MACMYND

Apple’s virtual Worldwide Developers Conference for 2020 started Monday, and while it was a given the online-only WWDC would bring updates to the company’s operating systems such as iOS 14, new hardware announcements are rare. This year, though, we got news about Apple’s home-grown processor, an Arm-based variant of chips like its A13 Bionic that’s intended to run MacOS instead of iOS or iPadOS like its iPhones and iPads. A new Mac Mini desktop for developers will be available this week running Apple’s A12Z processor so devs can start changing over their apps to run on the new processors.

Apple’s new chips promise to use less power while delivering the highest performance for the Mac, just as its in-house mobile processors have done for the iPhone and iPad. The Developer Transition Kit will include a Mac Mini powered by the A12Z processor, a 64-bit ARM-based system-on-a-chip designed by Apple and found in the current iPad Pro. The kit will also have 16GB of memory and 512GB SSD for storage with a developer beta version of the company’s upcoming MacOS Big Sur, plus Xcode. 

There will be a complete family of SoCs to run Mac laptops and desktops. Software like Microsoft’s Office suite and Adobe’s Creative Cloud will be able to run on both Intel- and Apple silicon-based Macs using Rosetta 2. Apple also said Apple silicon-based Macs will be able to run iPadOS and iOS apps natively.

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Despite the almost universal rumormongering about a new iMac coming out at Apple’s WWDC 2020, there was absolutely no mention of new hardware products.

Well, except for one.

Apple did, in fact, announce the quite well underway migration of MacOS to what Apple calls “Apple Silicon,” and which most of us call the Arm platform. The company spent the last 30 minutes of its slightly surreal, socially-isolated WWDC presentation time discussing exactly how MacOS will migrate to Arm.

Much of that migration is as expected. Like the migration from PowerPC to Intel a decade and a half ago, there will be a Rosetta translation/migration engine that will allow Intel-based apps to run in emulation on Apple’s chips.

Apple’s Craig Federighi shared that all the apps and demos shown on the Mac during the WWDC keynote were, in fact, Arm apps. And he and Tim Cook announced that Final Cut Pro X was running already on Arm, with work actively being done by Microsoft on Office and Adobe on Creative Cloud.

Of particular note is the fact that Big Sur, the new upcoming MacOS version, will contain support for Apple Silicon when it’s shipped this fall. More to the point, there’s a developer beta of Big Sur available now, and it also has support for Mac Silicon. Apple is readying a set of developer migration resources, including documentation, sample code, and more.

Apple

But here’s where it gets interesting. How do you develop for a new processor architecture when you don’t have it in hand? In years past, we emulated it or built using virtual machines. But Apple is apparently far enough along in this migration to be able to offer Developer Transition Kits, which include a Mac mini “enclosure” with an Apple Silicon-based motherboard inside.

At $500, the price for the DTK Arm Mac mini is surprisingly reasonable. One downside, though. Apple says, “The DTK … must be returned to Apple at the end of the program.” The company says the machine will include 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and run on the A12Z SoC (system on a chip).

Apple has a long track record of seeding developer units to key developers. I was a recipient way back in the day. They weren’t particularly aggressive about return schedules, but they liked to require seed units to be returned as an incentive to get developers actually coding before the return deadline. That might be part of Apple’s reasoning here.

Also: One developer’s favorite Mac coding tools for PHP and web development 

The key point here is this statement from Federighi: “Developers will be able to apply to the program at developer.apple.com today. We will be shipping units starting out this week, so you can get to work.”

So, yeah. Federighi didn’t specify what he meant by “apply” and what criteria would be used to determine who got units, but since this was announced publicly, we can be pretty sure Apple is expecting to send out Mac mini DTK units in quantity.

Are you planning to code for the new Mac architecture? Will you stick with the Mac after it transitions to new silicon? Let us know in the comments below.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.

Has your once shiny and speedy Mac lost a bit of speed? If you are seeing the spinning beach ball more frequently as your Mac struggles to keep up, then it’s time to perform a bit of maintenance to put a little pep back in its step. 

