In this lesson, we're going to discuss Apple, silicon based Macs.
We're going to talk about some of the unique features of this new hardware technology.
We're going to discuss application compatibility.
We're going to talk about Recovery OS and we're going to talk about some of the new security features,
including the concept of ownership.
So first, let's start by talking about what Apple silicone is.
So you've probably heard of the Apple and one processor.
If you're into technology like I am and pay attention to some of the tech news out there, this has
been sort of rumored for a number of years.
And just this past fall of 2020, Apple began shipping the first Macs with the Apple Silicon processor
in it.
And basically what this is, this is a move away from apple purchasing chips and chip architecture from
Intel, and they're instead developing everything in-house based on an ARM technology.
That's the same technology that's used in the series processors that are in the iPhone and the iPad,
since this is a single system on a chip architecture.
There's a lot of things that are integrated into a very small footprint in the M1 chipset.
You get shared memory for both RAM and video memory.
The graphics processor and the main CPU and the Solid-State Hard Drive storage are all on the same basic
basically piece of silicon.
So it's very high performance because it's an integrated system and also allows for a much faster processor
performance with a lot less power requirements per watt and and heat output.
So this is going to drive a lot of the new designs of laptops and desktops from Apple to be thinner,
lighter, more efficient from power perspective and a lot quieter on your desk.
So we've been sort of transitioning to Apple Silicon.
Over the past nine months or so, and Apple plans to really complete this through the year 2022.
They started in 2020 with some of their lower end machines, entry level consumer machines like the
MacBook Air or the Mac Mini.
And they've recently released the latest, the lower end iMac model, the twenty four inch iMac model
that replaces the twenty one and a half inch Intel iMac.
And they'll be, you know, continuing to ramp up new variants of the AM1, the M1, X, the M2 and
so forth over the next couple of years as they are able to replace the intel chips in the more high
end Macs with these newer, higher and Apple silicon processors.
So there's some advantages, some drawbacks, as I mentioned before.
The advantages include significantly lower power consumption, better performance per watt of power
and smaller physical footprint with sleeker hardware design and better cooling options as well, since
it's not nearly as as hot at, you know, high processor volumes than the intel chip that it's replacing.
But we do have some drawbacks, one of which is that, you know, because it's a system on a chip,
everything is on the same board.
So gone are the days of being able to upgrade your ram.
There are no ram slots on an M1 Mac.
If you buy it with eight gigs RAM, it's going to have eight gigs RAM for the life of the Machine.
Sixteen gigs as well.
And currently they're topping these out at 16 gigs and build to order configuration.
But that is expected to increase here over time as some of the more end machines become available.
The other thing that that happens with these major processor changes we've seen this years ago with
Power PC to Intel and now Intel to Apple, silicon is the need for software to be updated to support
it.
And so we're right in the middle of that process or change and that software update to take advantage
of it.
But does take developers a significant amount of time in many cases, especially for the higher end
pro apps to get fully transitioned.
There are some new security enhancements that we also get.
There's three that I'll just kind of talk about briefly.
The first thing that you have is file of all unified login experience.
And basically what that means is that if you if you've got firewalls set up on an Intel Mac, one of
the things you'll notice is that the machine boots up and you actually have to sign in to a file vault
enabled account.
And then the the system then finishes its start up process after that with without the silicon.
You actually load file vault after as part of the rest of the operating system loading up.
So the machine actually boots and then the sign in time is significantly faster because if you're signing
in and file, well, it's already running.
It's the whole operating system is already booted.
So you'll find that to be a nice feature if you're very interested in a fast log in time.
There are full security mode, which is the default, and then there's reduced security mode.
And one of the things that you'll see when you boot into the options menu in an Apple Silicom Mac is
the ability to go in and make those adjustments.
So this has to do with software that is able to run on the device.
And if there are certain things like kernel extensions that, you know, you're going to enable and
allow.
So depending on the third party software you're running, you may need to change it to reduced security
mode.
You know, I've used applications by like did you design like Pro Tools that has kernel extensions that
are required to interface with some of their external hardware.
And, you know, you can't do that in full security mode currently.
So a lot of this is probably going to sort itself out as software becomes more updated, but wanted
to make that, you know, make you aware of that, that kernel extensions and other things that really
talk directly to the hardware through the M1 and the Apple silicon architecture.
You do need to reduce the security mode.
And then we have the concept of ownership.
And so ownership is essentially the owner of the device, meaning and if you bought a brand new MacBook
Air, let's say, and you're going through the setup process and you're enabling things like, fine,
my I guess it's fine by now, but it's, you know, fine, my Mac, let's say.
And you want to set that up so that you're the person that you know.
Lead with a because you bought the device.
You actually are set up as the owner of that device, and I would highly recommend if you are in a situation
where you are a company that deploys a lot of Macs, maybe you buy a bunch of these machines and then
provide them to employees or students or you have them in your computer labs.
