Originally Posted by artie505
I think I'm missing something.

Doesn't your first statement say that you can make bootable M1 clones while your second one says you can't?

Or am I totally misunderstanding "bootable volumes on M1 Macs?"
I don't think that you have totally misunderstood, rather we have different understandings of what is meant by "clone". Bootable volumes can be installed on M1 Macs using the installer and then migrating the data from another installation, Time Machine, or a CCC or SD copy of the Data volume, but I think of that as an INSTALLATION. You cannot CLONE in the sense of the classic ASR, CCC, or SD replication of a complete bootable system in a single operation.

Personally I have not found Mike Bombich's work around to be at all satisfactory and after a couple of attempts to use it, I now use the installer and Apple's Migration Assistant to create a bootable external drive, but that is a NEW installation.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein