It seems that Auto Pilot is what holds up everything upon loading an image. Without it active, the user could immediately decide which module is needed/wanted and get right to work, since “The Big 3” are already included in one app.
I only use PAI on the M1 MacBook Pro, and even there it is unusually slow. I’ve given up using any Mac with an Intel processor for this. I also tried an older i7 PC build with dedicated GPU (which is usually pretty fast) and it too struggled with PAI.
As for the sharpening halos, especially when combined with denoising – I called that out very early in the beta process.
The good news is, Topaz devs always keep improving the apps so we just need to hang in there 
