14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released major improvements for its Remote Desktop Mac app, finally adding native support for Apple Silicon.
Launched in the fall of the last year with much fanfare, Apple Silicon allows for substantial boosts in terms of performance, and since then, developers have been working continuously on updating their applications to run natively on M1-powered chips.
Microsoft Remote Desktop version 10.6.0 therefore comes with native support for Apple Silicon, as well as macOS 11 compatibility fixes.
According to Microsoft, this new update, also includes “fixes to address mispaints when decoding AVC data generated by a server-side hardware encoder and updates to improve interoperability with current and upcoming features in the Windows Virtual Desktop service.”
The Apple Silicon push
Devices running on Apple Silicon are capable of reaching new performance records when native software is being used, and Apple itself praised the capabilities of its custom ARM-built chip versus the previous configurations of its computers.
“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.”
And of course, Microsoft is very committed to making its software benefit from all these improvements on Apple’s platform, so most of the products have already been updated or are in the process of getting updates to run natively on the M1 chip.