Preparing for Apple Silicon Laptop
I started preparing for the new MacBook Pro by making sure that I had Universal Binary versions of all the apps I use on a daily basis. A lot of them were simple updates - and the latest versions would run natively on the Apple Silicon chips. But a few need a little help.
There are a few where I simply need to download the Apple Silicon version of the app:
and a few I read are in the process of creating native Apple Silicon versions:
and a few I've sent off support requests for to see if they are planning on delivering an Apple Silicon version of the app:
- Base
- PDFelement 7
One that I was a little surprised about was Dropbox. They have iOS, and iPadOS clients, but not a Universal Binary client - or even one that's specific to the Apple Silicon architecture. Seems odd that being the case, but it was a chance for me to drop my usage of Dropbox, not renew my $120/yr subscription, and just move all the files to iCloud+. After all, I'm already using iCloud, and with the upgrades to iCloud+, and the cost being less, it seemed like a good move.
So I moved all the files, let them sync up to iCloud, and then removed the files from Dropbox. Then I simply logged out of each device, and then my laptop, and finally cancelled by subscription on the website. It was interesting that they wanted to keep me at the Free Tier, so it seems there's no easy way to really wipe out your Dropbox account, but this is good enough. It's off my machines, and I won't have to worry about the emulation on the new laptop.
In all, not bad... most are converted. In order to update Homebrew, I think I'm going to uninstall the complete Intel Homebrew install, and then start by putting back only those packages that I need - Postgresql, Node, and AdoptOpenJDK. I think that will be far easier than trying to migrate all the Homebrew tools I have now, most of which I really no longer need.
It's going to be an interesting transition. 🙂
UPDATE: Some news about Homebrew and Apple Silicon. I did a little digging to see what the status was on the support for Apple Silicon for the packages I needed to have on Day 1. It's in interesting mix.
- Java - it seems that AdoptOpen JDK has been renamed to Temurin, and the only ARM version is JDK 17. This means no more backward support for JDK 8 or JDK 11. This is going to then mean that I need to make sure everything is working OK, but I'm hoping it won't be bad.
- Postgresql - the latest is Postgres 14, and it's ready to go on ARM. Good. 🙂
- Leiningen - it appears to be OK, as it's just a script, so I think it's fine.
- jq - this is ready to go on ARM. Good. 🙂
- nodenv - this is ready to go on ARM. Good. 🙂
I'm sure there will be more support as the Mac machines all move to Apple Silicon, but it looks like I'll have only a few questionable apps on Day 1.