In a previous version of this article, I recommended that you replace your MacBook ($1,700 at HSN)‘s traditional spinning hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD) and add more RAM, but those two maneuvers have become outdated. For starters, MacBooks for the better part of the past decade have featured SSDs so you likely already have one unless your MacBook is ancient. Secondly, MacBooks in recent years feature RAM and SSDs that are soldered to the motherboard, making user upgrades all but impossible. Therefore, the following five tips will help speed up your Mac without replacing any of its hardware.

Before we begin, allow me a word of caution: back up your data before diving in. For Macs, it’s easy. Grab an external drive and run Time Machine. With your Mac’s drive freshly backed up, you may proceed.

Free up storage space

Sometimes, all your MacBook needs is a data cleanup. The more crowded its SSD becomes, the slower it will run. You can check out how much free space remains on your MacBook’s drive by clicking the Apple logo in the top left, select About This Mac and then click the Storage tab. If you are approaching maximum capacity, click the Manage button to free up some space. Here, you’ll see four recommendations for reclaiming free drive space. 

The first lets you use iCloud to offload files, photos and text messages. You can move all the files stored on your desktop and Documents folder from your Mac’s drive to iCloud. And you can store full-resolution photos in iCloud and keep what Apple calls “optimized” versions on your Mac that take up much less space. 

If you snap lots of photos with your iPhone ($699 at Apple), using the iCloud Photo Library is probably this single biggest space saver for your Mac. Keep in mind that you will likely run up against the free 5GB allotment on iCloud and begin to pay for space on Apple’s cloud. Upgrading to 50GB will cost you $0.99 a month, and the two bigger plans offer 200GB for $2.99 a month or 2TB for $9.99 a month. It’s cheaper than buying a new Mac.

The second option lets you optimize storage for the TV app by removing downloaded movies and shows after you watch them. The third option automatically cleans out the trash, removing items that have been sitting in the Trash for more than 30 days. The last option, Reduce Clutter, lets you review large files, downloads and unsupported apps and manually delete those you no longer need.

Perform some First Aid

Next, let’s clean up the applications you are keeping. When you install an app on your Mac, the piece of software arrives as part of a package of files, including permissions that tell MacOS which users can do what things with specific files. 

Over time, these permissions can get changed, resulting in your Mac lagging, freezing or crashing. Repairing these disk permissions, in the most basic terms, amounts to shuffling and re-dealing these permissions so that they return to their rightful place. 

To address this, MacOS has a built-in tool called Disk Utility that lets you run First Aid on your Mac’s disk. It can also repair issues with disk partitions and start-up processes. You’ll need to start your Mac in recovery mode and then follow Apple Support’s instructions to repair your disk using Disk Utility.

Find out which apps are resource hogs

If your Mac acts like it needs a nap every afternoon, when you are at the height of multitasking, there is an easy way to see which of your open applications is using the most system resources. Open the Activity Monitor by searching for it with Spotlight (keyboard shortcut: hold down the Command button while pressing the spacebar). 

The numbers you’ll see are constantly fluctuating, but they show you the amount of CPU and memory resources each app is using. Take a look at both the CPU and Memory tabs to see which apps are using the most resources. Maybe you’ll start using Safari instead of Chrome, for example, if you see Chrome eating more than its fair share of system resources.

Reduce login items

If your Mac is slow to boot up, the problem may be that there are too many applications to open at startup. It’s likely you never set them to launch at startup — they launch by default.

Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and then click on the Login Items tab to see a list of the apps that open when you boot your Mac. Highlight the apps you don’t want to open at startup and click the minus sign below the list of apps.

Keep current with MacOS

Apple releases new versions of MacOS as free upgrades, so there is no reason not to stay current. New versions of MacOS contain performance enhancements and security improvements to keep your Mac running smoothly and safely. To install updates automatically, go to System Preferences > Software Update and check the box for Automatically keep my Mac up to date. 

Using the Advanced button, you can choose whether to download updates automatically or also install them, too. There’s also an option to update the apps from the App Store automatically.