Apple’s New Apple Silicon Processors, the New Operating System Big Sur and Boxcryptor
Summary: For Mac users, a lot is changing right now. The first devices with the new Apple Silicon Processor M1 are currently reaching customers all over the world and the new operating system Big Sur is available since Friday, November 13. The most important thing: Boxcryptor runs on Big Sur as well as on Macs with the new processors.
All news from Apple can be found here in detail: The Full "One More Thing" Event: Welcome Apple Silicon
(English language). We also recommend taking a look at the video of the latest (virtual) Apple event:
https://youtu.be/5AwdkGKmZ0I
Big Sur 11.0 and Boxcryptor
We are very proud to again provide a compatible Boxcryptor version for our users just in time for the launch of the new Mac operating system. Please download the latest version of Boxcryptor for Mac.
Apple Silicon
The predecessors of the new ARM processors, which are now on everyone's lips under the new name Apple Silicon, have been used in smartphones and tablets for years. An important reason for this is that ARM processors are much more energy-efficient than their x86 counterparts from Intel or AMD due to the architecture used. And of course, this is a decisive factor, especially for mobile devices.
While x86 processors offered advantages in speed for a long time, ARM processors have caught up strongly in this discipline in recent years and especially the new representatives A14 and M1 from Apple offer an unprecedented performance per watt.
Apple has now equipped the first MacBooks and Mac minis with Apple Silicon processors M1. Users will clearly feel the change, especially in terms of battery life. There is talk of up to 20 hours of power.
Why Do You Need New Software for New Processors?
Currently, many software and app vendors are busy establishing compatibility with the new Apple Silicon processors. This is necessary because ARM follows a different instruction set than the x86 processors from Intel.
Background: Every software is written in a specific programming language. To run the software, the instructions for the processor must be translated so that the processor can read from them which operations it should perform. So-called compilers are available for this translation process. Until now, the compiler for software running on the Mac had to translate the program code only for Intel processors. With the new Apple Silicon processors, however, it must now also provide a translation for ARM instruction sets. Depending on the software, this also requires adjustments to the program code.
Of course, we made early efforts to obtain one of the first developer devices with Apple Silicon processors, the so-called Developer Transition Kit (DTK). This enabled us to adapt Boxcryptor to the new hardware and test it extensively.
Thus, all those who already use the new hardware from Apple and want to use it with Boxcryptor will receive a suitable version of Boxcryptor from day 1. Right from the start, we offered an experimental version. After finishing our tests with the new final MacBook and Mac mini models, we proudly released the new official version.
