Indesign and the apple M1 chip

InDesign is virtually unbearable to work with on the new M1 iMacs. I have a 24" iMac with 16GB of unified memory and I'm currently working on a product catalog. I can barely scroll through the document and I've only placed 2 pages worth of products thus far. The catalog is 60 pages long so I have no idea how I'm going to make this work effeciently. I've turned off pre-flight and switch between fast and typical display performance. This is an absolute nightmare!

It runs fine on my MacBook Pro M1 Max, but has tones of problems on my M1 iMac. Everything from crashing, text disapearing (then having to shake the text box for the text to come bacl) to text not showing up at all when I type. Not being able to save. They just updated it this morning and made it worse. 

I love my laptop, but when it comes to documents I love having the big screen.  This is really a pain. 

There is no defined ETA for the native apps supporting the M1 chip, it is being worked upon though. See the following article for more details

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/apple-silicon-m1-chip.html

-Manan

Adobe is actively working to make versions of all current applications that are native to the ARM processor which is part of Apple's M1 and future “computer on a chip” systems. No date has been announced yet for such releases.

That having been said, I personally believe that unless you are primarily looking for bragging rights about having “the latest and greatest” new toy from Cupertino, it might be prudent to wait a while until at least the next round of models are unleashed by Apple. Beyond resolving both operating system and application problems (and synchronization of same), the current M1 chip-based computers have two severe limitations that are fairly problematic for serious graphic arts production:

Small screens – The MacBook Air has a 13.3" screen. The MacBook Pro has a 13" screen, neither of which are reasonable for the type of work you are planning. Even a 15" or 16" Intel-based MacBook Pro is cutting it close. You would definitely need an external screen for either of these 13.x" systems to be at all usable.

Insufficient Memory – These initial models support only 8GB and 16GB versions of the M1 chip and this memory is shared between a number of components on the M1 chip. I think that most InDesign users and especially those users who are simultaneously running multiple applications (such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat in addition to InDesign, not to mention some type of mail client and browsers) would recommend at least 32GB of memory. 

Rumors are that more heavy duty configurations of the Mx-based MacBook Pro with larger screens, more memory, and larger SSDs are on the horizon. I believe that waiting a while will be rewarded significantly in terms of hardware that really meets your needs, less “issues” with MacOS, and ARM-native applications.