I retract my earlier post.
I just shut down and restarted a few times, and with he exception of one instance in which it happened extremely quickly and the wheel didn't appear, I've seen it, albeit briefly enough to miss if I hadn't been paying very close attention.
I'm now forced to guess that I've been missing it on other occasions for precisely that reason.
My 2010 MacBook Pro is like that since I installed a SSD. The wheel appears very briefly before shutdown.
I did finally test this on my iMac after booting into my other account and the same issue occurs –– no wheel on shutdown/restart.
Next time I have to restart, I'll try booting into Safe Mode and see if it appears properly then.
