11 great apps ready for your new 2020 M1 Mac

This year is the launch of the first Macs powered by Apple’s own silicone instead of Intel chips. As can be seen from our reviews of the M1 MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini, these machines are incredibly powerful and offer poor fast performance. This is especially true for apps designed to work on and make the best use of Apple’s latest technologies.

In this regard, this year’s Mac apps list will therefore focus on some of the software already optimized for this new era of Apple hardware. Last year’s choice is just as relevant and useful today as if you were on an Intel machine. But if you’re one of those new speed devil Macs (or giving a gift), these are some great ways to see what they can do.

We have summarized our favorite and most used games, programs and entertainment. Check out our app selection for iPhones, Android phones, Windows computers, en M1-equipped Macs; our favorite mobile games from Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass; and our best choices for game computers, the PS5, Xbox One and Series X / S, Nintendo Switch, en VR. We also listed our favorite streaming programs Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus, en Netflix; some great science books; and exciting new podcasts. (Note: the price was accurate at the time of publication, but may change.)

Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro is one of the very best editing programs for the Mac. It has the usual set of RAW editing tools, presets, sophisticated layer editing and photo filters, making it easy to control every detail of your images. What sets Pixelmator Pro apart is the automatic adjustments it can make through a machine learning algorithm trained with over 20 million photos. The latest update also offers greater flexibility across the interface, so you can put everything where it makes the best sense for your workflow. And in a world where a lot of creative apps require a subscription, I appreciate the one-time price of $ 19.99 for everything this app gives you.

The iPad app from Pixelmator Pro ($ 4.99) is also great – especially if you like to retouch things with your Apple Pencil, and so I edit a lot of my review photos.

Corpse room

Corpse room

Corpse room

Lightroom is the first of Adobe’s hugely popular applications to be compatible with Apple’s M1 silicone. And for many people, this is the default choice for editing and organizing their photo collection. Now the app has been updated to harness the power of Apple’s M1 chip to make editing even faster.

Remember that this is the regular version of Lightroom; Lightroom Classic is not originally offered on M1, but Adobe says there are no known issues running it through the Rosetta 2 translation. In my experience, Lightroom Classic feels a lot like the performance on Intel Macs.

A native M1 version of Photoshop will follow sometime next year, but Adobe has not given release periods for other programs like Premiere Pro.

Google Chrome and Firefox

Google Chrome

Google Chrome

Two major browsers, Chrome and Firefox, have already been updated to work on M1 Macs, so you should not experience any issues or irregular performance degradation when using them. In the case of Chrome, just be sure to select ‘Mac with Apple chip’ when downloading it, otherwise you will end up installing the Intel version, which will still work but not as efficiently.

Microsoft Edge currently has M1 support in its beta channel, so it should not be too far either.

Fantastic

Fantastic

Fantastic

If Apple’s built-in Calendar app does not do this for you, Fantastical may be the more advanced alternative you are looking for. The natural language analyst can turn normal sentences about your plans into a perfectly formatted appointment entry. You can configure your calendar view exactly as you like, and Fantastical also has widgets that allow you to appear in the “Today” bar of your Mac. There is a basic free version; the Premium version, which starts at $ 4.99 per month, offers additional features such as the ability to add tasks, full screen views and calendar synchronization.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365

Microsoft has quickly updated its entire Mac suite to fully optimize Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and OneNote for M1. You should therefore notice very fast achievements when you do work with one of them. I’m sure many people would prefer it over Apple’s own productivity programs like Pages and Numbers.

Twitter

Twitter

Twitter

Hear me out: the Twitter app for macOS has actually gotten really good. It took some polishing and debugging to get to this point, but Twitter for Mac is now full-fledged, responsive, and not nearly as likely as it used to be. If you haven’t given the original Twitter app a try yet, this is a great time.

If you still prefer a third-party app, Tweetbot remains the best, and it’s universal and M1-ready as well.

iMazing

iMazing

iMazing

iMazing is an excellent device manager for exploring everything on your iPhone or iPad. You can create backups (unlike the usual Apple), and download your messages, photos, music and more directly to your device.

But shortly after the launch of M1 Macs, it was also discovered that this software could be used to “sideload” and install iPhone applications – even those that have not yet been selected – for macOS. If you are experimenting with this, just expect that not everything will work flawlessly.

iMazing also recently added the option to clearly see which applications on your system are universal or developed for Intel.

Barman

Barman

Barman

If you have a clutter from a menu bar at the top of your Mac screen, Bartender can help you get things in order. With this app, which has been a favorite macOS utility of ours for many years, you can hide everything neatly under one icon on the menu bar to ease the chaos. You can also set triggers so that certain icons only appear at the times when they make the most sense.

Neural Mix Pro

Neural Mix Pro

Neural Mix Pro

Neural Mix Pro is an app that lets you separate and listen to the different parts of a song – song, instrumentation and beats individually. You can also change the tempo of a song without destroying the pitch. A handy tool for DJs and musicians, and it also just appeals to my inner music nerd. The end result can sometimes sound a bit phase-y (like most vocal software removal software) and have some artifacts, but it works better than other programs I have tried for this purpose. Just know that it is expensive compared to other recommendations here; you have to pay $ 50 to unlock the program.

BetterTouchTool

BetterTouchTool

BetterTouchTool

If you have the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Apple’s M1 chip, that means you also have the love-it-or-hate-it touch bar above your keyboard. There are ways to customize it in macOS settings, but BetterTouchTool is a tool that gives you even more flexibility on where to go when you use the Touch Bar, so you can quickly tap shortcuts for your most important applications.

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