I think Adobe know that Nikolas, that's why they are tackling on so many "fancy" features on top of the broken code, like 3D effects, machine learning filters and so on. They just ignore, that they also need to work on the foundation for that to go on.

Alastair Adobe just needs to remember what happened with Quark xPress that they beat with inDesign.
xPress was the leader but have flaws that nobody cared to fix because they where industry standard. Then came inDesign, with a ton of new features that made xPress seem like some primitive windows 3.11 era program and eventually was put aside, because by the time they realized they had rested on their laurels too long and started updating xPress, they had already lost to a better and cheaper inDesign.

It's not like Adobe isn't drowning in cash but somehow UI/UX is going to the dogs for the last few years. I used to use four Adobe products every day but now doing other things and using infrequently. It's amazing how many bugs and broken tools (very old tools too) it has on Mac. The historical fact of Adobe pushing users towards PC where they had advantages over Apple has come home to roost. Adobe don't respect Mac users. Offshoring all the coding for the last decade has had pretty bad consequences too IMHO. I've spoken to developers about vision critical bugs that they know about but can't track the source of. It's a cluster-suck of jumping from one error and bug loaded release to the next. I have to run Betas just to get something that works on Mac. It should be the opposite. I should be able to regress one versions and still keep working if need be but stuff is so out of date with Apples modern APIs that it just brakes when you update macOS (which Apple makes you do as a matter of course any time you ring them with problems).

I'm seriously thinking about the alternative, even though my professional use of the suite is now much more limited. The competitors in many ways are feature compatible and performance superior to Adobe. Adobe was always too conservative and profit driven (destroying, sorry acquiring, Macromedia for that purpose) but now even the good aspects of a conservative approach i.e. stable consistently performant software is now not even something we can bank on.

My sister worked at Kodak in the digital division when they invented the digital camera and were market number one in consumer class digital cameras in several regions like Asia/Pacific. But the greed had corrupted the higher executive levels and they thought the rivers of gold from printing photos and selling film would continue to flow for decades more, it caught them out and we all know the rest of the story.

Adobe executives would do well to read Willy Sih's books and papers especially this one: (He lead the digital division), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308670106_The_real_lessons_from_Kodak's_decline

LoL @Andrew... yeup.......

@Jeron yep - super frustrating. XD seems way too simple, but then you find all the complexity under the hood and it can do a surprising amount. And I think things like the per-canvas layer stack are things I can never live without now. Layers are odd at first but make a ton of sense as you work with them. Also - free plugins help bridge a lot of gaps. XD needs updates as well - of course - but it's definitely an app made for doing modern work, and it feels great using it. Super speeeeeedy!

I do not care anymore I am buying 7950x for home. If I can't use it for Illustrator I will have this at least for gaming ;D. If both task are not up spec of this processor then my last hope is going to be Blender.

Oh wow, I just woke up from a sixteen year coma and bought my first multithreaded CPU! I'm so excited to see how my favorite computer program Adobe Illustrator works on my blazing fast new hardware.

...Oh.

@Jayse Fair enough guess we're all just frustrated that we're having to find work arounds to get work done instead of Adobe fixing fundamental issues. Guess I might see how I can do some work in XD lol

@Jeron actually I do large format posters, shirt designs and print in XD. (that's how much I like the experience better) - you just have to create canvases at that pixel dimension, or, just export at 4x, or copy paste as the end step into Ai. It's surprisingly capable.

When I say Ai is dead, it's more from a perspective of directly and indirectly trying to get these kinds of updates since 2010. I've accepted that it's probably more likely to be reborn than re-engineered.

Keep in mind. I'm a huge illustrator fan. I probably wasn't clear if you thought I disagreed with you. I agree totally. I've just been waiting for longer than a decade. I came up with the idea of Ai being dead about 6 years ago and it just helped me have peace with it rather than get all frustrated. They have yet to prove me wrong.

And yes. I'll be the biggest celebrator when they merge Figma and XD (And Framer).

If only I could us Ipad to design and prepare for print 200 linear meters of wall print that I am keeping In one illustrator file for alignment and task automation purpose. I would do this from my living room and feel the same way as people on cool Adobe adverts. In reality I need mouse and keyboard and large scree as well as (sometimes) 64GB of ram.

TOP tips for any one working with rasters in illustrator

Check if your GPU Acceleration is on as this still keep glitching after using outline preview. If it is off > save file> switch off illustrator> switch on > continue work

I also find that if I link raster file sometimes is lagging but if I embedded it it works better.

I am not surprised why design agency keep sending us Photoshop files at full size but only 75ppi for large format print.

@Jayse That doesn't really shine light on the core issue. I get that XD is replacing UI/UX work in Illustrator but explain to me how XD is replacing things in industries like Screen Printing, Large Format, and various others? XD is a specialized app that Adobe has and is not what I would use to ever create something like a shirt design or a poster. The software is not dead, though it may be dying due to people moving to other software, and the fact still stands that they need to fix core performance. I love that companies like Affinity are putting pressure on Adobe and making some great software. Also adobe bought Figma so I imagine that will be absorbed into XD.

Also I have nothing against a Tablet version but if I have a powerful computer then there should be no reason that I shouldn't be able run a more powerful version of the app on it so that it takes advantage of the hardware. The issue is that multi-core computers have been around for decades so this should not still be "Under Review"

Illustrator is dead. For the most part.

One day, it will be replaced by what they're slowly rebuilding from scratch on iPad. (Borrowing from the excellent XD app.)

