My wife recently purchased a new MacBook air M4 for use with here small jewelry business. This is the latest in a series of MacBooks she has used. The problem is that it is painfully slow, frequently giving the spinning rainbow as she tries to work. I want to attach an etrecheck report to see if the experts on here can give me any guidance on where to proceed.
MacBook Air (M4, 2025)
You have a lot of "stuff" running and several process crashing continually.
2026-02-07 16:57:39 galileod Crash (70 times)
First occurrence: 2026-02-07 07:25:28
Executable: /Library/Application Support/Fitbit Connect/galileod
That's associated with the Fitbit software you have installed.
In addition, you have problems with something crashing core audio, finder, adobe creative cloud, and others.
I'm guessing you migrated everything from an older Mac when you got this one. Very possibly migrating even older 'stuff' from Macs you had before that...
If it were me, I would back up all of the data, wipe the machine, and start from scratch. Do NOT migrate applications or user account settings.
You have a lot of "stuff" running and several process crashing continually.
2026-02-07 16:57:39 galileod Crash (70 times)
First occurrence: 2026-02-07 07:25:28
Executable: /Library/Application Support/Fitbit Connect/galileod
That's associated with the Fitbit software you have installed.
In addition, you have problems with something crashing core audio, finder, adobe creative cloud, and others.
I'm guessing you migrated everything from an older Mac when you got this one. Very possibly migrating even older 'stuff' from Macs you had before that...
If it were me, I would back up all of the data, wipe the machine, and start from scratch. Do NOT migrate applications or user account settings.
I see internet plug-ins that were installed years before your computer existed, likely moved by Migration Assistant. One, a component of DivX could be an issue. there were reports here of outdated version of DivX could slow macOS. If you still use DivX, update it. Otherwise, send it an eviction notice.
Another thing— you may have done the computer equivalent of "bringing a knife to a gunfight." Those Adobe apps are very demanding, using a lot of energy and creating heat. Macs have a thermostatic system that, should it detect a significant increase in internal temps, will clock back the processor to a lower speed to reduce heat generation. If things get too hot, the system may shut down the computer.
Here's where my "knife" reference applies. No M-series Macbook Airs have cooling fans. Nada. They are convection-cooled just like original G3 iMacs which also ran hot. Macbook Pros have one or two fans depending on model. You may be seeing the effects of heavy workloads on a fanless computer.
Can you reduce it? Maybe.
— Make sure all the exterior metal surfaces have air contact. That may mean using a vented stand to expose that nice spread of heat-sinking aluminum that is the case bottom.
— Using an external monitor increases workload.
— Where possible, only keep a minimum number of apps running in the background. Apps playing video, be they adverts, shows, or video-conferencing, are big heat generators.
I wish I had known about the no fan issue with the air. Its my wife's computer and she has always just migrated everything over from the last one to the next. I'm a windows guy and don't know much about IOS except that I did have a couple of dual boot windows/linux machines I played with for a while.
I'll have to give her the good news and go thru the reset process. Only problem I see is that she doesn't keep any sort of file system for her data and has folders scattered all over the desktop.
MacBook Air M4 is painfully slow with spinning rainbow
