When you play, close down all unnecessary apps and settings. To run Fornite better on Mac, make sure you install a clean version of the game. However, there are ways that you can certainly make the experience better.It's shockingly responsive, as if it's awaiting your next command like an over-eager puppy. Recently, I was fully hooked on the newly-released AR game Pok&233 mon Go, which is dramatically different from the traditional games.My first thought while using the M1-powered MacBook Air, surprisingly enough, was that it felt like an iPad Pro. Now the company is basically bringing that same cohesive experience to Macs.Huge sound is a big part of gaming on your Mac, PC or PS4, and these fantastic-sounding and incredibly comfortable Siberia 350 headphones from SteelSeries are the best way to get your game on.It's like seeing the web for the first time - one unencumbered by the cruft of increasingly sluggish desktop browsers.If you can, close Firefox or Chrome on your Mac while you game, or at least close them before you game and start a fresh session if you like to surf the web or research while you play. Sites load up almost instantly, and scrolling through complex pages feels effortless. Safari, in particular, delivers the best web browsing experience I've ever had on a computer.
Additionally, you can kill off some of OS X's features that you know you never use. Disable OS X Features You Never Use. One of the best ways to keep your Mac in speedy shape is to clean. And during my testing, I never once encountered the dreaded spinning beachball of death, which I've grown all too used to seeing on my work-issued MacBook Pro from 2017.Gamers can use emulators on their computers to make some games easier to play. Again, I felt a very iOS-like sense of smoothness here. There's no hesitation when swapping between apps, and as I mentioned, it wakes up the MacBook Air immediately when you open the lid. You can feel that while merely browsing around the finder and system menus. Mac shortcut for mission controlGoogle's browser significantly lags behind Safari when it comes to loading web pages, but again that's also in line with what I've seen on every recent Mac. Its new Rosetta 2 emulator kicks in to run those older apps, and from my experience it works seamlessly, without any noticeable slowdown or hiccups.Chrome and Slack launch quickly through Rosetta and don't exhibit any of the slowdown I’m used to on Intel Macs. Apple isn't abandoning apps built for Intel's x86, though. It's a major difference under the hood, too, as the M1 is an eight-core chip based on an ARM design, which are typically found in mobile devices. I mainly used it for some 3DMark benchmark comparisons, but it's a nifty feature to have. Whereas the M1 MacBook Air handles just about every app without a sweat.And thanks to the M1 chip, you can also add iPhone and iPad apps to the list of things you can run on your Mac. Some apps just wouldn’t run at all. Here, Apple is leagues ahead of Microsoft, which failed to make Intel emulation work well on the Surface Pro X. I was able to run Apple Arcade titles like The Pathless with ease at 60fps, everything ran as smoothly as on my gaming PC. Apple's SOC offers up to 8 GPU cores (the base MacBook Air only has 7), and from my testing it blows away Intel's integrated graphics. So you can forget about having Instagram running alongside your inbox.The M1 also gives the MacBook Air something it’s never had before: decent gaming performance. Developers can choose to keep their apps out of macOS entirely, something both Google and Facebook have already done. Epic stopped updating Fortnite on Apple's platforms in August, amid their ongoing legal battles.Dell XPS 13 (2020, Core i7-1065G7, Iris Plus)Dell XPS 17 (2020, Core Core i7-10875H, NVIDIA RTX 2060 Max-Q)ASUS Zephyrus G14 (AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS, NVIDIA RTX 2060 Max-Q)For our review, I tested the pricier $1,249 M1 MacBook Air configuration with a full 8-core GPU, 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. I wouldn't bet on playing too much of that game on the MacBook Air for now though, as it's incredibly unstable. In comparison, it ran at around 40fps with Intel’s Iris Plus graphics on the last MacBook Air. But it still feels genuinely strange to have an ultrathin machine like the Air running complex 3D titles without breaking a sweat.It even managed to play Fortnite at around 60fps while running at 1,400 by 900 pixels with high graphics settings. It just relies on a heatsink and passive cooling, like the iPad. I can only imagine what Apple's SOC will look like on beefier systems like the MacBook Pro.Another shocker: the MacBook Air delivers this performance without a fan. These are stunning results, and it's even more impressive when you consider this is the weakest version of the M1. The MacBook Air was only outmatched by some of Intel and AMD's fastest chips — the i7-10875H and Ryon Dell's XPS 17 and ASUS' Zephyrus G14 when it came to multicore performance. It even beat out Intel's NUC 9 Extreme, a machine that's basically a portable desktop. Make Your Better For Gaming Series Intel ChipThat's around five hours more than the last Intel-based MacBook Air, and it puts the system among the longest lasting PCs we've tested.I haven't talked much about how the new MacBook Air looks and feels, but that's because it's the same as the last MacBook Air we reviewed. So much so that it lasted 16 hours and 20 minutes during our battery benchmark, which involves looping an HD video. Apple has proven that slim machines can both be powerful and run efficiently. Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 from 2017 was one of the last fanless PCs we reviewed, and while I liked that machine, its Y-series Intel chip was undoubtedly sluggish. While it’s far faster than the last MacBook Air, that's still a solid machine that'll last you for years. But should you dump your current Mac for it right away? That's a bit more complex. And, speaking of disappointments, I would still like to see more than two USB-C ports for accessories.The M1-powered MacBook Air feels like an enormous leap forward for Apple in every way. Additionally, the 13.3-inch Retina Display looks fantastic - it's ideal for binge-watching videos - though I would have liked to see Apple shave down more of its side bezels like Windows PCs. And it also has the same excellent keyboard, which has a satisfying amount of depth. The unibody case feels as sturdy as ever.
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