Apple’s Macs M1 are known for their speed and for good reason: They, wake up immediately and go through chores, often without sweating. You might think that your MacBook Air M1, MacBook Pro, iMac, or Mac mini M1 maintain that level of performance no matter what you throw at it; as it turns out, though, the applications you use have a big effect.
A bit of M1 history
You may notice that some apps on your Mac M1 open instantly and work like butter, while others bounce off the dock before launching a bit slow. There is a reason for this; not all applications are designed for M1. For the uninitiated, M1 is Apple’s first chip designed for its Macs; essentially, Apple now makes its own “brain” for its computers.
For years, Intel manufactured all the integrated processors and graphics cards for Apple, while AMD produced dedicated graphics cards for certain machines. Apple combines its own processor, graphics card, memory and more into one high-efficiency chip. But it’s not just the hardware; Because Apple manufactures both hardware and software for its Macs, it can tweak and optimize that experience in the same way that most companies can’t.
The applications are optimized for M1 or Intel
Of course, application developers can also optimize their applications for M1. When they do, they can run third-party applications as well as applications made by Apple, which provides an excellent computing experience. The applications are divided into two versions: “Universal” (sometimes “Apple Silicon”), which are optimized for both Intel and M1-based Macs, and “Intel” which are optimized for Intel machines.
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You can still run Intel applications on a Mac M1, they just have to go through an emulator called Rosetta 2. This experience is not optimized for M1, so you probably won’t get the performance of Intel apps that you do with Universal apps.
How to check if your applications are optimized for M1
It’s easy to check if your applications are Intel or Universal. Click Apple in the upper left, press and hold the Option key, and then choose System information. Under Software, click Applications. Here is a complete list of applications on your computer. Look at him kind tab at the end; this will show you if an application is Intel or Universal. If you want to sort the list by this metric, click kind.
The fact is that you may have Intel applications on your Mac I could be universal applications. If you’ve migrated your apps from a previous Mac other than M1, for example, they may have reached their Intel version. If there is an application that you know has an M1 version, such as Chrome, for example, you can uninstall and reinstall it to run the M1-optimized application on your Mac. Just go back to System information a make sure the M1 version is on your computer.
Also, when downloading apps from the Internet, see if they have options to download the app for M1 or Intel-based Macs. Be sure to download the M1 version, if so. If there is no option and the app appears as “Intel” on your Mac, there is probably no M1 version.