This week, Apple previewed macOS Sonoma, the latest version of its Mac operating system. The software update, which launches later this year, will include several new features, but not all of them are available on Intel-powered Macs, according to Apple.
On the macOS Sonoma Features Pagethe fine print indicates that the following features require a Mac with an Apple silicon:
- Presenter Overlay, a feature that displays the user on top of the content they share in any video conferencing application.
- Game Mode, which prioritizes CPU and GPU performance while gaming by limiting the performance of background tasks.
- New high performance mode in Screen Sharing app.
- The ability to pair Made for iPhone hearing aids directly with your Mac.
- The ability to summon Siri by saying “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri”.
Apple doesn’t say why the features aren’t available on Intel Macs, but it most likely has to do with performance considerations, and only Apple silicon Macs have a neural engine for machine learning tasks. The last Intel Macs were released in 2020, and Apple has since moved on to its own custom-built processors. The transition to Apple silicon is now complete after the launch of a new Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip this week.
macOS Sonoma is likely to be released to the public in October and is compatible with Macs released in December 2017 and later.
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