I got another freeze last night. The app called Parallels Control was open - but it seems that isn't the issue. At that time I was transferring files to an external drive. I had two external drives connected - one was sitting idle. After the freeze I needed to enter the password for the idle drive. I have no idea if the freeze corrupted any files that were transferring to the external drive. They were all FCPX libraries and LPX projects.
Oh, I did install two other apps. One from a company called Eventide (
they make professional audio equipment). And, the other is Apple's Keynote. Here is the current list of installed software:
- Yamaha USB audio driver (Steinberg)
- dspFxMx (Steinberg mixer for audio interface)
- iReal Pro (Chart Notation for music)
- Logic Pro X (Apple)
- Final Cut Pro X (Apple)
- Finale (MakeMusic, Inc.)
- Pages (Apple)
- Numbers (Apple)
- Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop (Microsoft)
- Parallels Desktop 16
- Zoom
- H9 Control (Eventide)
- KeyNote (Apple)
If someone asked me to point to the most janky software installed then I'd eye the driver and associated apps for my DAW (
items 1 and 2 above) - which uses the audio interface hardware called Steinberg UR44. Now, I've used this same software since late 2015 (
with the same laptop) and for many, many years did not have freezing up until I upgraded macOS. However, my experience with Steinberg software is - messy. That is to say the approach Steinberg takes for their licensing and installation onto macOS is convoluted and upsets other programs and causes lots of error messages to display - which then requires aggressive repair in order to restore the other applications to normal operation. I have contacted Steinberg about this - but, not surprisingly, they simply don't give a flip.
The real problem is that troubleshooting requires the user to use the affected laptop frequently - but the laptop has very little software installed. At this time I only use this laptop when I need to edit a video or use Logic Pro X. Since I need a DAW for both I can't realistically uninstall all the Steinberg related stuff used for the DAW.
So, the catch-22 here is that I hardly use this laptop for lack of installed apps, but troubleshooting requires frequent use while uninstalling random apps. Currently, I only use this computer for music and video editing - removing the janky DAW software would mean I'd stop using this laptop entirely.
Data logs of some type might be helpful - but, I'm not technical on these matters. I'm just a user (
kind of the reason I got an Apple in the first place).
I have to wonder if Mojave is the problem or part of the problem. Both laptops have Mojave - and both laptops freeze.
Anyway, I'm very pessimistic that there even is a solution that would fix my 2015 MBP. If I had the money I wouldn't even be dicking around with this nonsense - I'd just run out and get a new $5000 MBP. But, I've got to stick with this 2015 MBP for a little while longer.
I'm beginning to just hate Apple in much the same way I hate Windows.