As Apple continues the transition to superior Apple Silicon, the company is still supporting Intel-handicapped Macs with its latest macOS Ventura operating system, with some notable exclusions.
There are a few primary features in macOS Ventura that you’ll only be able to use if you have an Apple Silicon-powered Mac.
First and most notably, Apple says that support for Live Captions in FaceTime is limited to Macs powered by an Apple Silicon processor.
This feature relies heavily on the Neural Engine, hence why Apple is limiting it to Macs with an M1 or M2 chip… Meanwhile, the second feature that Apple says is only supported on Apple Silicon Macs is the Reference Mode with Sidecar capability. This feature allows you to use a 12.9-inch M1 iPad Pro with the Liquid Retina XDR as a secondary reference display for your Mac. This feature is only supported on on iPad Pro 12.9-inch with Liquid Retina XDR display and Mac computers with Apple silicon.
Finally, there is a third small feature that is limited to M1 Macs and later: the ability to insert emoji using your voice while dictating on device.
MacDailyNews Take: It could’ve been worse. Last year, with macSO Monterey, Apple had a much longer list of features that do not work on Intel-handicapped Macs .
macOS Ventura supports the following Macs:
• MacBook 2017 and later
• MacBook Air 2018 and later
• MacBook Pro 2017 and later
• Mac mini 2018 and later
• iMac 2017 and later
• iMac Pro 2017
• Mac Pro 2019 and later
• Mac Studio 2022
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I must say having bought a very expensive 2019 Mac Pro I feel a little sucker-punched. It frankly never felt that fast to me. It’s unlike the experience of having a 2009-2012 Mac Pro which had an incredibly long life. Wonder if there will be a conversion kit from some third party to convert 2019 Mac Pros to M chip? Probably not since Apple chips will probably not be available to anyone else BUT Apple. Someday it may make a very fine Linux machine instead.
I doubt any such conversion kit exists. Sadly your Mac Pro is pre-COVID, we live in “new normal” times now, everything screwed up.
Yeah, the Xeon chip in there costs $3k and is not snappy. But the good thing is you can just drop in a 28 core processor from eBay as a relatively cheap upgrade, along with improved graphic cards and memory as desired.
By 2018 those of us using Mac Pros were thoroughly disgusted with Apple’s inability to keep its flagship performance Mac relevant … let alone competitive.
In 2019 we were elated to see that Apple finally woke up. But then we saw the price tag, the ridiculous designer-forward machined alyooooominyum case, and T2 electronic lock. Clearly designed for high budget digital animation studios, and nobody else. Apple has failed to bring it over to the M chips, perhaps because it can’t dethrone Xeon processors for real workstation workloads. M chips are designed for battery life before anything else. Apple probably won’t update the Pro until all premium 3rd party pro applications are M-chip native.
For now the Studio is the mainstream workstation from Apple, and yes you will still be forced into lots of external Thunderbolt stuff if you have multiple firewalled projects like a real pro. Be glad Apple didn’t have Ive design it to be a $10k art project.
Nah, next year we get M2/M3 Super Mac Pro, don’t sweat it bro.
Looks like my late 2015 5K iMac will be getting replaced soon. I’ll upgrade once the iMac gets an M2 or anything above a normal M1
I figure Ventura is the last Mac OS for Intel Mac’s in the practical sense. Now Apple may release another Intel Mac OS after Ventura but clearly Intel Mac’s are legacy and Apple has already begun to isolate Intel Mac’s from new features. This just tells me that once third party apps are done moving to Apple silicon the support for Intel Mac’s will go away. I went through the same when Apple moved from PowerPC chips to Intel. Same thing, just another repeat of how Apple moves these transitions along quickly.