As Apple continues the transition to Apple Silicon, it is also still supporting Intel-powered Macs with its latest macOS releases. macOS Ventura is capable of running on most every Mac release since 2017, including those powered by Intel as well as Apple Silicon. But with that being said, some of the new features of macOS Ventura are only supported on Macs powered by Apple Silicon.
According to Apple’s website, 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 overlays automatically transcribed captions onto a FaceTime call. There’s even support for speaker attribution when in group calls:
Live Captions in FaceTime: See automatically transcribed dialogue integrated into your FaceTime video calls. With speaker attribution, it’s easy to follow along with group conversations.
This feature relies heavily on the Neural Engine, hence why Apple is limiting it to Macs with an M1 or M2 chip inside and not supporting any Intel-powered Macs.
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.
9to5Mac’s Take
Apple is being far less aggressive this year with limiting features to Apple Silicon Macs than it was last year with macOS Monterey. But on the flip side, Apple is also dropping support for a pretty large group of older Intel-powered Macs this year.
Most notably, macOS Ventura drops support for the (infamous?) 2016 MacBook Pro and the trash can Mac Pro from 2013. In total, macOS Ventura supports iMac and MacBook Pro models from 2017 and later, the 2018 Mac mini and later, the 2018 MacBook Air and later, the 2019 Mac Pro, and the Mac Studio.
As the Apple Silicon transition continues, Apple is likely to keep dropping support for Intel-powered Macs at a somewhat faster pace than usual. When the company transitioned from PowerPC to Intel, Apple dropped support for all PowerPC computers in just two years.
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