Your Intel-Based Mac Won’t Support These New macOS Monterey Features

While Apple on Monday showed off a number of dazzling new features in macOS Monterey, several of them will not be available on Intel-powered Macs.

On the macOS Monterey features page, down in the fine print, the following features are listed as requiring a Mac with the M1 chip:

• Portrait Mode blurred backgrounds in FaceTime videos
• Live Text for copying and pasting, looking up, or translating text within photos
• An interactive 3D globe of Earth in the Maps app
• More detailed maps in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London in the Maps app
• Text-to-speech in more languages, including Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish
• On-device keyboard dictation that performs all processing completely offline
• Unlimited keyboard dictation (previously limited to 60 seconds per instance)

Apple does not offer an explanation as to why these features are not available on Intel-based Macs. The Cupertino firm is currently in the middle of a two-year program to transition its entire Mace lineup over to its own custom Apple Silicon processors.

Although Apple didn’t offer an explanation as to why Intel Macs can’t handle some of the new macOS Monterey features, Apple journalist Rene Ritchie tweeted that the Intel-based Macs lack the Neural Engine that many if not all of these features require.

(Via MacRumors)