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(Opens in a new window), which was spotted(Opens in a new window) 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. 

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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.

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