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To recap, Big Sur is bringing some notable updates like a revamped and customizable control center, a revamped action center, and improvements to Maps, Safari, and Messages. Today, Apple said the software is also tuned to work properly on the company’s new M1 chip. Like other ARM-based PCs, Apple said Macs using the M1 chipset will also wake up very quickly.
macOS Big Sur on M1 compatible machines will also use the right cores for specific tasks like other modern ARM-based devices. – high performance cores for more demanding applications, for example, and high efficiency cores for less intensive functions.
On M1 machines, Safari will run Javascript programs one and a half times faster and is almost twice as responsive as before, Federighi said. Animations will also be fast and smooth, he said, and rendering 3D animations or editing raw video footage will also be fast. This is in part thanks to the new unified memory architecture, he added.
“We built macOS on Apple SIlicon to use the same data formats for things like video decoding, GPU, and display,” so publishers don’t need to waste time and money on convert files.
“Of course we’ve optimized all of our apps for M1,” Federighi said, shouting Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Garage Band, iMovie, Logic Pro, and Final Cut Pro as some of them. One of the biggest issues with ARM-based PCs is app compatibility, and Apple also pointed out its universal apps that will work on devices powered by M1. The company said Adobe and Omni Group will be bringing universal versions of their apps soon, starting with Lightroom next month and Photoshop early next year.
At its event, Apple also showed a large number of developers how easy it was to transition their apps to the Universal versions. This perception of how easy it is to create compatible apps for new machines is key to Apple’s success in switching to ARM laptops. Microsoft’s failures in this space are a clear lesson to be learned.
Existing apps that haven’t been ported to the universal version will find Big Sur’s Rosetta 2 useful. It is software that translates applications designed for x64-86 machines to run on Apple Silicon. It looks like Microsoft’s emulator on Snapdragon PCs and gives developers time to move their apps to the universal platform. Apple said on its developer page: “This is not a substitute for creating a native version of your app.” We don’t know how long Rosetta 2 will stay yet.
From what we’ve already seen, Big Sur is also offering a redesign, although from our preview the changes are subtle and feel less like a makeover and more like a touch-up.
Some improvements are under the hood, like the Photos animations which display faster thanks to the Metal support. Others are only evident when you use new customization options. Now that we have an official release date for the final software, we can expect to test the macOS update – hopefully on one of the new Apple Silicon-powered Macbooks?
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