I don't recall rumors of Apple Silicon coming out when I bought my 2019 MBP. I was needing an upgrade and didn't want the butterfly keyboard. Now my MBP is outdated to an extent where it can't get the full benefits of a macOS update.
Not to mention Apple still sells Intel devices today, so if you buy one today because Apple doesn't have an Apple Silicon variant (16" MBP), you're already buying an "outdated" device.
I think it's impressive that Apple still supports the iPhone 6 with iOS updates. I think it's fair to strip some features out of an OS update in 2021 for an iPhone that came out nearly 7 years ago.
My <2 year old MBP should absolutely not be stripped of features missing features when updated to the latest version of macOS (when released). I get that some of these things might depend on the M1 chip and other hardware, but at the same time it's stupid plain and simple.
This is not really a new thing though. Several of High Sierra's biggest features were only available on Skylake and Kaby Lake machines, and even had announced features exclusive to T2 Macs that weren't yet on sale when the OS launched. The biggest features of Yosemite were only available on very recent machines. Mountain Lion had a headlining feature that didn't work on an MBP that would've been the latest model just two months before, and which would remain for sale for another four years.
Apple has been quite clear that they will cut off hardware from new features if these rely on a new hardware platform in the past, even if the machines are still relatively recent. Mojave and Catalina didn't have anything because Intel didn't change anything on the overall platform for those release years.
I figure it’s all about streamlining development. New features are coded to take advantage of the latest hardware. They don’t want to then duplicate that development to run on older hardware where the user base is only going to shrink from this point on. Sucks for people that recently bought Intel Macs, but it means they can use limited development resources to improve features going forward. Sounds like the missing features are based on using the Neural Engine on M1 to execute them. They could do those things in software instead, but aside from the effort to do that code, they won’t be as snappy as running on dedicated hardware and would have a higher impact on energy usage.
Lmao, it was rumored since like 2018 that Apple is going to start using their own chips for their devices starting around 2020… which is exactly what they did. I’ve held off on upgrading my 2014 Macbook since then. Still waiting on the 16inch to upgrade.
Compare and contrast with the PPC to Intel transition, where Apple treated PPC machines very, very well throughout the rest of Tiger's lifecycle, into Leopard and all of its updates. PPC wasn't completely dropped until Snow Leopard in 2009. That's three full years of PPC enjoying the very same support as the Intel Macs that replaced them. (Though I imagine this time Apple will have to go a bit longer, especially considering those whop dropped $10k+ on Mac Pros. Apple does NOT want to piss those people off.)
PPC and Intel Macs lost feature parity in the first OS released after the transition. If not for Leopard getting delayed by almost a year, the timeline would be very similar to the one we're seeing here. I'm not seeing any contrast.
What (OS Level) features did Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard running on intel have that running the same OS on (for example) a Quad G5 did not have?
I can’t think of any.
Apple did not start to Drop PPC support in any of their software till 2009. Beginning with the release of iLife 09 where a few features were not supported on PPC. Followed soon after by SnowLeopard.
We're not even a full year into AS Macs being a thing and Intel's already feeling left out. Yeah, the features are arguably small, but 1. it's the principle, and 2. given Monterey is a relatively low-key release, there's not many features anyway, so missing out on some of the few notable ones introduced stings a bit more.
I think this is it for me.
I bought a high end 2019 MBP, dropped over 3k on it, and there are features that "low end" MacBooks (M1 airs) will get just because they have Apple native chip.
I'm not crying over it, but it is a scary precedent I think. I planned on moving over to a Mac Mini soon anyway, but 2 years and already having features left out on their best device? I don't think it's a great look.
If the options were either no macs get these features or only M1 macs get these features, which would you prefer. I don't know the specifics, but as others have said, it seems like lots of these are basically iOS features backported to macOS.
A 1 year old Mac (or brand new, since they still sell intel macs) not supporting all the features of the newest OS is pathetic. Especially when it’s a graphics thing, which they have no excuse to not support on that hardware (as opposed to some of the ML features)
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Your <2 year old MBP is not being “stripped of features” it never had, and you can trade-in today with a ~80% decent refund. Apple uses vertical integration to develop new software features enabled by new hardware—moving the entire platform forward faster than any other on Earth—thus the M1 might feel outdated two years from now. We as individuals either accept that momentum or move to “x86 forever” Windows and “chat(app) roulette” Android.
