EndNote X9 extremely slow on MacOS 10.13

Yes, unfortunately EndNote for the past two major version upgrades seems mostly to have been abandoned as far as performance issues are concerned. They make a couple of aesthetic changes, slap a new version number on it, and try to charge folks a hefty pricetag for it. What is worse, some people who have purchased EN 20 have said they’ve actualy begun taking away certain capabilities!

X7 was the last version that really worked well for me and if I could just dust it off and make it work for Big Sur and the current version of Word, I would. Since then, versions have given me beachballs, freezing, sluggishness, etc. A real mess that I am positive could easily be reproduced on the machines used to beta-test by the developers. It honestly seems they literally just can’t be bothered anymore.

Unfortunately, this is not a trajectory that is specific to EndNote, whose intellectual property rights/brand has changed hand from one large company to another at least a few times in the past decade. There’s a tendency to milk good products of every last drop of revenue while maintaining skeletal support and occasionally releasing nominally “new” releases to project the image that the product isn’t Abandonware.

I’m not holding out much hope for a major turn-about anytime in the near future, and that’s just sad.