These “behind the scenes" benchmarks of the M1 GPU are again impressive to say the least. Is the Mac bound to become a gaming machine?

Here is the list of apps that I use and that are ready for my upcoming M1-based Mac mini. The list is growing almost on a daily basis. I didn’t expect it would go that fast. The prospect of much faster Macs could trigger an even faster adoption by developers. Apple’s bet is paying off.

U = Universal. U-C = Universal, Catalyst-based port from iPadOS. U-S = Universal SwiftUI based app, C = Non universal but compatible.

My wish is to install Universal apps only as I don’t want to trigger Rosetta 2.

• [U] Omnigraffle
• [U] Pixelmator Pro
• [U] Affinity Photo
• [U-C] Universe
• [U] Transmit
• [U] Little Snitch
• [U-S] Aviary
• [U] Darkroom
• [U] Apple’s iWork
• [U] Apple’s iMovie
• [U] NewsExplorer
• [U-C] Twitter
• [U] Screens
• [U] Ulysses
• [U] Things
• [U] Fantastical
• [U] AirBuddy
• [U] CleanShot
• [U] Reeder 5
• [C] iStats Menu
• [C] DayOne
• [C] Carbon Copy Cloner
• [C] Timing

Comparing the performance of a 2017 iMac to a M1-based Mac mini, based on Geekbench numbers. Sometimes, a picture, oops, a graph is worth a thousand words.

My current experiment of macOS Big Sur on a 2017 MacBook Pro is not very impressive. I can feel the difference compared to Catalina.

In light of Apple’s recent products introduction, consider the recently introduced Microsoft Surface Go. A Windows laptop that starts with 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB SSD, 12.4” touch screen using the Intel Core i5 which will get you 13 hours on battery for 550$. If you want a 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, the price goes up to 899$, but you keep the same lame CPU.

Now, compare this to the new MacBook Air (a much more powerful laptop) for 899$ (education pricing), same amount of RAM and SSD, 5 hours more of battery life, a much better non-touch display.

How is Microsoft supposed to compete against Apple in this market now?

They simply can’t, and they should start to worry.

What’s wrong with Medium’s “reading time" stat? Here, this story “Thoughts on ‘One More Thing’ - The Ultimate Mac Transition”, got 34 views so far, 12 reads, 2 two responses, 4 fans, 53 claps but the total reading time is 50 seconds? What’s wrong with that? 12 reads x 11 min estimated reading time = 132 minutes. Someone wrote: “very informative talk”! Did this guy really read my story or he is trying to get some attention? 🤨

Why is exposure notification taking so much battery power? Do you experience the same thing? I’m running on iOS 14.3b1 but it was the same behaviour under previous iOS releases. I’ve been monitoring this for a while. I don’t want to turn that off. Oh, and by the way,amI alone who doesn’t find very intuitive these graphics?

My favorite RSS reader News Explorer (read my review here), is already supporting macOS Big Sur, M1-based Macs. The updated News Explorer UI on Big Sur is much cleaner in general. I’m on the list to test the iOS 14 friendly version, adding support for Widgets and I can’t wait to see their implementation.

Big Sur update is certainly big. Full of goodies and the enabler for the next decade of excitement for the Mac.

Ars Technica put together a massive review of Apple’s macOS Big Sur. It is quite impressive. It’s exactly the kind of review that I’m looking for. Visuals and internal architectural features are exposed, explained but rarely justified, only when it serves a purpose of contextualizing the matter. Kudos for the author: Andrew Cunningham

Now, I’m so anxious to get this thing running on my upcoming Mac mini. Big Sur is not only a refresh of the user interface but also an important sum of things under the hood that is being upgraded and modernized.

Maybe I’m wrong with my perception of the disaster Apple created with the introduction of widgets in combination with notifications center (read my comment here on micro.blog). After reading the excellent MacStories.net review of Big Sur, I finally saw the combination in action. Notifications are see big improvements and look closer to what we get on iOS.

Still, Apple lost the opportunity to make widgets available in their own space, something like what we used to have, the Dashboard. It’s ridiculous to confine widgets in such a small space, considering modern screen sizes. Oh, and I hope the interaction feels much more fluid on M1-based machines because the last time checked on a 2017 MacBook Pro, with Big Sur beta 10, it was super laggy

Picture credits: from MacStories’ review of Big Sur.