I had the exact same problem last night. Got through paying for CA state, the program froze with the mac wait icon every time I hovered over the window. I waited 10 minutes and it was still frozen. I then force quitted the app, then relaunched and the same "please wait while it checks for any updates" then crash or quit.
I've tried moving the program to the trash, emptying trash, reinstalling.
I've tried the above then restarting the mac.
I've tried manually cleaning all app files, using a helper program to clean all app files.
I've tried saving the session data saved and doing the above.
It's always crash after that "updates" window.
