Is it (hopefully) my inexperience, the Blender Version, bugs or have I simply made a terrible mistake?

My projects aren’t packed but still far from being simple. That’s not what I expect an Upgrade to be like. Issues with the viewport and unexpected crashes are pretty existential though. wouldn’t happen on my 2012 MBP with maya. I also experienced difficulties in the viewport with “moderate” poly count models (200-400k) and unexpected crashes when trying out low scale simulations and animations following tutorials. My first animation renders in cycles turned out kind of okay - but took a long, long time even with little to no challanging content (I think). I’m a Blender Newbie trying to switch from Autodesk Maya 2017/Arnold to Blender/Cycles as a now freelance digital artist using Adobe CC and all sorts of musical software constantly along the way - after 6 years with Maya on my mid 2012 MBP I finally managed to upgrade to a new machine (MBP 2021, m1 max, lots of gb ram, osx monterey) expecting the finest rendering results in a matter of seconds - You probably won’t be surprised about how disappointed I was lol - the render settings are set on what is available: metal. The dearest apologies if you find this topic redunant as it was previously discussed - I couldn’t find topics helping with my issues. Hello to all you beautiful Blender Artists!

Autodesk maya m1