth Sirbaugh]

Help? (though... I'm not sure what you can do).

I just received my brand new Mac Studio M2 Ultra (maxed out memory and highest processor) running Ventura 13.5. I have installed all my Adobe programs and when using Illustrator 27.7 it's roughly the same speed, beach ball appearance, pausing that I had when i used my old Mac (late 2013 iMac maxed).

This has been tough for me to stomach for many reasons. I expected 'some' kind of speed boost here (especially coming from an old 2013 iMac) or even just a more fluid program use. Now (with a brand new machine) im constantly having to shut everything down and restart to then open up my Illustrator for a smoother workflow until it becomes laggy again .... rinse repeat. 

Now, for perspective, I am working on a file with multiple artboards and a few placed images... but nothing that should tax a brand new juiced Mac Studio. 

I'm frustrated to say the least. Any help would be appreciated... I literally have nothing else running but Illustrator and Mail.

Thanks 

[davidp46544262]

I'm relieved but frustrated to see this post. I thought it was how I installed my Adobe products or something I was doing wrong. Thank you for this post. 
It's the same with Premier Pro and Media Encoder. Unbelievably slow. 

ANY help would be greatly appreciated as this machine wasn't cheap!

[davids82967484]

Unfortunately, nothing to add other than I'm experiencing the same thing. I'd understand with my 2015 iMac (with spinning HD) at the office, but on my 2019 MBP it's inexcusable. Seems like nearly every click, or move, or god forbid I change a font. Even with the most basic of layouts - it's incredibly frustrating.

[Anubhav Majumder]

Hello @Seth Sirbaugh, @davids82967484, @davidp46544262,

We understand how frustrating it can be to experience performance issues in Illustrator. Would you mind trying the suggestions shared in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/optimize-illustrator-performance.html) and checking if it helps?

Also, try resetting Illustrator's preferences by following the steps shared in this article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-preference-issues.html) and sharing your observations.
Disclaimer: Please note that resetting preferences will remove all custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with the defaults. You may save a backup of these settings from the location mentioned in the article.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Anubhav

[Seth Sirbaugh]

I've actually already gone down this list. I have very few fonts loaded. And reset and reinstalled. Nothing helped...

Also the only other program that is/was open was Mac Mail... closing it and running illustrator without it open does nothing to change performance. My machine also has 192 GIGs of memory with an M2 ULTRA chip... this shouldn't be happening guys. I mean ... literally it's the only app running on the fastest Mac Studio Apple offers. Help?

[Seth Sirbaugh]

Also to add to this issue—there seems to also be some be a some major buginess with typography... im having issues with type on a path from older files... and even having a hard time just selecting some pieces of text (this is happening in multiple files).... so now intead of working on my new blazing M2 Ultra ... im sitting in front of my 2013 iMac because the Illustrator is more stable and while uber slow... its at least functional. Guys—I'm a professional designer and illustrator and have been using this program since the days of Power PCs.... this is unacceptable and now its really starting to effect my ability to work. Please. Help. This needs some kind of update ASAP.

[Anubhav Majumder]

Hello @Seth Sirbaugh,

We're sorry for the trouble. It looks like we need to troubleshoot this on a live session. Please head here (https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html?rghtup=autoOpen) and select the chat button in the lower-right corner of the page. We can help troubleshoot faster that way.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[defaultpmg5occbvek8]

I found this thread because I'm having the same experience with a brand new Mac Studio (Apple M2 Max, 32 GB) running Ventura 13.5.  It's truly unacceptable for Adobe Creative Cloud to be running so slowly on the latest and greatest Mac OS.  Is this because Adobe CC isn't compatible with Apple silicon?  

[Anubhav Majumder]

Hello @defaultpmg5occbvek8,

We understand how frustrating it can be to experience performance issues while working in Illustrator. Illustrator is natively supported on Apple Silicon (https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/apple-silicon-m1-chip.html). Would you mind trying to manually reset Illustrator's preferences and checking if it helps:

• Close all Adobe applications.

• Go to the following locations

• ~/Library/Caches

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe

• ~/Library/Preferences

• Rename Adobe Illustrator, com.adobe.illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 27 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 27 Settings.old

• Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud.

Note: Location starting with this "~" sign indicates the User Library, which is hidden. So, you need to copy & paste the exact path in spotlight search or from Finder Menu > Go > Go to Folder > Paste the location in the dialog box like this:

Disclaimer: Please note that renaming preferences folders will remove all the custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with default settings. You can also save a backup of the folders in case you want to. The location is mentioned above.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[Victor3245830334f2]

Hey, has this been solved ? I was considering getting a Mac Studio M2 Max with 64Gb. I am working mainly and heavily with Illustrator...my old iMac 2015 is lagging behind and I avoid updating Illustrator for that reason...

How is going now for you with your M2 Ultra with Illustrator ?

thanks

[nikb58062351]

I've been using Illustrator on a MBP M2 Max with 64GB RAM and 1Tb of disk since January 2023. Prior to this I had an iMac 2014. I was expecting to experience a MASSIVE improvement in performance from old to new instead, I was left overall disappointed. I reasoned that the reason might have been down to Illustrator using single CPU processes in a world that uses multi-core for almost everything. Using Photoshop shows that when going multi-core for applying effects the speed boost compared to my old iMac is there. Using Illustrator, however, is not the same. I often work with heavy files of around 200Mb and my old iMac could hardly cope with it. I had to disable loads of things and work in keyline mode. I refuse to believe that I should do the same using my new MBP. Recently I began to feel that the same app running on Windows might actually run smoother. I have no way to test this and I might be wrong in the end. Should this be the case then I would say that in a world of Audio, Video, Rendering, AI... Apple decided that multi-core performance should be dedicated to those endeavours, while designers using InDesign and Illustrator cannot take advantage of these improvements. As I said, I might be wrong, but I've been doing this for a very long time, going through several cycles of new software and new hardware and I've always experienced speed improvements along the way. This is the first time that (albeit many features are light years ahead of what was happening 10 years ago) I feel like the speed is not there.