You know I love the Mac.
I’ve even taken the symbolic “next step” by adhering the Apple logo static sticker to my back window of my vehicle. But, lately, things have not been friendly between me and the MacBook Pro. Seemingly out of nowhere it recently started eating through its battery life at an alarming, if not, annoying rate. Performance wasn’t as mind-blowing as it had been just a couple of months ago. And then there was the heat…
I’ve been noticing that if I’ve left the Mac open with the screensaver churning as it idles, it’s getting RIDICULOUSLY hot. Or even just working on it with it on my lap became a test in human pain threshold. Recently, I’ve even noticed a small dimple on the bottom of the aluminum case – almost surely from the CPU inferno inside. And the fan runs ALL the time.
After a recent incident which almost cost me third degree burns to my thighs, I decided to do some poking around for answers – and found them, well, hard to find. My investigation led me to my Activity Monitor (on your Mac, just click GO at the upper righthand corner of your screen and choose UTILITIES – Activity Monitor). Low and behold, the computer’s CPU hog was revealed: a process called “adobe resource synchronizer”. After closely monitoring it, I found that it was eating up between 80-90% of my system resources and running CONSTANTLY. Thus the sluggishness and HEAT I was experiencing and the rapidly-depleted battery. I’m still unclear what the process is supposed to be doing. Bits of info I’ve collected around the webiverse leave me to believe it’s a new piece of Adobe Acrobat Reader X that synchronizes forms. Regardless of its true purpose, it’s NOT working properly – and the results could be downright dangerous.
Because Adobe has made it almost IMPOSSIBLE to permanently quit the process while Acrobat Reader X is still installed, I had to take the unfavorable steps of temporarily force-quitting (sounds like a Jedi move) the process in the Activity Monitor and completely removing Acrobat Reader X, in hopes I could go back a version until Adobe gets this mess straightened out. Unfortunately, Reader is a required piece of my daily arsenal as it powers the interactive forms and contracts found in Instanet’s TransactionDesk system. But it was that or CONSTANTLY forcing the process to quit. It’s a real pain.
Here are a few other unhappy people, like me, whining about it (that always works, right?):
MAC FOURMS – Adobe Resource Synchronizer
If you’re a Mac user, it’s definitely something to look into unless you want your MacBook or Air to become the world’s most expensive pancake griddle.
