PDFpenPro - Freezing, slow rendering, excessive CPU usage (Apple M1)

[Rafael Cobos]

Just wondering if there is an update on this issue. I use the program every day and the same issue occurs at least once a day.

[adam stein]

I’ve been emailing back and forth with support for weeks. They’re very nice but the focus seems to be on my cpu revving up, and getting activity monitor samples and “top” reports from terminal, and finding old kext files… I’d really like to hear about Nitro’s commitment to a product and user base that is I think decades old and right now needs some care. 

is progress being made to fix these problems? 

just yesterday night I was teaching on zoom… opened up a pdf during a screen share, and it was all just checker boxes. I had to stop the screenshare so I could force quit pdfpen and reopen it. 
 

if this is happening to so many of us it can’t be the fault of each of our Macs! 
Adam 

[Richard Aube]

On 2/11/2022 at 3:04 PM, Bill Mosca said:

It's time to bid PDFpenPro goodbye after many years as a contented user. It's been seven months since I reported this issue to Smile (just prior to acquisition by Nitro) and five months since I reported it directly to Nitro and initiated this thread. I've provided Nitro with process samples and other analytics. No signs of a forthcoming fix and not so much as a minor update since the product was acquired last July. So I'm--very very reluctantly--headed back to Acrobat. Nitro, it seems, wasn't a good home for PDFpenPro after all. 

So sad, I'll soon do the same... I don't understand why there's no update on this issue.

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Richard Aube,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums!

Please be informed we have an internal case open with our product team regarding this issue, however, there is no ETA for the fix yet.

Rest assured our development team is doing their best for a fix.

Thank you so much for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

[adam stein]

Here's the latest from Nitro:

 

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your patience and I trust you are doing great today!

Kindly note that this issue in regard to the random app freezing will be placed on the long-term product roadmap, so unfortunately, there is no short-term solution for it. 

This case will be closed, however, we recommend following our Release Notes located on our site https://community.gonitro.com/forum/24-nitro-pdf-pro-for-mac-pdfpen/

On behalf of Nitro, my sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.
 

[John Colburn]

I have the same issue. It is now April 27th and PDFPENPRO still hangs intermittently. Any suggestions from those of you who have already switched, where I should go now?

[Steven Lefkoff]

Is there no update on this? The PDFPenPro app has not been updated in almost a year. Still crashes a few times a day on my M1 Macbook Pro. What is going on? It would be nice if someone at Nitro would just tell us that they aren't working on the software anymore.

[adam stein]

Yes my app still crashes/freezes/stops rendering frequently on my M1 MacBook Air… you can see my post above for the email when nitro supported basically said fixing this is on our long term roadmap and there’s no short term fix. 
it’s really quite frustrating. I can only assume that smile didn’t know that nitro would abandon this long running beloved piece of software so soon after they sold it to them… I know this won’t happen but I really wish smile would just buy it back and fix it! 
 

I’ve depended upon pdfpenpro for years! 
 

what shall we do? Just move to PDF expert?

adam 

[Michael Long]

Same problem. 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Pro, macOS Monterey 12.4, Nitro PDF Pro 13.2.1

I've updated everything and replaced PDFPenPro with Nitro's latest version. It freezes randomly, and sometimes the pdf that locks it up one time will open properly the next time. Various versions of PDFPenPro did the same on my old iMac with Catalina. It looks like Nitro has inherited a widespread problem and, despite Allain's polite but unhelpful replies, there seems to be no fix in sight. I, too, am ready to bail unless I receive concrete assurance (not empty promises) that this will be resolved shortly.

[Bill Mosca]

On 6/16/2022 at 2:40 PM, adam stein said:

Yes my app still crashes/freezes/stops rendering frequently on my M1 MacBook Air… you can see my post above for the email when nitro supported basically said fixing this is on our long term roadmap and there’s no short term fix. 
it’s really quite frustrating. I can only assume that smile didn’t know that nitro would abandon this long running beloved piece of software so soon after they sold it to them… I know this won’t happen but I really wish smile would just buy it back and fix it! 
 

I’ve depended upon pdfpenpro for years! 
 

what shall we do? Just move to PDF expert?

adam 

Adam,

Nitro has made it abundantly clear that they have no intention to address this issue anytime soon. I reported this issue to Smile a year ago (prior to  by acquisition by Nitro) and then reported to Nitro directly almost 10 months ago. As recently as April 2022, they've indicated that possible resolution is on a "long-term roadmap." Sadly, it seems clear that PDFPenPro is destined to die as abandonware. 

[Allain Umailin]

Hello Everyone,

We would like to assure you we are still supporting PDFPen Pro, now known as 'Nitro PDF Pro for Mac'. We just came out with a new build of our Mac software as well, however, 'this high CPU / freezing' issue you have brought to our attention is still being evaluated for a potential fix. 

Rest assured that we will check with our Product team to see if an update is available. 

Again, we do apologize for the delay in mitigating this issue as we know the software is not performing as intended on your computer.

[adam stein]

Hi everyone. 

I was about to agree with both of you, Michael and Bill (and I do), but I then I saw Allain's post. Allain, you have always been polite and friendly, and I'm glad to hear you're still supporting the app (albeit with a new name which I guess makes sense given Nitro's ownership of it). I'm glad to hear there's a new build, too (can we just download it from your website? "Check for Updates" in the app just shows: "PDFpenPro 13.1 is currently the newest version available), but I can't imagine you've brought out a new build for this professional level app and it doesn't address the problem of PDFs freezing while they're being rendered, or before they can even be rendered, and causing a force quit to be necessary... that's just my experience but I know others have similar and some slightly different experiences. 

