14 DAY TRIAL // Apple Silicon is the next big thing in the Apple world, and the Cupertino-based tech giant itself keeps bragging about the performance of its own custom ARM chip on every single occasion.
And truth be told, the official numbers do sound interesting.
The company says the M1 chip can deliver up to 3.5 faster CPU performance than the previous generation Macs, which is something totally impressive, especially because the older Apple computers were already pretty fast.
“M1 is the first personal computer chip built using cutting-edge 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with an astounding 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip. It features the world’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon, the world’s best CPU performance per watt, the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer, and breakthrough machine learning performance with the Apple Neural Engine,” Apple said.
“As a result, M1 delivers up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning, all while enabling battery life up to 2x longer than previous-generation Macs. With its profound increase in performance and efficiency, M1 delivers the biggest leap ever for the Mac.”
Needless to say, to benefit from the full potential of Apple Silicon users must run apps that are already optimized for the Apple chip. And this means the devs around the world are now working around the clock to prepare their software for the M1 processor.
Firefox is one of the world’s leading browsers, and naturally, it just had to run on Apple Silicon too. Version 84 is the one adding support for the M1 chip, so make sure you update to the latest version to benefit from the native experience.
But here’s what you must do in order to correctly install Firefox on Apple Silicon.
If you’re already running an older version of the browser, you can update to build 84 using the built-in update system, but then it’s mandatory to close the app and restart it to complete the browser update and switch to the Apple Silicon-optimized experience.
“If you’re on a Mac computer with Apple Silicon, you will need to fully exit and restart Firefox after upgrading to Firefox 84+ in order for Firefox to run on the new architecture, which has faster performance and better battery life,” Mozilla explains.
How to check if you’re running the Apple Silicon build of Firefox
If you’re not sure if Firefox has already received the Apple Silicon update, it’s pretty easy to tell if this happened or not right from within the browser.
First and foremost, make sure the browser is already on version 84. After this, you can open the app, and in the address bar, type the following code:
about:support
Look for an entry called:
Rosetta Translated
If its current setting is false, then you are running the Apple Silicon version of the browser. If this flag is set to true, then it means you’re still using the Rosetta emulation and you need to update to Firefox 84 and restart the browser to complete the switch.
Needless to say, all future versions of Firefox would support Apple Silicon, so the steps above apply to all updates after Firefox 84.
In the meantime, Apple is working around the clock with developers to bring their apps to Apple Silicon, and new such updates are released every once in a while. For what it’s worth, the main alternatives to Firefox, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, already come with Apple Silicon support, as both Google and Microsoft rolled out this important update in the testing channels