BR T5.3.9 on Mac OSX 10.7.5?

[catfingers]

hi I'm having enough hell with this to revert to T4:

So randomly - this happens: the rainbow-spinning cursor (beachball of death) starts up when I do the following:
* click on a looped clip in a track
* drag in a sample from the Finder.

The Tracktion session cannot be saved - I can't bring up the 'force quit' dialog in the Finder & shutdown/restart don't have any effect. Tracktion shows 1% usage with 100 tasks running. Several times, no other open files can be saved (the apps report that save failed in their various ways).

On other occasions, automation curves seem to be locked in one or more tracks - i.e. cannot add or edit points, unless I quit & re-open the session.

Only common factors I can think of are:
* NI Maschine 2.1.3 is open or has been opened at some point - usually to export samples into the Finder. Always standalone - never as a VST.
* Neyrinck Ney-fi app is open or was opened at startup & quit later, even if not used
* wifi is on & possible Chrome open or used at some point
* Soundflowerbed was loaded at startup

The system is a 2009 Macbook Pro (core2duo 8gb RAM, Mercury Electra 6g SSD) osx 10.7.5 with Presonus firebox.

A