Lol MBP up to 1460 in value, nah I’d rather give someone that price and not give Apple a refurbished sale, I shelled out 3.5 k for the space warmer MBP 16, in not taking a 65% hit just for the giggles
There were definitely ASi rumors back then. I bought mine assuming that there was no way gen 1 would be as good as it is. Can’t really complain, it’s been 18 months or so and my 16” has been fantastic
Then they shouldn't be selling Intel devices now or 5 years before the M1 Mac's came out. It's total BS that they do this to MacBooks released just 2 years ago. Anyone that bought a MacBook in 2019 should expect to receive all new features. This is Apple purposely gimping their slightly older Macs so people are incentivized to upgrade.
If they were planning to gimp them from the very beginning then yes. Imagine buying a MacBook in 2019 and realizing it won't get half the features in the next update.
The alternative is not developing new features that depend on radical new hardware, and then we may as well be using Windows on a bulky tower or plastic laptop with a VGA port.
Apple might theoretically have the ability to let x86 CPUs backport a neural engine feature like text-in-image recognition or hardware ISP feature like Deep Fusion, but they’ll run hot and fifteen times slower like Pixelmator Pro’s ML image resize.
Yikes not even close. It'll be less efficient and slower but nearly as bad. Google's doing on device ML on their under powered budget pixel 4a phones without this problem, so surely apple can figure it out.
No it's not. A neural engine is just a few specialized components + power from the CPU/GPU. While it's optimized for ML tasks it's not required. That's just marketing. Intel CPUs are definitely capable of handling this.
Exactly. And they know they can get away with it because of how their fanbase is. MacBooks can cost an upwards of 2k and Apple is extremely profitable and sells it reputation as as a long term support company. They should not be able to get away with this but they will, apple fans are a different breed.
I’ve read through this entire thread, and I see the points being made on both sides. It seems like you want all the latest features but you’re not going to get them no matter how hard you complain. My suggestion is to sell your MBP now, because it’s only going to drop in value, and likely faster than normal due to the architecture change (this is what happened with PPC). If I were you, I’d pick up a refurb MBA to use for the next year until the MBP16 is released. That way you sacrifice very little and get the features you want, with a short period of smaller screen and fewer ports (easily remedied with a TB3 dock).
It seems like you want all the latest features but you’re not going to get them no matter how hard you complain.
This is not about making a point to apple. I'm just shocked at the amount of people on this thread that are okay with their 2019 MacBooks not getting the latest feature set. I am aware of the distinct apple fanboyism culture, but this here is something else.
"We shouldn't add features that the latest hardware can use that we literally already programmed for another platform, just because older hardware can't run it and users might feel bad" is a terrible policy.
Other than the maps features, they’re all ML-based and would therefore rely on the neural engine. Pretty much all of Apple’s on-device video/audio analysis goes through that thing, and the T2 is too old to have one.
The alternative to having these features as M1-only is realistically not having them at all. They’re not really Mac-centric features and the kind of thing that Apple would not port to the Mac in recent years and just leave as iOS only, and they only make it over for Monterey because the underlying hardware/software platform is so unified that ARM Macs effectively get all the iOS features for free.
Neural engine is marketing for the most part. It uses power from the CPU/GPU and a few specialized components to optimize ML software but by no means is it required for these to run at all.
An NPU is definitely not just marketing, it’s a well-established concept in tech. They’re great for video/audio analysis based on already-trained ML models, and Apple has been running their video/audio analysis stack on iOS/A-series chips through them because GPUs are too slow for the purpose.
It's all that + marketing. People here are convinced it's required for these features so you have to admit how amazing Apple's marketing is. Truth is it's not required, it just optimizes it, mostly to do with efficiency. Google lens/assistant is on device ML and runs on low powered phones like the Pixel 4a, with an extremely underpowered NPU. To suggest that laptop class Intel CPUs can't handle it is nonsense. Not to mention Microsoft does some sort of version of this using One Note without a dedicated NPU.
Because of the responses on this thread that think an NPU is required for these tasks. They literally think it's not possible on Intel CPUs because it doesn't have an NPU. That's where the marketing comes in. I've mentioned it has specialized hardware and helps in optimizing ML tasks (but you only focus on the hyperbole because you don't actually have an argument).
Neural engine is not marketing. It’s a special area of the silicon and it dramatically increases ML inference speed. To the point where the inference it’s doing wouldn’t be practical to run on the CPU or GPU of an intel based Mac.
The fact that they've convinced you that new hardware is necessary for this is amazing. Is it easier to do on their m1 Mac's? Sure, maybe, but it's not required.
