Been meaning to make a sticky for this… as it still seems to come up quite a bit.

The workaround is to remove the file:
\users\YourUserName\Library\Preferences\com.autodesk.Maya-2011-x64.plist

Or if that doesn’t do it, the other Autodesk files in that same directory.

This won’t fix all Mac performance problems at this time, but it may help some people.
http://www.thnkr.com/wiki/index.php?title=Com.autodesk.Maya-2011-x64.plist

n8skow [FA]

Thank you so much for hosting this thread.  I have been losing my mind trying to find a work around for this problem.
Let me start off by saying I originally bought a macPro about a month ago. It came with build 10.6.5 installed. I have an 8 core with 6 gb of ram. It came with an ATI 5770 card. I am having the typical “Maya slowness / beach ball after doing anything problem.” After some research I was under the impression that the 5870 would fix said problems. I went to the apple store swapped out my card. The 5870 runs 1% more efficiently. I am still having to wait about 5-10 second when switching between wire frame to shaded view or when toggling between transform and scale mode. It’s also happening during a wide array of other instances. I tried deleting the com.autodesk files from my library / preferences folder and still running into the same problem. I feel up against a wall and I am mid project. I need help, im tossing this out to the forums for some love and support. Nobody at Apple was able to help me. Their staff is very nice, very supportive but also very uninformed about anything 3d related. Please help.
Ryan

that sounds like a license problem or your scene. I’m not seeing any sort of delays like that.

Try reactivating Maya - in the Help menu under license if you are seeing beachballing