Take Control of
Your M-Series Mac

Apple’s new Macs based on the M1- and M2-series Apple silicon system-on-a-chip offer remarkable advances in performance, battery life, and memory utilization. With those improvements comes a host of changes in hardware, from how a Mac starts up to making backups of your computer to understanding fundamental aspects of system security. Take Control of Your M-Series Mac teaches you everything you need to know about these topics and much more.

You’ll learn not just how to make a bootable clone of your Mac on an external drive, but whether it’s necessary with Monterey or Big Sur and an M1- or M2-series Mac. Find out how to make a clean transition from an Intel Mac, while taking advantage of installing and running iOS and iPadOS apps natively within macOS. You’ll also learn the early method of running Windows on an M1 or M2 Mac, with notions of what’s to come.

If you’ve already bought an M1- or M2-series Mac and want to get more out of it, or you’re considering a purchase and trying to understand what you need to know, Take Control of Your M-Series Mac will fit your needs. NOTE: This book is intended for people who are already familiar with Macs. It is not a beginner’s guide, nor is it a complete user manual. Its focus is on what’s different about M-series Macs compared to Intel-based Macs.

For anyone seriously considering getting an M1 Mac, and everyone who has one already (including me), this is the essential guide and reference. If you don’t buy it, you’ll regret it.
—Howard Oakley, The Eclectic Light Company

Here’s what you will learn from this book:

• Get to know the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, and M2 processors, and what’s so different about them
• Understand the limits of emulation
• Control how apps for Intel Macs and universal Intel/M-series apps launch on an M-series Mac
• Learn the complexities of backing up an M-series Mac
• Decide whether you need a bootable duplicate of your startup volume
• Maximize battery life and longevity
• Work with recoveryOS, a substantially different process with an M-series Mac
• Walk through a new process of reviving or restoring low-level firmware on a non-responsive Mac
• Manage system security when you need to work with kernel extensions
• Install and run iOS and iPadOS apps
• Learn the current limits of using Windows in macOS on an M1- and M2-series system

About Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman is a veteran technology writer who has contributed to dozens of publications across his career, including Macworld, Fast Company, and Increment. He has also written dozens of editions of books in the Take Control series. He spent 2019 and 2020 building 100 tiny type museums full of real printing artifacts. Glenn lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.