troubleshooting docker and podman on MacAirbook M2

I have an old MacBook Air running 

• macOS Catalina v10.15.7 with a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 and 4GB of RAM
• `docker compose version` = 2.2.1
• `docker --version` = 20.10.11

I have a new MacBook Air running 

• macOS Sonoma v14.6.1 with an Apple M2 and 8GB of RAM

Podman on the new MacBook M2

Downloaded 

https://github.com/podman-desktop/podman-desktop/releases/download/v1.15.0/podman-desktop-1.15.0-universal.dmg

from https://podman-desktop.io/downloads

Confusingly, 1.15.0 provides Podman 4.9.0 (?)

As per https://stackoverflow.com/a/76488304 I tried

% podman machine stop; podman machine start

Waiting for VM to exit...
Machine "podman-machine-default" stopped successfully
Starting machine "podman-machine-default"
Waiting for VM ...
Mounting volume... /Users:/Users
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/Users’: Read-only file system
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /
Error: exit status 1

I then tried

% podman machine stop
Waiting for VM to exit...
Machine "podman-machine-default" stopped successfully

% podman machine rm
The following files will be deleted:
...
Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y

% podman machine init                                         
Extracting compressed file: podman-machine-default_fedora-coreos-41.20241215.2.0-qemu.aarch64.qcow2: done  
Image resized.
Machine init complete
To start your machine run:
	podman machine start
    
% podman machine start
Starting machine "podman-machine-default"
Waiting for VM ...
Mounting volume... /Users:/Users
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/Users’: Read-only file system
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /
Error: exit status 1

Running as root doesn't help

% sudo podman machine start
Error: cannot run command "podman machine start" as root

As per https://stackoverflow.com/a/71576242 I tried

% podman machine init --cpus=4 --disk-size=60 --memory=6096 -v $HOME:$HOME
Extracting compressed file: podman-machine-default_fedora-coreos-41.20241215.2.0-qemu.aarch64.qcow2: done  
Image resized.
Machine init complete
To start your machine run:
	podman machine start

% podman machine start
Starting machine "podman-machine-default"
Waiting for VM ...
Mounting volume... /Users/myinitials:/Users/myinitials
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/Users’: Read-only file system
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /
Error: exit status 1

As a consequence, while I can run the container,

% podman run -it --rm localhost/ui_v8_website_flask_neo4j_webserver /bin/bash 
WARNING: image platform (linux/amd64) does not match the expected platform (linux/arm64)
root@4d006ef73e19:/code# 

I am unable to mount the local directory

% podman run -it --rm -v `pwd`:/scratch localhost/ui_v8_website_flask_neo4j_webserver /bin/bash
WARNING: image platform (linux/amd64) does not match the expected platform (linux/arm64)
Error: statfs /Users/bhp/version_control/allofphysicsgraph/ui_v8_website_flask_neo4j: no such file or directory

Uninstall Podman

podman machine stop podman-machine-default
podman machine rm podman-machine-default
podman machine rm
sudo /opt/podman/bin/podman-mac-helper uninstall
sudo rm /etc/paths.d/podman-pkg
sudo rm -rfv /opt/podman
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Podman\ Desktop.app/
sudo rm /var/run/docker.sock
rm -fr ~/.local/share/containers/

Docker on the new MacBook M2

Downloaded https://desktop.docker.com/mac/main/arm64/Docker.dmg from https://docs.docker.com/desktop/setup/install/mac-install/