Technology is always moving forward, and sometimes in order to move on to the next great thing, some devices are going to be left out. In Apple’s case, some new features revealed for macOS 13 Ventura won’t be available on older Macs because those features require the technology used in Apple’s M1 and M2 chips. So if you have an Intel Mac you won’t able to use these features in the fall:
The same applies if you don’t have an M1 or M2 iPad – read this to find out what features iPad with A-chips miss out on: You’ll need a very new iPad to get every feature in iPadOS 16.
macOS Ventura M1/M2 features
The following features will not work on Intel-based Macs and require a Mac that running an M1 or M2 SoC:
Live Captions
Announced back in May, Live Captions rely on the Neural Engine in Apple’s M-series chips to create real-time captions during phone calls, FaceTime conversations, and video conferences.
Dictation emoji support
While using dictation in Ventura, you’ll be able to insert emojis, but only if you’re using a Mac with an M1 or M2 processor. This also requires speech models to be downloaded, and it works with Cantonese, English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.
Reference Mode with Sidecar
If you have a 12.9-inch iPad with Liquid Retina display, you can connect it to your M-series Mac and use it as a reference display, which means the iPad can use color palettes for specific purposes, such as video production, print, and web design.
Stage Manager and external displays for iPad work only on tablets that use an M1 chip
Apple
iPadOS 16 features that are only for M1/M2 iPads
These features work only on iPads with an M-series chip (11-inch iPad Pro, 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and iPad Air)
Stage Manager
Stage Manager is easily the most anticipated new feature coming this fall, but precious few devices will be able to use it. Here’s why, according to Apple: “Stage Manager is a fully integrated experience that provides an all-new windowing experience that is incredibly fast and responsive and allows users to run 8 apps simultaneously across iPad and an external display with up to 6K resolution. Delivering this experience with the immediacy users expect from iPad’s touch-first experience requires large internal memory, incredibly fast storage, and flexible external display I/O, all of which are delivered by iPads with the M1 chip.”
External displays
The new external display support in iPadOS 16 doesn’t just mirror the iPad, it expands the workspace. But if you have an M1 iPad, you can connect a display and use resolutions up to 6K, and well as drag and drop between the iPad and the apps running on the external display.
Reference Modes
The 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Liquid Retina display can be set to display difference reference mode colors for use with video production, web and print design, and more. Also, as mentioned above, this iPad is the only one that can be used as a reference mode display with a M-series Mac.
Other iPadOS 16 feature exclusives
iPadOS 16 has a few other features that won’t run on every iPad. Here’s the lowdown.
- Magnifier app: Announced in May, the iPadOS 16 Magnifier app will support Door Detection, People Detection, and Image Descriptions. This will be available on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (4th generation or later) and the 11-inch iPad Pro (2nd generation or later).
- Virtual Memory Swap: If you’re using an iPad app that needs more memory than what’s available in RAM, Virtual Memory Swap will kick in and temporarily use the iPad’s built-in storage (up to 16GB) as RAM. This works on the 12.8-inch iPad Pro (5th generation or later), the 11-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation or later), and the iPad Air (5th generation) with 256GB of storage.
