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macOS Monterey: Here Are All the Features Your Intel Mac Won't Support
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There's no possible way for that to happen, MacOS doesn't run the software for a good part of the job I do. (I'm an IT Manager.) Windows does everything I need and well, even when coding.
My 2017 MBP died already. (the batteries blew up like a balloon at the beginning of 2020.)
By the time Monterey is stable/reliable enough for me to upgrade from Big Sur, maybe Apple will have released an iMac or Mac mini with the new M processors. 11.4 was the first Big Sur version that worked well for me, and it didn't come until the end of May.
Although these features aren’t dealbreakers for me and I’m planning on a new MBP in the coming months anyways, this is total horse poop. Apple is pushing people to buy the newest and greatest, and selling hardware that doesn’t fully support the latest software. Tim Cook has made Apple what it is today, but the days of Apple being a consumer focused company are loooong gone. The only thing that matters now are the stockholders and the bottom line.
They look to fall into three categories:
1. Better graphics than available to most Intel Macs
2. High efficiency cores
3. Neural Engine
My bet is a lot of the graphics features could be technically shoehorned into Intel macs, but they'd be writing specific code they plan to throw it away in the near future. That's not a good investment.
Same. However Apple repaired it free of charge. Besides that one issue, it’s never given me any problems. If I wasn’t feeling bogged down speed-wise, I could keep rocking it for another 1-3 years.
I’m still keeping it alongside an M1 Max machine to virtualize x86 windows and Linux.
He might, if there's genuinely a piece of Windows-only software he absolutely must use. In that case, run it within a Parallels window and then use the Mac for everything else.
there’s plenty of Windows/intel-only software, especially if you’re in scientific computing
Actually, they kind of can. The requirement (though circumventable as you point out) is that your computer has support for TPM, which is either a module or firmware. Mobile Intel chips have supported firmware level TPM since 4th gen days with 2.0 support coming in 6th gen. It's just not possible to enable this on the Macs, but probably could be with an UEFI update.Well it's not like Apple can magically install a physical TPM chip on your systemboard, which was an original requirement for Windows 11.
[...]
Thing is, that update is not at all likely to ever happen. Just an in-theory thing they could have done.
I'm all for installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, but keep in mind we have already had examples where games detecting they run on Windows 11 are refusing to run if they can't put their anti-cheat keys into the TPM 2.0 module. Hoping that will not become a norm.
As hillarious it might sound, the Intel 16" has SERIOUS gaming troubles. Typically a scenario that puts constant long-term load on BOTH CPU and GPU will make the CPU throttle BELOW base clock speed after just ~5-10 minutes of usage. It's noticable in say a long DaVinci Resolve render but of course also games.
And it's not typically CPU nor GPU thermals that does it but the VRM! It gets too hot and just makes the whole machine throttle! Really sucks.
It should, with caution, be mentioned that you quite easily can do VRM-to-body thermal pad mod that does WONDERS with this issue and turns the Intel MBP 16" into a capable gaming machine. However the bottom of the laptop will get QUITE hot and of course screws with warranty claims etc.
Not sure what kind of scientific computing you are doing but I did it for 20 years and almost nothing required windows. Very little was processor-specific either.
Most of it was written for Linux though with some available of a Mac. The Linux stuff we would use ssh + X11 (when needed) when using a Mac.
There’s a lot of legacy weather modelling that for some god forsaken reason only runs on Intel where I used to work. I personally never understood what the heck they were doing but I guess it was instruction specific to sap the last piece of juice.
I should clarify, some of these are intel specific and not Windows specific, but I’ve seen windows specific rubbish as well
Ok, that makes more sense. A lot of weather modeling code is written in Fortran 60, 77, or 90. Most of it will work on non-Intel but some if it is binary-only for whatever reason. Most of the old code is being (very) slowly phased out as it can't take advantage of GPUs. I worked mainly with fluids and other physics codes.
Monterey is probably the last major OS release for Intel anyhow. I expect the switchover to go as quickly as it did from PowerPC to Intel. Once that transition started 10.5 Leopard was the only major universal binary OS released. By 10.6 it was Intel only. When Apple said they would support Intel for years to come that only meant minimal security patches and bug fixes. Apple wants to make money selling new hardware. Never believe a word they say when they claim support for years to come. Lots of Intel hardware going into the trash in the next 2-3 years.
As someone else already pointed out: Chances are that Apple is leveraging some of its specific hardware in the Apple Silicon chips, probably allowing to use some existing functionality, which they would have to manually implement with more effort on an Intel machine. Then Apple decided to not assign any resources to that - for various reasons.
One of them probably being the intention to boost the transition to Apple Silicon. Some others may as well be legitimate, for example having to coordinate less code on two different platforms.
After all, people were already complaining about deteriorating software quality and this move (-> don’t implement lower priority parts into the old world anymore) could help in improving in that field.
I don't expect Apple will support intel macs for much longer. They've done this before when they transitioned from Powerpc to intel.
Just get the new mac pro when they come out next year.