At WWDC 2021 earlier this week, Apple released macOS 12 Monterey, along with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and other developer tools. Now, although macOS 12 brings a bunch of nifty features for apps like Safari, FaceTime, and Messages, it seems like Apple will be restricting many of them to the M1-powered Macs. Hence, these features will not work on older Macs, MacBook Pros, and iMacs that pack Intel processors.
So now that Apple has released the new version of macOS for MacBooks and iMacs, the company has added some features that will exclusively be available on M1 Macs. You can find the list of the M1-exclusive macOS 12 Monterey features right here:
- Siri Improvements – 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).
Why are Some macOS Monterey Features Limited to M1 Macs?
So, these are some of the features that will not be available on Intel-powered iMac and MacBook models. Although Apple does not clearly explain why they are not available on the Intel Macs running macOS 12, popular tech-pundit Rene Ritchie says that the Intel chipsets lack the Neural Engine that some of the features like Portrait Mode in Facetime and Live Text require.
