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Charlotte Henry

Charlotte is a media junkie, covering how Apple is not just a revolutionary tech firm, but a revolutionary media firm for TMO. She is based in London, and writes and broadcasts for various outlets.

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Native Dropbox Support For M1 Macs Doesn't Seem to be Happening

[Update November 1, 2021: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston has said that his company is working on a native M1 build. It plans to release it in the first half of 2022. Original post below]

It looks likes users with M1 Macs shouldn’t expect native support from Dropbox any time soon. MacRumors reported on a long-running support thread discussing the issue of Apple Silicon.

An official Dropbox support thread, shared by Mitchell Hashimoto on Twitter, reveals a fiasco around native support for Apple silicon Macs. Dropbox is seemingly insisting that a significant number of community members will have to vote for native Apple silicon support for it to be implemented. There are also multiple repetitious requests with different phrasing, fragmenting users’ votes for support. In July, responses from Dropbox staff on the thread explained that “this idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team,” and flagged Apple silicon support as in need of more votes. A month ago, Dropbox staff again replied to the thread requesting native Apple silicon support, saying that Dropbox will continue to be compatible with all devices that run supported versions of macOS using Apple’s Rosetta translation layer. Additional complaints in the thread claim that Dropbox with Rosetta hemorrhages MacBook battery life and uses a disproportionate amount of memory.

Latest Amazon TVs Will Support AirPlay 2, HomeKit

Amazon released its Omni and 4-Series Fire TVs on Wednesday. It also announced that the devices will soon support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, according to The Verge.

Amazon has already rolled out AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to some of its “Fire TV Edition” TVs from Toshiba and Insignia. Curiously, these features have yet to come to the company’s standalone Fire TV streaming devices — including the just-released Fire TV Stick 4K Max. I’m not sure if that’s an intentional choice, but it’s a bit odd that Amazon is ready to announce support on day one for its brand-new TVs with nothing to share about AirPlay 2 coming to its cheaper devices. (Roku supports AirPlay 2 on both its players and Roku TVs.)

Apple Music Becoming Available on Windows 11 as an Android App

Windows 11 users will soon be able to access Apple Music as an Android appMacRumors reported on the functionality, currently available only to beta testers.

Microsoft released Windows 11 earlier this month, but its promised support for side-loading Android apps was delayed. That just got one step closer, however, with the first preview of the support now available to testers in the Beta Channel version of Windows 11, which means interested users need to opt into the Windows Insider program to gain access. As it’s a preview release, Microsoft has limited the number of Android apps that can be run on Windows 11, and has partnered with Amazon to make around 50 apps on the Amazon Appstore available to download and install. ‌Apple Music‌ isn’t available on Amazon’s Appstore, but it is possible to run the app using the app’s APK and the Windows Subsystem for Android.