MacOS Monterey comes with a lot of new features, however, some may not make it to Intel-based Macs, according to Apple. It is unclear whether any of these features will make it eventually, or if there are hardware limitations, or if this is simply a strategy to make the Apple Silicon models more exclusive.
Reported by MacRumors, some of the small letter, fine print shows us that some of the key features announced will require a Mac with an M1 chip, including any Macbook Air, 13-inch Macbook Pro, Mac mini, and any iMac released since November 2020.
The following features will be exclusive to Apple Silicon powered devices:
- The portrait mode blur background in FaceTime videos
- Live Text for copying and pasting, and translating texts within photos
- More detailed maps in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and more in the Maps app
- Text-to-speech in more languages
- On-device keyboard dictation where processing would take place offline
- Unlimited keyboard dictation
Apple has not yet revealed why any of these features are not available on Intel-based Mac devices, so it remains to be seen whether the company will share any news regarding this in the future. It seems unlikely that features such as more detailed maps would cause any performance issues on Intel-based Macs, so it looks a lot like Apple wants to make the Apple Silicon devices more exclusive and more enticing to new customers.
Apple is currently in the middle of its two-year transition from Intel processors which is slated to be completed by 2022. Intel-based Macs will likely be supported in the coming years, however, some features will seemingly be exclusive to Macs running Apple’s own chipset. The new 14-inch and 16-inch Macbook Pro models will also reportedly be powered by the new M1X chipset; they are expected to be announced sometime in later this year.