Firefox Updated With Native Support for M1 Macs, Mozilla Touts 'Dramatic Performance Improvements'
Mozilla today released Firefox version 84 with native support for Apple Silicon Macs with the M1 chip, touting "dramatic performance improvements" over the previous, unoptimized version of the web browser.
Specifically, Firefox now launches over 2.5 times faster and web apps are now twice as responsive, according to Mozilla.
If you are using a Mac with the M1 chip, Mozilla says you will need to fully exit and restart Firefox after upgrading to version 84 in order for the browser to run natively on Apple Silicon. Mozilla promises not only faster performance, but also better battery life.
Firefox 84 is also the final version to support Adobe Flash.
Apple recently shared a list of popular apps optimized for M1 Macs that are available in the Mac App Store, such as Pixelmator Pro, Adobe Lightroom, Affinity Designer, Darkroom, Fantastical, OmniFocus, BBEdit, Instapaper, and Twitter. Apple boasted that apps optimized for the M1 chip deliver "game-changing speed and capabilities."
Last month, Apple released its first Macs with the M1 chip, including a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini.
Related Stories
Malware specifically tailored to run on Apple's M1 chip has been discovered, indicating that malware authors have begun adapting malicious software for Apple's new generation of Macs with Apple silicon.
Mac security researcher Patrick Wardle has now published a report, cited by Wired, that explains in detail how malware has started to be adapted and recompiled to run natively on the M1 chip. ...
Apple's more powerful "M2" chip is set to come to a wave of new Macs, bringing significant performance and efficiency improvements to a range of new models, according to recent reports.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously said that Apple is working on higher-end Apple silicon chips that are expected to "significantly outpace" the performance of the latest Macs that still contain Intel chips,...
This week, Adobe updated Photoshop with official support for Apple silicon, offering customers native support on Apple's latest M1-powered Mac computers. In an interview with Computerworld, Photoshop Product Manager Mark Dahm promoted official Apple silicon support, saying that Photoshop runs 50% faster on an M1 MacBook compared to last year's Intel-based MacBook.
Speaking to the team's...
Docker today announced that it has launched a new version of Docker Desktop for Mac with Apple silicon support, allowing developers to use the Docker software on the M1 MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini.
Prior to launching, the version of Docker Desktop for Mac with M1 compatibility has been available as a technical preview, and Docker says that testers have found the software to be...
Apple is working on a high-end version of the Mac mini, featuring a more powerful Apple silicon chip and extra ports, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In a wide-reaching report, Gurman explained that Apple is developing a more powerful version of the Mac mini, positioned as a high-end version of the current M1 model. The new Mac mini is expected to use the same chip as the...
We're just three days away from Apple's annual developers conference, WWDC, but rumors are still divided as to whether new MacBook Pro models with Apple silicon will be announced at Apple's opening keynote on Monday.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty weighed in on the matter in a research note shared with MacRumors today, claiming it's "likely" that Apple will announce at least one new...
Just a few days after Apple's first Macs with its custom-designed M1 chip became available to order, the first orders are now beginning to ship to customers, with deliveries set to begin arriving to customers on Tuesday, November 17.
While most pre-orders are still in the "processing" or "preparing to ship" stage on Apple's website, UPS is beginning to show some MacBook Air orders as "in...
Apple's custom next-generation Mac processor entered mass production this month, claims a new report today from Nikkei Asia. Tentatively dubbed the "M2" after Apple's M1 chip, the processors take at least three months to produce and could begin shipping as early as July in time for incorporation in Apple's next line of MacBooks, according to the paper's sources.
The next generation of Mac...
Apple recently shared a list of popular apps optimized for Macs with the M1 chip that are available in the Mac App Store, such as Pixelmator Pro, Adobe Lightroom, Affinity Designer, Darkroom, Fantastical, BBEdit, Instapaper, and Twitter. "Macs with the new Apple M1 chip offer unprecedented performance, and developers can optimize their apps for the M1 to deliver game-changing speed and...
Apple is readying its more powerful, next-generation "M2" chip for redesigned MacBook Pro models, according to recent reports.
According to Nikkei Asia, Apple's next-generation custom silicon chip for the Mac, tentatively dubbed the "M2" chip, entered production in April. The processors take at least three months to produce and could begin shipping to Apple as early as July, in time for...
Top Rated Comments
Congrats team firefox.
Thanks for M1 build!!
(Apart from that it's extremely fast, reliable, doesn't use a lot of memory, but that's all second to the icon.)
If in two years Apple has a system to replace the MacPro, that would mean there are server-class chips in the horizon.
If Microsoft ported over stuff like SQL Server to that, it could mean tremendous cost savings for power and cooling.
That in turn could be the end of Intel as we know it.
But even the hardware available now is just too good for devs to ignore, so I expect full support from most Open Source software within a year.
And I expect most Microsoft employees regardless of which division they work for have now taken a look at it and asked themselves, once again, „Why can’t we do this?“.
This might be a „MacOS X Tiger“ moment again, where Apple has delivered on all the promises that Microsoft made.