Apple’s big reveal for macOS Monterey left out one glaring issue: Not every feature is coming to Intel-based Macs.
You’ll have to own a newer Mac outfitted with Apple’s ARM-based M1 chips to receive every upcoming function. The company quietly disclosed this important tidbit in the footnotes for the Monterey preview, which was spotted by MacRumors.
The features Intel-based Macs won’t be getting include:
- Portrait mode for FaceTime, which can blur the background in your video calls.
- Live Text in Photos, a Google Lens-like function that lets you interact with text found in any picture. For example, you can copy words photographed in an image, and paste them in a document.
- The interactive globe and 3D city views on Apple Maps.
- Text-to-speech voices in languages including Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish.
- On-device keyboard dictation, enabling you to speak to your Mac, which will then type your words. The processing all occurs completely offline.
- Continuous dictation. Apple currently limits the speech-to-text dictation to 60 seconds before timing out. However, Macs with the M1 processor can tap unlimited dictation.
- Spatial audio and dynamic head tracking for when an AirPods Pro and AirPods Max connects to a Mac.
So far, Apple hasn’t officially said why Intel-based Macs will be missing out on the features. But we suspect the company will point to the M1 chip’s “neural engine,” which is designed to power AI-based algorithms.
Nevertheless, the news is bound to annoy owners of older Mac hardware. When Apple last year announced the Mac line was migrating to ARM-based processors, a key concern was how long the company would continue supporting software on Intel-based products.
That said, the majority of Monterey’s upcoming features are still coming to Intel-powered Macs. However, some standout functions, such as Universal Control and AirPlay for Mac, can require a Mac from 2018 or later.