If that very problem is causing longtime customers to abandon the app, I would guess that "still being evaluated for a potential fix" is a not quite the level of urgency that is needed. Even if the app is now being targeted toward new customers, and even enterprise/business customers... if they bought a mac in the past year or two, it's probably an M1 mac and then they'll experience this problem! 

 

I'll try downloading the new build and maybe it's better, and I'll probably keep using PDFPenPro a little longer because I've used and loved it for so long and I don't like the idea of searching out a replacement... but at some point I may have to. 

 

Adam

p.s. Are the iPad and iPhone apps going to continue to have development? 

[Collin Ong]

I got a MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and installed my licensed PDFpen (latest 12.x).  I swear it was working fine but then it started having this hang/max CPU/no render/blocky render problem so some searching brought me here.  I was going to buy the update to 13 if it fixed the problem but from the posts here it looks like it wouldn't.

It's very disappointing that Nitro still has not fixed the problem after over a year.  Makes me also question whether I can stay with this software.

Here is my speculation based on reading through the posts and replies from Allain on this and on how the software development industry works: (again all of the following is my educated guess and not based on any direct knowledge)

• When Smile sold PDFpen to Nitro, they handed over the code base but the programmers of that code did not move over to Nitro. 
• This problem is a deeper bug than normal, perhaps because it technically "works"; I've walked away with PDFpen stuck opening a file with it pixelated and then come back hours later and the file is open ok but then any moving or changes triggers another long render. So it is a deep performance problem interacting with the M1 in some way.  This would take a deep understanding of the code to fix, but if nobody from Smile came over, then it's going to be a long and hard fix to fully understand the code and how and why running on the M1 creates this problem.
• Another guess is that the reason for the statement: "this issue in regard to the random app freezing will be placed on the long-term product roadmap, so unfortunately, there is no short-term solution for it" is that they have no ability or intention to maintain the existing PDFpen code base and instead are planning to migrate the PDFpen user base to a new product based on their own existing Nitro PDF code.  This was probably their long-term plan in any case, because internally, why would they want to maintain two completely separate code bases when they could maintain a core PDF engine for all platforms with customized interface code for each platform. This bug forced their hand because they are faced with investing a lot of time into investigating a deep problem with the old code base without knowing that a fix could even be found; and all this effort would be "wasted" because they plan on ditching the old PDFpen code anyway, so the long-term fix is to finish migrating to their new code.

Anyhow, if my speculation turns out to be correct, then PDFpen as we know will be dead. Maybe the new Nitro product will be good too, but I hope what we love(d) about PDFpen survives the transition.

[Michael Long]

Just a small but important correction. This problem didn't start with my 2021 M1 Macbook Pro. I had it on my prior 2015 Intel iMac for several years and with each successive major version. Smile didn't care, apparently, and just passed it on to Nitro. As Collin said, it's a deep and persistent flaw in the core code. I'm not holding my breath for updates. It froze several times today reopening files I've opened in the past. Each time required a force close and a near-fatal blow to my patience and loyalty.

[Collin Ong]

On 7/27/2022 at 8:57 PM, Michael Long said:

Just a small but important correction. This problem didn't start with my 2021 M1 Macbook Pro. I had it on my prior 2015 Intel iMac for several years and with each successive major version. Smile didn't care, apparently, and just passed it on to Nitro. As Collin said, it's a deep and persistent flaw in the core code. I'm not holding my breath for updates. It froze several times today reopening files I've opened in the past. Each time required a force close and a near-fatal blow to my patience and loyalty.

My previous mac was an 2014 Intel MacBook Pro and I didn't experience any performance issues with it, until I got the MBP M1 Pro.  So your experience is quite strange.

Strangely enough, I used PDFpen quite a bit the past 3 days and haven't experienced the freezing problem. I did not make any changes to PDFpen or any system updates either.

[John Quiggin]

No progress on this.

Writing off PDFPen now. Any suggestions for an alternative?

[Fernando Martinewski]

Still having this issue, many times a day. No updates. No communication with customers. The only time it was updated I had to find out by myself and manually update it only to change the logo and name do Nitro PDF Pro. 

PDFPen just seems to have been abandoned after it was sold.

Edited January 30 by Fernando Martinewski
Wrong.

[Allain Umailin]

Hello Everyone,

In behalf of Nitro, our sincere apologies for this inconvenience this cause you.

Kindly note that we have identified the issue and are actively working on implementing the fix.

We appreciate the patience you have shown while we work to resolve this bug.

While we do not have an exact date at this time for when the updated build will be released, I will provide a further update as soon as one is available.

Thank you and stay safe always!

[Severin Eskeland]

I am also having problems with the latest Nitro PDFPenPro on a Macbook M1. The software is sluggish and often hangs. Search is not working. The PDFPenPro v 11 works much better.

[Anthony Wilkinson]

I am also having problems with the latest Nitro PDFPenPro 13.3.0 on a Macbook M1 Pro running MacOS Ventura 13.2.1. When I drag and drop PDFs into a current PDF, the software frequently hangs. I see a checkboard background. The PDF page will not render. It just stays like that. This happens frequently. Yesterday, I could not complete a project for a client. I had to switch to different software.