"The beach ball "on iCloud Finder..." is the result of the inescapable delay created by your internet connection to the iCloud drive and independent of any I/O issues with local drives.
Question on that one Joe: But that did not happen ever in 6 years on the imac 27"..
Probably because the iMac was too slow to be aware of the delay.
Today had totally unrelated meeting with expert Photoshop printing and mentioned the M1 Beachball, and he asked, "Did you use migration assistant?"
He said he had all same crazy things happen with Photoshop and more, migrating over. He said tons of stuff wrecks havoc bringing over from Intel to Silicon and he gets many calls from others saying same thing. Recommendation was same as J, Etracheck: Clean install.
IN short nothing else really fixes the beachball.... JUst clear, migrating from INtel to M1.. big issues. Funny how nothing online or no Apple tech know about that... or mention it much.
All I can say is I have migrated from Intel to M1 using migration assistant to retrieve the data from a clone volume, and another time from Time Machine and I did not encounter anything like you and he describe.
That said: in my mind, if do it: then just screenshot every app and every setting I've made, ir workspace, docks etc etc etc, and then don't bring anything over at all, which is SO tempting to do, I can't even fathom amount of stuff right now that would have to be redone. But you agree, the key if do that is to RECREATE everything one keystroke at a time. The one thing kill me is Word Style I have. Have not done those in years. Would not even know how. ... Macros etc....And workspaces, and accounts.. etc etc... ANY other warnings on that? But you agree if do it, don't give into temptatioin to drag over a preference or some folder with old workspace, styles , macro, keyboard shortcut... redo it all.
I have installed, upgraded, reinstalled, numerous times including installing and re-installing over an existing system, nuke & pave installs using Migration Assistant to recover data from another computer, a data volume clone, and Time Machine backups.
In one case my data recovery consisted solely of setting up the user account and turning on iCloud sharing. Other than a day or so of slow running while the system sorted everything out and the occasional incompatible app, I have never had a problem such as you describe. Much of my success I ascribe to having all my settings, passwords, Libraries,
etc synched with iCloud.
If your system is full of antiquated detritus, a rebuild such as you describe might be an alternative, but the 500+ unique passwords in my keychain are enough to make that alternative very unattractive. (I do clean out the keychain regularly to keep it to a manageable size.)
