I just sent my 22 y/o granddaughter my Canon 7D MK ii and 100-400 is ii lens. She has only used a cell phone for photos before. I sent the camera set up for wildlife photography. I need recommendations for a good source of learning about DSLR camera basics. She is a smart gal (and like most young folks nowadays) has a great background in computer software. Thanks for sharing great resources. I have a Tamron APSC 11-16mm lens I will also send her as she is interested in night photography also.

I post photographs for many reasons. First let me explain, I am a picture taker. I take spur of the moment shots in field situations that most people call snap shots. I am not, and never want to be, considered a photographer.

I post because my ego needs stroking. I post things that I find interesting that others may too. I post because occasionally I can bring someone joy or get a chuckle out of them.

I am also an image creator. I take several images, often from different sources, combine them to produce a picture. Please take note of my terminology, I take images and combine them into a picture, not a photograph.

I post in several Forums. Where I post depends on the subject. Photographs generally go in Photo Gallery or Birds where they get the most looks (remember ego). Occasionally a photograph will go to one of the Specialty Forums where I hope to get honest critiques, my ego be damned, in an attempt to improve my skills.

Composite pictures generally go to one of the Specialty Forms for meaningful critiques of my effort. If I create a composite that I think is really cool I may post it to Picture Gallery (remember ego). Occasionally I will construct a composite that has a "social message". Being careful not to cross the line and get moved to The Attic I will post it in the Photo Gallery

I only recently upgraded to Ventura, and will take my time going to Sonoma. I never jump on a new OS upgrade right away. As others have said, new OS versions often take a few updates to get the kinks out. It sounds like your computer has a quirky relationship with Apple Mail. I've had that on my MacBook Pro before too.

If you have yet not tried removing the accounts and adding them back, that is easy and worth a try. Otherwise, I'd encourage you to keep on pestering Apple Support till you get a resolution. And if you haven't done so yet, I'd post on the Apple forum boards specific to the email problem.

Thanks! Unfortunately, I think you've stumped the Burk...

It *sounds* like you are using the right hardware and up-to-date Ventura.

But be sure your computer meets or exceeds all the specs, not just memory and storage. The GPU must have Metal support and you need 4 GB of GPU memory for 4k or greater displays. (I'm pretty sure that 2019 machine does.)

There could be some sort of corrupt preference file or cache file buried in your hidden [Username]/Library/Preferences folder. I had that with Lightroom 12 Preferences. Deleting a certain file took care of the problem.

I would open a chat with Adobe Support and let them guide you from here.

As for your email delays, most mail client software only polls the server periodically. Some software has a "Check for new messages:" feature you can set to various intervals. Apple Mail has that option. See Mail Settings dialog, below. The drop-down menu offers Automatically, 1, 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes, or Manually, as choices. You may be able to change the Preferences setting for better performance.

I had a problem with AppleMail- it froze with Monterrey on my MacBook Air when I tried to send an email with attachment. It had worked a couple days before. My IT consultant couldn’t fix it, said to delete my two email accounts and reload (no joy) and said upgrade to Ventura. Did that and was unable to reload either account. She couldn’t upload an account either on her Air, realized there’s a BIG BUG 🐛 in AppleMail (built into the IOS). This was mentioned in Apple forum and she would get a fix from Apple, then let me know how Apple responds. Haven’t heard. I don’t know if this relates to your mail anomalies.
BTW, my consultant say Sonoma, since it’s a newer IOS, likely still has bugs 🐜 needing fixes, so don’t upgrade. It irritates me to get notices for Sonoma updates.

My standard response is to upgrade to the latest version your hardware supports. EXCEPT if you have needed software that won't run on it. Usually, software vendors keep pace with OS releases, but sometimes there's a bit of a lag.

I have a number of macs, ranging from a 2015 11" MacBook Air to a 2022 M2 MacBook Pro. That means I'm running everything from Monterey (12.1) to Ventura (13.4.1) to Sonoma (14.1). I'm not overly impressed with the newest gimmicks... er, "features" Sonoma brings to the table, but as long as everything works, I'm happy.

Things to check:

> Do you have the minimum resources for your applications? Consult the software vendor's website to be sure. The requirements have crept up there for a lot of recent upgrades.

> Is AT LEAST a third, and preferably HALF of your startup drive empty? On Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs, the less memory you have, the more the system relies upon the SSD for swap memory paging. If your drive is more than 2/3 full, the system may not have enough places to put data, and may bog down or crash. I hit the wall on a huge project once, and it wasn't pretty. Offloading hundreds of gigabytes of data to a hard drive helped. Buying a FAST external SSD helped a lot more!

> Are you running an older Intel Mac that is barely capable of running Ventura?

> Do you leave your machine on overnight, in sleep mode, so all the automatic "housecleaning" routines can run? MacOS runs a bunch of UNIX utilities in the wee hours to keep things tidy. If you turn the Mac off, they seldom get run!

> Have you checked the SSD with Disk First Aid, part of Disk Utility?

> Have you tried creating a startup volume on an external SSD, to see if that runs properly?

> Is all of your data properly backed up on a Time Machine external drive, one other drive, and a cloud service?

If you don't know how to do some of these things, Google search is your friend. So is the Apple Support line at 800-275-2273.

I've been running Ventura since version 13.2, with no significant issues, on a 2020 M1 MacBook Air (16 GB memory, 1 TB storage).