Definitely review the documentation out there about ownership and make sure that when you are onboarding
your new machines before, you know, sending them out with your employees or your students or putting
them out into production, that you've gone through the necessary steps to claim ownership of the device.
You'll need that if you need to ever unlock the device, if it's been remote, locked it with with the
find my tool or using an MDM tool to lock it down, you're going to want to make sure that, you know,
if you want to recover that machine, that you truly are the owner of the device.
So real quickly, moving into application compatibility, there are really two types of applications
out there when it comes to working with the Apple silicon based machines.
You've got Intel device or Intel applications or applications that are built to run on Intel hardware,
and then you have universal applications that are compiled to actually run on either Intel or on Apple
Silicon.
And so the difference here is that an application that was built to run on Intel is going to run in
a compatibility mode on the Apple silicon machines using a technology that Apple calls Rosetta, too.
And it basically is just a very fast runtime recompile or that can translate those Intel instructions
to Apple silicon instructions and then operate the application.
So the easiest way to to really check and see if your device, if your applications are Rosetta to or
universal, is by using the get info command and looking under the general section here, as I've got
in this PowerPoint slide, and just look and see under kind, it's going to say it's an application,
but it'll either say parentheses, intel or parentheses.
Universal universal applications will actually run in full speed on either Intel or Apple silicon machines
as when they go to run, it will load the appropriate app, you know, code to to run at the full,
full speed and optimized performance.
So I talked a little bit before about booting into the options menu.
And so this is a little bit different.
I think if you've gone through our lesson about keyboard shortcuts and things like that, when it comes
to booting up an Intel Mac, there's a whole bunch of different alphabet soup type shortcuts that you've
got to learn holding down, you know, option T or P and R or hold down the option key.
So there's a whole lot of different things that really streamline that on Apple silicon.
What you can actually do here is just turn off your machine and then do a cold boot holding down the
power button.
And after you hold it down for a bit until the screen loads up, you'll see your boot options to either
boot to your internal hard drive or this new option that comes up that says options.
And it looks like kind of a settings icon.
So when you do that, you click on options that actually takes you into what Apple's calling recovery
OS.
Inside recovery, OSJ, there's a number of things that kind of just it's a one stop shop for a lot
of the stuff that on the intel architecture was a variety of different keyboard shortcuts that would
bring up certain things.
So the first one is the whole reinstall.
This would be more of your classic recovery tools.
So time machine system restore install a new copy of Mac OS or reinstall Mac OS launch safari so that
you can use it as a browser and be troubleshoot what's going on with your machine.
Use disk utility to reformat the internal disk or, you know, partition it, add new volumes and things
like that going in and changing the start up security.
Whether you can, you know, where you're going to boot the machine up to and whether or not you're
going to turn on or off the and the enhanced security from fallout or redo security mode, having access
to the terminal there as well, so that you can run any Unix commands that you might need to in a pre
boot state.
And the new one I want to point out here is shared desk, and this is basically the same as target desk
mode was on the intel architecture, if you remember, target this mode.
Basically, what you can do is hold up, boot up your machine, hold it on the letter T, and it would
actually allow you to connect to a fire wire or a thunderbolt cable between two max and then the machine
that has the tKey held in would actually show up and mount the hard drive on the other Mac on the desktop
as as an external storage.
Then you could, you know, repair the disk or collect data if if you've got the encryption key for
it to mount it and interact with the data that's on there.
It's a common administrative tool for recovering machines.
So in an hour on Apple, silicon based Macs, we now have shared disk.
And when you boot up the machine and you choose shared disk from recovery OS, it works very much the
same.
You can plug in your, you know, Thunderbolt cable between the two devices and then authenticate and
be able to access that remote disk from the one Mac on the other and do the same kinds of things you
would have done with target disk mode.
And then the last little item here that I want to point out is the revive or restore functionality.
So this is actually kind of cool, starting with the Apple Silicom Max.
Very similar you can with an iPhone or iPad.
You can actually connect a machine, a Mac to another Mac that's running Apple Configurator, too,
and use these tools to restore the Mac OS firmware, which is, you know, recovery OS and all the other
things that are part of the firmware or revive it, which would be updating it to the later version.
So I'm not going to demo this.
It wouldn't be all that interesting, honestly.
But if you want to check out Apple's support guide about this, I've got the link down here below.
And basically, you know, this is when you would want to use something like this.
Is it you're putting up your Apple, Silicom Mac and there's a hardware issue with it can't even get
into the recovery.
This will allow you to try to revive it.
And you want to try that first and it'll update the Mac OS firmware from Apple Configurator to that
Apple, Silicom Mac.
And if that fails, then you can try to do a restore, which would blow away and completely restore
the Mac OS firmware.
And then that should, you know, bring the machine back to life and then you can move forward with
getting into recovery OS, you know, reinstalling Mac OS and getting the machine back into production.
So just wanted to mention that that is as a new feature that's unique to Apple's Silicon Macs.
But, you know, that's something that they are interested in or need to do.
There's some good guides out there for that.
Now, I won't run through that here in the interest of time.