What you need to know
- Google Drive File Stream will get support for Apple's M1 silicon chip in April.
Google Drive File Stream is being updated to support Apple's M1 Macs in April.
From 9to5Google:
Since the November launch of Apple Silicon-powered Macs, third-party developers have been steadily updating their apps with native support. Google now plans to update Drive File Stream in April with M1 support.Backup and Sync works with Google Drive and Photos. It's a fairly standard client that lets you sync all (or just some of) your files/folders, including images and videos. Meanwhile, Drive File Stream — which is getting renamed — is intended for Workspace customers and features an on demand model.
As the report notes, support for File stream, soon to be renamed 'Google Drive for Desktop', was lacking when Apple silicon launched last year. Google's own support notes now confirm that support for Apple silicon and M1 devices will come with version 47.0 of the software when it's released in April.
Taking advantage of the M1's blazing speed, Google released an Apple silicon version of Google Chrome very shortly after launch in November. From that report:
Google has released a version of Chrome that natively supports Apple silicon and, according to benchmarks, achieves impressive speeds compared to the translated version running through Rosetta 2.When Apple originally released its new M1 MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, Google Chrome did not natively support the new M1 processor and ran through Rosetta 2, Apple's translation software, in order to operate on the new Macs. While many have said even this version ran quite smoothly on the new Macs, the new Apple silicon-supported version of Chrome absolutely smokes it.
The updated version of Chrome is reportedly 2x faster.