Years ago, I watched them recreate After Effects for performance from the ground up, and that was years of hot mess. Users were furious. To avoid that, it appears that they're basically redoing the apps to be web/iPad apps, which is smart and future forward. They've been super slow with it tho, probably because of lack of competition. (just buy Figma or Freehand etc. if something competitive shows up)

But hopefully that shines some light on what they're likely doing in this domain. For speedier, more pleasant experience of Ai, try the iPad version, XD and or the competitors.

Ai used to be my daily driver for 10 hour days, now, I do the same work, but Ai is not even a shortcut in my dock. 🤷‍♂️ (99% replaced by XD).

I find it interesting that they continue to add 3D support and features but won't fix the core performance of the program. 3D is going to require more CPU and not less so seems like you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

It's painful that this hasn't been implemented yet. It's hugely critical to performance. Working on any projects with large raster images is tiresome. Seeing that this was posted in 2017 gives me very little hope.

I started rasterizing my 4x4-inch black and white artwork at 300ppi about 20 minutes ago. I had the rainbow wheel of death for a good 5 min before the progress bar indicating it started rasterizing showed up. Meanwhile, my total CPU usage is hovering around 12% usage the entire time and Illustrator is unresponsive. I'm running a 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 with 40GB of ram for crying out loud. Sure the artwork is complex, but 20 minutes for something so small and only one color without any custom transparency effects, and it's STILL processing. Feels like I'm using an old G5. (Edit: I eventually force-quit after 30min as it was still processing)

@AJ, I'm sure it's the accountants who are running the show now. Like so many company before, they will use the same business model. Bleed it dry until it dies then maybe hire some big shot to bring it back to life in it's final breathe. In the meant-time, release a few useless updates to make it look like they're doing something. I'm sure they understand perfectly well.

Yes, I feel all the same frustrations.
The potential to pinpoint edit colour and form in Illustrator in its current state is completely hampered by Adobe's lack of action.
Adobe's focus on 3D and other icing sprinkles functions without building on the program's fundamental usability is unbelievable after 5 years of waiting with no progress on this.
For digital artists is impossible to make certain sorts of perfectly feasible artwork in the current state of this program because we are stuck in a 1990s time slip without multi thread foundation.
Why are we still waiting on this half a decade down the road?
Adobe is a resource rich company.
Is it engineers who do not actually understand the creative potential of the program? Is it sales departments mangers who have no experience of using the program to its full potential. Or it is simply a cold disregard for end users who have asked time and time and time again for action on this?
When it works I love Illustrator but like others here I am tiring or paying for a subscription to a company that will not support or listen to its creative users. If Adobe made Illustrator more baseline solid think of the superlative artwork that could actually be rendered. think about it Adobe: you could showcase that work and make more sales. How about fixing these basic performance issues, Adobe – please?

Has i pointed out in a call with them back in 2018. at least have a core dedicated per project file. this way if i open more than one file it will not crash me when just doing a task has simple has copy and past. yes i have that experience still to this day. opening more than one file or having a menu brochure that has more than 600+ lines of text and Ai crashes form a copy and past. More ram helps but having Multi core support will be the best fix.

Well, it goes without saying that Mama Adobe doesn't really care much about taking care of her beloved children (they once were).
I would propose (even if it is of little interest to mommy), to devote more energy and effort to improving the obsolete architecture of her software (software that runs on codes written and implemented for at least 30 years), taking care to improve performance such as USE of the CPU, RAM, GPU and spend less time implementing small new features that often are of little use, actually are of little use.
Example they insert a whole part dedicated to 3D, but then this 3D consumes enormously CPU / GPU / RAM resources but the architecture still thinks in single core so to work easily with 3D is a disaster because everything is very very very SLOW and the 'user probably that "amazing" function will never use it because it is slow and wastes precious time, then illustrator stops and you waste more time!

Sincerely, I am a former Freehand User, with many BUGS that had that software you worked easily without lag (with much much slower machines, we are talking about 2003/2005 (almost 20 years ago)) and yet I did everything with that software, now Illustrator I use it for small things, brands or vector icons, for the rest I try to do everything with InDesign, at least it is more stable and faster. Illustrator is so heavy, even with a few boards, it is also imprecise in snapping to paths, it worked best freehand with its snap on nodes or it automatically adjusted to the curve of the path.
I tried Affinity Design, and I have to say it's about snaps, multicore speed, CRAZY zoom 1.000000000%
IT IS REALLY SCARED, if those of affinity would improve a few things present in Illustrartor, believe me for the proposed cost and the fluidity and speed of that software, they will pass en masse to Affinity.
But maybe that's what Adobe expects since it doesn't do anything to improve its software. Only new SIPERFLUE features.

How do you think about it?

@Stuart Chesters
I have switched over to affinity, I had the programs day one but had to spent some time to get used to them and there are some missing things here and there. As a freelancer it doesn't make any difference since I hand out PDF files anyway.

But version 2 is said to be around the corner for Designer and I hope they will add more of what is missing.
For example there is no text warp and no image trace.

Also I want to dispel a small misinformation here, the programs are not 100% multitreaded BUT, they are clearly way faster as they are written from scratch and take advantage of modern hardware in ways illustrator can't because of the old bits of code in there.

That being said most of the time I see more cores to engage in something and they have also added GPU computation to help with rasters. When I see most of the work is on exports tho, many times I see my CPU getting that sweet 100% on all 6 cores/ 12 threads, although it is fast enough to see it for seconds and mostly if you have rasters in the design.

Again, no matter what the program is way faster than illustrator and it shows mostly on older hardware.