14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since Apple announced Apple Silicon in November, the community of software developers has been hard at work on adding support for the new chips in order to take full advantage of the performance improvements they provide.
Today, it’s the turn of VideoLAN, the company that brought the world the super-popular VLC media player, to announce support for Apple Silicon.
Starting with version 3.0.12, VLC runs natively on M1-powered Apple devices, while also adding a series of other improvements, such as support for the RIST protocol, fixes for crashes with Direct3D video filters and for the audio distortion experienced with starting playback on macOS.
The full changelog is available here, while the latest version of VLC for macOS can be found here.
Apple Silicon performance
Apple’s figures concerning the performance boost that Apple Silicon brings are absolutely impressive.
“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. 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,” the company said last November when it officially introduced the new chip.
And the Cupertino-based tech giant won’t stop here. The company is already believed to be working on the very first upgrade for the chip, with the debut expected to take place as soon as the year.
The ARM push has also caught the attention of other companies, including Microsoft, as the Redmond software firm is also believed to be exploring its own custom ARM processor.