How are you liking the new DaVinci Resolve 17 so far? Well watch out, there’s a new one coming right behind.
No sooner had we finished writing up the new DaVinci 17 than a rock came through the window with a note telling us an update is on the way which will add Universal app support for M1 powered Macs. Universal support means applications will run on Intel-based Macs as well as Macs with the next-gen silicon starting with M1.
This was kind of expected, given Blackmagic Design’s affection for the Apple platform.
This new release of DaVinci, 17.1 will be available for Macs only, it will be compatible with Big Sur (as you might imagine) and the Beta is available for download now from the Blackmagic website.
DaVinci Resolve 17.1 supports the M1’s unified memory architecture, which enables GPUs and CPUs to access memory without the need for PCI Express transfers. Apple has optimized the M1’s graphics performance on Apple’s Metal graphics API giving the Resolve users an immediate boost in performance. The companies say up to five times better.
DaVinci’s press release for 17.1 has all the details on Resolve 17 as well as the new update.
What do we think?
We think Blackmagic could have waited a couple of days and had one press conference to announce Blackmagic Resolve 17 and the Blackmagic Resolve 17.1 Beta, but no.
There’s more news on the Apple front too.
Microsoft has mentioned that programs running on Rosetta 2, the emulator to accommodate programs written for Intel processors will have a slower initial opening time on the new Apple silicon as the software is optimized for M1. After that apps will open normally but they won’t get the performance benefits of the new M1 architecture.
Adobe hopes to have an M1 version of Lightroom available in December 2021 and a Universal version of Photoshop in 2021. This year at Max, there was evidence of considerable work going on for the iOS mobile devices including for Lightroom, Photoshop, and Illustrator. It was probably a good time to optimize for M1 as well.
It might not be easy for all developers of legacy applications to port to Universal, but what’s interesting on the flip side is that the Upcoming Big Sur version of Mac OS iOS apps will be able to run iOS apps. We’re expecting to see quite a few new apps being written for the new Apple M1 machines from iOS app developers.
