Apple introduced brand new Macs based on their own M1 silicon chip during the ‘One More Thing’ event on Nov 10. The company’s in-house built chip is based on ARM’s architecture, and all developers targeting the new devices are working on transitioning from Intel’s x86 to ARM. Google released a new version of their browser Google Chrome with native support for M1 chips, but soon retracted the update reportedly due to unexpected crashes.
If and when Google releases the update again after fixing the known issues, the browser can be downloaded directly from Google Chrome webpage. If you have already installed the browser, it will be updated automatically. Users on the Google Chrome webpage can choose between two versions of Chrome: Mac with Intel chip and Mac with Apple chip.
Apple’s M1 chip based on ARM architecture is a big transition and it is one of the reasons that made tech reviewers caution new buyers about purchasing the devices based on the M1 chip.
All applications previously made for Macs were built to be run on Intel chips and developers will now have to rewrite code to support the new platform, and this will take time. Apple announced this transition in June, so that developers could start moving their apps using Apple’s Universal App Quick Start Programme. However, while some programmes have already been updated, it will take some time before we have an Apple alternative for every Intel application.
One of the notable applications that are currently in the migration process is Adobe’s Photoshop. Yesterday, Adobe released a beta version of Photoshop to support Apple’s M1 chip. The Adobe Creative Cloud lineup is considered one of the most important software collection for designers and artists, and the company plans to release its apps with support for the silicon chip by early 2021.
Apple’s new lineup of Macs which come with the M1 chip are the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, and the MacBook Pro. The latest macOS release BigSur comes with a native support for the silicon chip.
Apple claims that their M1 chip provides considerably faster performance and better battery efficiency compared to regular Intel chips of the same range. The company says that their chip provides up to 2X faster CPU performance and 3X CPU performance per watt. The M1 chip is an SoC which houses an 8-core CPU, an 8-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine for machine learning, all in one single chip.
