Preview crashes on El Capitan

Seems to me that the problem here is a general decline in Apple standards (apologies in advance for this anti-apple post but honestly I'm severely unimpressed). Now it's kind of fair that they haven't released a patch for this yet as software testing is a difficult thing. It's also kind of fair (and I think I'm being very generous here at best, this is the point of software testing and it's clearly not just me having this issue) that as this is only affecting some users and they didn't catch it in time.

What really does annoy me though is that I've yet to see any indication that Apple remotely cares that they've clearly created this bug. I raised this bug on the 6th November with them, a good week after I'd already been dealing with this ridiculous bug. Since then I've had one request asking for information (which I've provided) and nothing more. Not even an apology for the issues I've been having. I pay a lot of money for Apple products to not have this problem, I may not make that mistake in the future.

In the meantime, do I lose faith in Apple completely (I'm very close) and just install Linux instead. At least then I'm pretty sure I'll be able to read PDF's no problem, which at the moment is 90% of what I want to do and it astounds me that this is such a problem. I would accept this if I felt remotely like Apple were trying to help, so the Office bug was a catastrophe for them it seems (clearly they know where there market is), they do everything then can to help there. Are there really that few number of people who read PDF's? I doubt it, more likely it's not upsetting business's so why worry. I have never used Office in my life, I am currently writing my PhD thesis in LaTeX and at times it's like bashing (no pun intended UNIX bods) my head against a wall. Pathetic Apple, totally and utterly pathetic.

I also point out that the only reason I upgraded to El Capitan is because my Mac was crashing every week on Yosemite. Apparently it's recommended to upgrade to the latest software early, is it really too much to ask that it might actually work? Well apparently the answer from Apple is twice yes. I'm starting to think Windows 10 may be better, never would have believed that 5 years ago.

Incidentally, for those who want to just read PDF's I recommend Chrome. I know it's not what it's meant for and frankly it s-u-c-k-s (blocked for some reason) but I've never found this crash yet. But then Chrome is not intended as a PDF reader, so some of the other things I like to use are unavailable, for example being able to jump to a particular page in the document instantly. Am I asking too much Apple?

@strottos exact same situation here. Writing my PhD thesis on my mac and this PDF problem is very *** annoying to say the least. Now I've learned not to typeset so much (using Lyx in my case) and also learned to recognize the preview/skim bug early so I rush to press Cmd+Q before even getting the beach ball spinner, then I typeset again.

I feel exactly the same. I used to work on Linux because I couldn't stand the windows philosophy where you need to install an anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-xxx before even start to do something useful. But on Linux I had to go nuts sometimes if I needed a software that was not readily available in the distribution. So I decided to pay the extra money and go Apple to have the Linux stability and the luxury one-click apps installation. Now the stability part is not true anymore for me, at least since Yosemite. El Capitan only confirms the general quality decline. If I'm not wrong, Cook presented El Capitan at the keynote as an under the hood security and stability release. Well...

I agree with what you guys say...

This is clearly not cool.

I think I must have sent close to 50 crash reports, tried to get in contact with Apple though the feedback page. But not a word about this major issue has been heard from Apple.. I have tried to point them to this thread.

Not sure what else one can do.. It's now been a full month of crashing for me.
Perhaps we should start a twitter storm? How about:

#CrApple

#Crashingtosh

😉 😐 😠

Apple clearly seems to be in decline...

Just did:

https://twitter.com/AnisBoubakerCA/status/671819322382155777

I suggest posting some example PDFs online so other users can test to see it crashes on their Mac. Make sure the file does not contain any personal info.

You can use a free DropBox account using this referral link. https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTU3MTI2MTk

I've already hit my limit for giving me free space, but it will give you a big of extra space if you use a referral link rather than a direct download.

If you prefer the direct download use this link: https://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=mac

Diane, the thing is, the problem doesn't immediately show up the moment you open a PDF. It's entirely possible that users who aren't heavy PDF users might never run into it. I just tried opening a directory of 15 PDFs totalling around 500 MB and it didn't happen (simultaneously, as in "IFS=$'\n'; for i in *.pdf; do open $i; done"). Sometimes that triggers it pretty quickly with a bit of moving around within documents, not always. Point is it can be a bit complex to widely test for.

anis79, that account you tweeted at is definitely not affiliated with Apple.

For me, it happens when I scroll through a lot of pages in a PDF file (especially pages with lots of text it seems). So, Preview will crash if I use my mouse to scroll from page 1 to 100. However, I find that I can avoid a crash if I scroll through 10–20 pages, close Preview, and then start scrolling again.

For me, it seems to be connected to how text is rendered.

I have the same problem with PDFs. It happens most often after some time of idleness. When I stop using Preview for a while, and try to start scrolling after, it often crashes. Same spinning beachball until I force quite.

Interesting thing. Exactly the same thing happens when using the PapersApp. That app uses the same rendering base 8or whatever it's called) as Preview I think.

Hope a solution is available soon, because this is making me crazy. I rely very heavily on Preview and Papers, they're among my most important research tools.

True, it does usually happen at some point while scrolling or selecting a page from a thumbnails sidebar.

I'm running Public beta 5 of OS X 10.11.2.

I just used page down and scrolling in a PDF with 251 pages. I did not crash.

I have Office 2011 and Office 2016 installed.

Users that are crashing should test in a new User. You can use Guest user or create a new User in System Preferences. Put example files in Shared folder for testing. Testing in a new User will quickly tell you if the problem is system wide or if it's your User's folder that contains the problem.

Your Hard Drive/Users/Shared

After you log into the new test User, drag from Shared (it actually copies) your test files to the Desktop.

Remember to drag it back from Shared when you log into your main User .

CREATE A NEW USER

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Users & Groups.

Switch to the New User by logging out/in or use Fast User Switching.

Only default Apple apps will be in the Dock in the new User. Go to Applications to open other apps you might want to test.

dianeoforegon, many did that already (see older posts). Some even had the crashes with a brand new laptop. I believe you're the first to report using the beta of 10.11.2. Hopefully they fixed it and this beta will come out quickly.

When discussions get really long, it's too time consuming to go back over all the old posts to see what has been mentioned.

It's usually a week after a beta before it goes public. If you want to enroll in the beta, you can sign up for the BETA here:

https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram

How to leave the OS X beta program

1 Open System Preferences and click App Store. If you’re like me, you may not remember or have even ever visited this preference pane.

2 For Macs that opted into the beta program, there’s an option labeled Your Computer Is Set to Receive Pre-Release Software Update Seeds. Click Change.

3 Click Do Not Show Pre-Release Updates.

The pre-release option disappears and you’re no longer shown these updates in the App Store nor notified. You can opt back in through the page linked above if you want to resume testing early releases.

Same problem here with Preview and PDF posts. Just updated El Capitan and now trying to open a PDF completely crashes my 2015 Macbook Pro. Very poor. Hope there's a patch very soon as I use PDFs all the time for business and general filing.

Just happened to me again--and it happened yesterday as well. Very frustrating to having to re-arrange Preview windows into different spaces after force quit.

Same problem. I have MacBook Pro retina 13. Just installed El Capitan. This version of preview installed - Version 8.1 (877)