The holidays are a time to take stock of where we are, where we've been and where we're going. Most of all, we need to celebrate the fact we are still here.
The most important news is the growing developer interest in the new Apple silicon chips. Not just the M1 chip, but what it portends for the new Macs coming next year. What I am seeing is that, while support for macOS Big Sur is growing quickly, the real effort is in getting apps to support Apple silicon natively. Final Cut already does, however, both Adobe and Avid are working to create native apps.
Last week, Adobe released beta builds of Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush and Audition with native support for new M1 Apple chipsets into public beta. These are not full-fledged apps. Limitations for the initial Premiere Pro Beta on Apple M1 hardware include third party integrations, such as Transmit reference monitoring hardware, plugins, extension panels, and control surfaces. Still, this is good news for Adobe users on future Mac hardware.
Avid announced on July 15, 2020, that "Avid is working to understand the impact of the Apple Silicon announcement related to Intel and future Mac's and Big Sur support. When we have information to share, we will deliver it at that time." Since then, Avid has not updated its timetable.
macOS 11.2 (a key update to Big Sur) entered beta on Dec. 16, but there's no word on when this update will be released. I plan to upgrade once this version is publicly available.
As with tech in general, development happens in its own time. Rumors are nice, but we can't take action until a new version is actually released. Our industry uses dozens of media creation apps every day. If you plan to upgrade to Apple silicon, please check with the developers to make sure they support it on your system.
