During the WWDC21 presentation, I was messaging a friend. We’re that rare form of geek that also loves Apple stuff, so this is pretty standard. When they showed off the new feature allowing you to drag and drop across Macs and iPads, I thought for sure it would be for M1 Macs only. That just seemed like the kind of thing Apple would do and I’ve been pessimistic about Apple silicon since last year. It’s not, by the way. Intel Macs can also drag and drop across iPads and other Macs. However, there are other features that are limited to Apple’s new M1-powered Macs. Many of the new and exciting features in macOS Monterey are only for Apple’s few Apple Silicon powered Macs.
M1 Only
Believe it or not, this is one of the things an Intel Mac “can’t” do.
Below is a list of features that Apple won’t bring to Intel Macs, but is instead holding off only for their M1 Macs.
- Portrait blur in FaceTime calls
- Copying Live Text from images with optical character recognition
- Detailed 3D maps in cities
- The 3D globe view in Apple Maps
- Text to speech for the additional languages, including Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish
- On-device dictation
- Unlimited dictation (presumably, 60 second dictation limits will remain)
Apple’s website shows the full details of which Macs can do what.
Of course, Intel Mac owners shouldn’t feel too bad. After all, there are things their Intel-powered Macs can do natively:
- Play all made for Mac games
- Use an eGPU
- Use more than 1 external monitor (or 2 for the Mac Mini)
- Work on and test Android apps
- Trust developer software to just work
- Boot into Windows using Boot Camp, to take full advantage of the graphics and processing power of your setup
- Continue to use it for work without stress
So, really, there are tradeoffs. Getting an M1-powered Mac isn’t an “upgrade” for many people. It’s not even possible for everyone.
It’s clear that many of these new M1-only features came down to the fact that Apple didn’t want to make sure it worked on Intel. For example, Zoom has already figured out how to blur the background in calls on Intel Macs. Google has had “live text” for years, and multiple applications can do optical character recognition. Google Earth has had 3D models of the planet for many years. Dictation software has permitted complete documents as a stream of text for accessibility purposes, also for years.
Forced Obsolescence?
This really seems like Apple is artificially limiting the Intel Mac. Apple could easily make these features for Intel Macs, as other developers have done, but chose not to. If that’s specifically to drive sales of new Macs, it’s a cut and dry case of forced obsolescence. Apple has faced lawsuits from forced obsolescence in the past. This seems to be another clear case of it.
Many of us can’t even upgrade, making this case of forced obsolescence even worse. Most of the software I still rely on for work doesn’t run properly on Apple silicon Macs. And, frankly, I put a lot of time, effort, and money into my Windows on a Mac setup, which I don’t plan to give up. Have you seen GPU prices? Setting up an eGPU wasn’t cheap!
Furthermore, Apple just doesn’t have their entire segment covered by Apple silicon yet. They still have nothing for pros. There’s not one Apple silicon Mac that can power more than 2 monitors (including the internal one on laptops). Apple’s trying to force users to a platform that they haven’t even finished building yet.
macOS Monterey will release this fall. Intel Mac users may be disappointed that many of the features Apple showed off have been left behind.
Sources:
- William Gallagher, AppleInsider
- Joe Rossignol, MacRumors