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Apple M1 chip FAQ: All your questions answered

Apple M1 small chip giant leap website screenshot 001

The M1 chip. A brand-new piece of technology announced by Apple. This tiny but powerful chip is a significant part of a new lineup of Mac computers. But what exactly is the M1 chip? What does it do, what are the benefits of it, and should you look into buying a Mac that has one? This M1 chip FAQ has answers to these questions and more.

How to use the VoiceOver Utility to customize VoiceOver on Mac

VoiceOver Utility General

With VoiceOver on your Mac, you can perform tasks, take actions, and do everything you need to do while experiencing a visual impairment. We’ve walked you through the basics like turning VoiceOver on and off, setting up your modifier keys, and working with app windows.

Here, we’re going to explore customizing VoiceOver on your Mac with a tool called VoiceOver Utility. In this one handy spot, you can change the voice, magnify your cursor, and adjust the announcements you hear. And since many of our upcoming VoiceOver how-tos will direct you to this location, it’s good to become familiar with it. Ready? Here’s how to use VoiceOver Utility to customize VoiceOver on Mac.

MacX Video Converter Pro: convert, download, compress, edit videos at lightning speed [sponsor]

With the latest iPhone 12 family of smartphones offering improved video recording in crisp 4K resolution, the iPhone remains the best pocket camera for capturing high-quality video on the go. But with that power comes a greater responsibility in terms of efficient processing of those video files on your computer. To help with that, a company called Digiarty is offering a powerful app for effortless 4K UHD video processing, called MacX Video Converter Pro (free trial is available). With it, you can convert, edit, download and resize your media with a hardware-accelerated performance that makes the most out of your Mac or Windows PC's CPU and GPU.

How to force universal Mac apps to run under Rosetta emulation instead of natively

Apple provides the enhanced Universal 2 binary feature to its developers who wish to ship macOS apps that pack in code for both Intel and Apple Silicon systems. In other words, a universal binary runs natively on both Apple M1 and Intel-based Mac computers because it contains executable code for both architectures. However, certain edge cases may justify running a native Apple Silicon app under Rosetta emulation, and we show you how it's done.

Lack of eGPU support in M1 Macs may only be temporary

Mac with eGPU

As iDownloadBlog reported a few days ago, the new Apple Silicon-powered M1 Macs do not support external GPUs (eGPU), but that could be a temporary hiccup. That's because macOS Big Sur has bee discovered to detect a connected eGPU over Thunderbolt 3, although it's not exposed to the user or actually accessible for compute and graphics tasks.