Last year’s picks remain just as relevant and useful today if you’re on an Intel machine. So in that vein, this year’s Mac apps list is going to focus on some of the software that has already been optimized for this new era of Apple hardware. This is especially true for apps that are designed to run natively on them and take full advantage of Apple’s latest technologies. As is evidenced by our reviews of the M1 MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, these machines are incredibly powerful and offer wicked fast performance.

This year marked the introduction of the first Macs to be powered by Apple’s own silicon instead of Intel chips.