There have been no reports of problems, or even slow performance or poor battery life, but now that we have an M1 version available, we can get an idea of how much better the M1 can really make things.Īccording to reader comments at 9to5Mac, playing back 1080p HD videos in the M1 version results in about 25% lower CPU utilization than on the Intel version running through Rosetta 2. To be clear, the Intel version of VLC runs just fine on Apple’s new M1 Macs. Of course, you’re not going to notice this with apps like Microsoft Word or Twitter, since these don’t exactly tax the system’s resources, however the new M1 version of VLC provides a nice example of what a native M1 app can truly do. In fact, how well this works is actually a strong testament as to how blazingly fast Apple’s new M1 chip really is, and most users don’t find running Intel apps on their M1 Macs a problem simply because most of them run just as well as they did before what they don’t realize is that they can actually run much faster. So fans of the popular open-source VLC media player will be delighted to know that the developers have just released an ARM-based version of the app that runs natively on Apple’s new M1 MacBooks and Mac mini, and it looks like it delivers some nice performance improvements.Īlthough Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer does a surprisingly good job of allowing Intel x86-based apps to run on the new M1 ARM architecture, it still adds overhead that’s not necessary with apps that are natively compiled for the M1. Even though Apple’s new M1 Macs can run just about every traditional piece of macOS software without any problems, it’s definitely better to have versions that offer native support for Apple’s new ARM-based chip, and this is especially true when it comes to apps like video players and converters, which put more than the usual amount of demand on the CPU.

Vlc for m1 mac