68K to PowerPC in 1994-1998, on to Intel in 2006-2009, and to Apple silicon from 2020. The 68K emulator, Rosetta, and Rosetta 2 that enabled backward compatibility.
Intel
How much faster are the P cores in M3 and M4 chips, compared to late Intel Macs? How do they compare when running threads at low QoS, such as those of macOS background tasks?
A round-up of firmware updates across 15.4, 14.7.5 and 13.7.5, prospects for future macOS and firmware updates, and problems updating to 15.4.
Apple silicon laptops start up (if not asleep) when you open their lid or connect power. Now you can change that behaviour by setting their NVRAM.
Two important catches that can cause a macOS installation to fail in Apple silicon: using the DFU port, and not setting up ownership correctly. Both are explained here.
It’s September 2016. Apple has just released the iPhone 7, with its first big.LITTLE CPU cores, then 4 days later macOS 10.12 Sierra. How does it transition from there to release the M1 in four years?
Did you think your Intel Mac doesn’t support the 20 Gb/s speed of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2? It can do, with a little extra hardware support, just as it will a USB4 SSD.
How to connect a USB4 SSD to get better performance from an Intel Mac. Should you buy a Thunderbolt 4 hub, or a Thunderbolt 5 dock? Do any of these live ‘up to’ their claimed performance?
Did you spot the change that didn’t take place as expected in the 15.2 update this week? It marks the end of the Intel era for Macs.
The CPU view in Activity Monitor is the starting point for tuning the performance of software. Here are its virtues, and a few vices to beware of when using it.
The Eclectic Light Company 