Will Rapidweaver work on the new M1 MacBook air?
No one has one yet, so to say for sure would be lying.
It should, according to Apple
The new Apple proprietary chip Macs will use Mac OS 11(big sur).
2 Likes
If I had the money, I’d order one tomorrow and let you know! 
Hey All,
RapidWeaver 8.7 runs great on our (ARM) Dev machine that Apple loaned to us, and while I haven’t tested RW on the new machines I’m certain it will work just great like on our dev machine.
RapidWeaver 8.7 will run on the M1 hardware using Rosetta 2. I don’t think you’ll even notice it’s not native (that’s what we’ve seen from our testing).
RapidWeaver 9 (currently in development) and will ship as a Universal 2 app and will run natively on both Intel based Macs and Apples new M1 Macs.
So in short, if you use RapidWeaver for building websites you’re all set, we’ve got you covered!
Oh, and don’t forget to grab the 8.7 update we released today for Big Sur:
https://www.realmacsoftware.com/news/?id=rapidweaver-87-now-available-with-support-for-big-sur
Happy Weaving!
10 Likes
Thanks for the great work and support @dan
Many thanks. Most appreciated.
Many Thanks Dan its great to see the team are ahead of the game.
Thank you for the clarification @dan. Much appreciated.
please don’t wait till RW9 to offer native support for M1 chips. I can say that there is a very big difference and those with large sites like myself need native support now. I have a nearly 4GB Rapidweaver file and on really long pages with a lot of Foundation column stacks, its very slow with occasional beach ball when trying to drag stacks. Im running this on the 2020 Mac Mini. My previous computer is a 2013 Mac Pro base model, a nearly 8 year old computer and its much smoother with pages that stutter on the Mac Mini even tho the Mac Mini is technically twice as fast. Please consider updating it now, at least in Beta form, for those with large sites. Not everyone has small sites with a handful of pages.
4GB 
??
I have to ask what you have in your file? I was getting worried when my project hit 81mb.
Well I bit the bullet and bought a new MacBook air updated to Big Sur and all is well Rapidweaver works like a dream. Thanks for all the hard work @dan and team Rapidweaver.
2 Likes
its a real estate website with about 200 properties.
@orbitalpunk Seems to me that the simple answer is to warehouse all the pictures. Then the project file will be a very small fraction of the size.
I don’t believe the speed problem @orbitalpunk is experiencing in RW8 is because of “project file” size. As he said the previous computer (a 2013 MacPro) was much smoother.
I’ve done a bunch of testing with RW8 and project file size doesn’t really impact page edits much at all.
Warehousing the images may make the project file size smaller, but could slow editing and preview down even more. Since every image would have to load from the internet.
I’m not sure what benchmark or measurement is being used to assume a New Mac Mini is going to be “technically twice as fast” as a 2013 MacPro? There are a lot of things other than CPU’s that will affect the speed of a computer. The new Mac Mini’s use 8 cores. Some software can’t really take advantage of multiple cores.
Now RapidWeaver 8 like almost all apps need to get “translated” by Rosetta 2 to run on the new CPU. So I’m guessing his suspicion is that the translation layer (Rosetta 2) is what is slowing down RapidWeaver’s performance. Most of the benchmark test that I’ve seen show Rosetta 2 performs pretty good.
I’m surprised at that, @teefers, but I but to your superior knowledge.
I was basing the “twice as fast” remark on CPU benchmarks from Geekbench as well as my own tests encoding video in Handbrake. Of course there is Metal and OpenCL performance but its my understanding Rapidweaver is more CPU optimized instead of purely Metal/OpenCL. Either way, According to Metal/OpenCL performance on Geekbench when comparing the M1 Mac Mini to the 2013 Mac Pro with dual D300 video cards, they are nearly equal. So the only logical assumption for the slow down is the Rosetta 2 Translation layer. And its surprising RealMac is so behind on this with not even an Alpha or Beta in sight for users when they are a Mac only software development company with 2 Apps, one last updated 3 years ago. Plus they did have a Dev machine. Now they are saying no M1 support till the next major upgrade which could be many months to up to a year. Really? Even Microsoft Excel, Word and Adobe Photoshop has a M1 beta, now. I would think they would prioritize this since some people can have large sites or lots of stacks. I guess not.
Let’s be honest, it’s too early to start accusing RM of being behind schedule. Give them a chance. M1 has only just popped out and all their efforts has been to get 8.7 Big Sur ready.
They may have a test M1 machine but with all the COVID crap flying around, who gets to use it if the entire dev team is forced to isolate and work from home? Remote access to the M1 may not have been the biggest priority when COVID hit. Just keeping the company running would be my priority.
You said yourself that it must be the Rosetta-2 translation engine. Most probably right as it’s the first iteration on a new OS. I’m pretty impressed that the new Mac Mini can take on a dedicated dual GPU in a Mac Pro. Imagine what it will be like when all the software is compiled for native M1.
Handbrake is going to run under Rosetta so no contest yet. The fact that RM say RW is holding it’s own with current hardware is good news.
Let’s see what happens as RW9 is a ground up rewrite. Patience is a virtue…
2 Likes
For me, keep RW running with the latest OS is most important. I will not rush and buy an M1 and wait for iMac to appear in 2021. As long as RW runs on M1for the customers already using them, it is fine by me, with or without Rosetta.
1 Like
Hey All,
We understand everyone with an M1 based Mac wants a Native RW right now, and so do we. However, it’s not not only RW that has to be compiled for Apple Silicon, it’s also all the third-party plugins. If we shipped RW for Apple Silicon today, none of your third-party plugins would run. It’s as simple as that.
We’re working on RW9 and it’s coming along great, from what we’ve been able to test, it’s blazingly fast on Apple Silicon!
Sorry I don’t have better news, but as soon as we have a usable beta that’s good enough for use on “live” sites, we’ll give you guys access.
Stay tuned. RW9 will be worth the wait.
Thanks,
Dan
9 Likes
You’re mistaken about Handbrake. The released a native Apple silicon beta 3 weeks ago. https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/releases/tag/1.4.0-beta.1