Some macOS Monterey features aren’t supported on Intel Macs

Apple’s transition to its own M1 processor for the Mac (and iPad Pro!) lineup has gone pretty smoothly so far. However, things may start to get a bit rocky as the company continues to lean away from Intel’s processors. Namely, when it comes to features.

Feature parity is pretty standard right now between Apple silicon Macs and Intel-based options. Which is how it should be, all things considered. But it looks like that won’t be the case for much longer. At least, not when macOS 12 Monterey launches later this year.

According to a report today from MacRumors, some of the more interesting new features coming to macOS Monterey, including Live Text, won’t be supported on Intel-based Macs. Even if they support macOS 12 Monterey. Apple notes these features aren’t supported on Intel-based Macs on the landing page for Monterey, so it’s as official as official gets.

There are more than a handful of new features that aren’t supported on Intel-based Macs, according to the original report. Here’s a quick bullet list:

  • Live Text, allowing users to directly interact with text captured in a photo
  • Globe view in Apple Maps
  • More detailed cityscapes, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco, in Apple Maps
  • FaceTime Portrait mode, which blurs the background while on a FaceTime video call
  • On-device, offline dictation
  • Neural text-to-speech support in Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish
  • On-device dictation without a time limit

It probably won’t take long before people start accusing Apple of locking some features behind its own Apple silicon processors. Especially if this trend continues into the future, and even more noteworthy features aren’t available on Macs that don’t have an M-series processor under the hood.

What do you think of this?