I recently invested heavily in Silhouette products, purchasing a Silhouette Portrait 4, an Electrostatic Sheet, replacement protector sheets, the auto-sheet feeder, and the top-tier license for Silhouette Studio. I was excited to start creating, but I quickly discovered a major problem: the Silhouette Studio software on macOS would not allow me to select any tool except the move tool.After some research, I found that this is a common issue with the software, and there are countless articles and forum posts online discussing the problem. Unfortunately, I learned about this far too late, and by the time I realized it, I was stuck with expensive equipment and software that simply did not work as advertised.Reaching out to Silhouette’s support was a nightmare. It took well over a month to get any response, by which time the return windows had closed. I was left with no choice but to try and troubleshoot the issue myself. As an experienced software engineer, I explored various solutions, eventually finding that running Silhouette Studio on Windows 11 Pro ARM Edition in a virtual environment worked. However, this was a clunky and impractical workaround, significantly degrading my Mac’s performance and increasing power consumption. It was far from ideal. I had to purchase the Windows 11 Pro license just for this. When I informed Silhouette support about my findings, their response was shocking: they refused to provide any further assistance because I was using a virtual machine. I repeatedly stressed that my goal was to get the software working natively on macOS, but they just would not listen. They seemed more interested in proving that the problem could be reproduced on Windows – something completely irrelevant to my situation.After much frustration, I finally managed to get the software working natively on macOS. However, I soon noticed that the app was consuming over 50% of my CPU overnight while simply idling in the background. This spike in power usage translates to approximately £5 a day, forcing me to constantly close the app when not in use. The app takes several minutes to start each session. It’s unbearable and renders are very powerful machine useless. Despite repeatedly requesting to speak with management about my issues, Silhouette consistently ignored my requests. They claimed their lead developer was on leave – but given how long it’s been since they updated their Mac build environment, I’m convinced they don’t have a lead developer. The software doesn’t even run properly on Apple silicon, which has been out for five years!Silhouette’s customer support has been nothing short of appalling. They don’t listen, they don’t read, and they haven’t made any effort to resolve the issue or offer practical solutions. It’s clear they don’t care about Mac users or about their customers in general.If you’re a Mac user or value good support, save yourself the headache and choose a different brand. Go to Cricut instead – their products are more reliable, and their support actually listens.*edit*I made one final attempt at getting help and was as clear as possible this was about native macOS and the reply?‘We understand how frustrating it can be when software doesn’t work as expected. I want to point out that using Silhouette Studio in a virtual machine isn’t officially supported, which can lead to the problems you’re experiencing. For the best performance, we recommend running the software on a compatible operating system.’The woman is truly stupid and needs to learn to read.
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