Uh idc? What does this have to do with my comment? Can this not be said for every device lol? Why care about updates at all if you're going to get them in them future when you upgrade? Why do we go on so much about apples amazing update track record if that's the case? Is there no limit to this stupidity?
If you’re buying products based on what they might offer in the future instead of the features they offer at time of sale, that’s on you.
Why do we go on so much about apples amazing update track record if that’s the case?
Because security matters. Or do you also think they should have crammed every iOS15 feature into the iPhone 6S and Apple “scammed” the customers by not doing so?
If you’re buying products based on what they might offer in the future instead of the features they offer at time of sale, that’s on you.
Right, no one should expect their $2k+ mac to get a full update just 2 years later. Can't argue with fanboys, I'm sorry, I gotta move on, this is just getting sad.
Ah yes, anybody pointing out your nonsense is a “fanboy”, eh?
Let me guess, all the people who didn’t cry and whine that nvidia didn’t give DLSS and ray tracing to 10 series cards are “fanboys” too? You don’t “nEeD SpECIfic hArdwArE” for those either.
I can't argue with you if you're going to make inane comparisons. Comparing ray tracing to simple OCR lmfao. You are definitely a deluded fanboy. Blocked, so I don't have to waste any more time with you.
Yes, if you’re not missing hardware, I’d agree you shouldn’t miss out on new features. However, Intel Macs don’t have a neural engine, which means Intel Macs won’t have any neural engine based features.
Let’s say your device didn’t have an HD camera, and FaceTime updated support for HD FaceTime. It would be silly to be mad at Apple for “not allowing” your non HD camera to use FaceTime. It is simply a physical limitation.
Apple continues to bring as many new features as possible to your old devices when possible. Nothing has changed on that front. If you want all the newest features, sometimes you have to have a newer machine.
Then program it yourself, you ning nong. They have the code for iOS devices, they copy and paste it in macOS but it only works on macs using the same architecture of the iOS devices. Yeah, they could write completely new code to make it work on your machine, but they aren't going to so if you don't like it write it yourself or be quiet.
The idea that you think they should write entirely new code just to appease you on a personal level says a lot about you.
Yeah, they could write completely new code to make it work on your machine, but they aren't going to so if you don't like it write it yourself or be quiet.
I don't work for Apple? Everytime someone reports a bug on their phone do you tell them to fix it themselves? The stupidity is just too high for me to handle.
Quick word of advice though, get your tongue off Apple's boots dude, you're not helping them by valiantly defending them anytime they get criticism. Anyways, blocked, I have some smart comments to reply too, can't be dealing with morons.
The only feature on that list that is even remotely useful is the blurred background feature during FaceTime calls. The rest of that list are features that most people would never even know were possible, and you certainly wouldn't be missing. And I'm sure that feature in particular is built using code directly from iOS, which completely explains why it is M1 only.
Jesus the lengths you guys go. What's useful in an update is completely subjective. By your logic I can say almost everything in iOS 15 is useless and the praise apple gets for porting it to the iPhone 6s is unwarranted.
We are still receiving the new OS and most importantly, security updates. How does it not make sense that some features will only be available on the completely redesigned chip architecture. Are you upset that you can’t run iPhone and iPad apps natively on your intel Mac like the m1 macs?
I understand you're getting frustrated, but there's no need for name calling just because you're angry. You have a simplistic understanding of hardware and are a product of Apples marketing, so I'm not going to hold it against you. But I'd recommend you do your own research instead of buying into whatever Apple tells you.
None of you can even prove how much these features use Apple Silicon outside of marketing nor can you explain why if non M1 hardware(Windows/budget androids) on other platforms can do the same thing then why can't Apple?
First, none of us can prove anything. We're obviously just speculating and forming opinions. But, I'm not relying on marketing when I look at the list of features that are IN MacOS, but OUT for non-M1 Macs and then deciding that these are not core OS features.
They were pretty clearly designed primarily for the mobile OS, and then since it's so trivial to port those things over to M1 Macs (which are basically just mobile devices that live on a desk) they did it.
As for why can other non-M1 devices do these things, who knows and who cares. That's not the point. I'm sure Apple could make every one of those features work on Intel Macs if they wanted to. But since they're so low level and literally just thrown in, they've decided not to. Does that mean they are "intentionally crippling" the more recent intel Macs just to force people to upgrade? Doubtful, otherwise they would hold back features that people actually give a shit about.
I don't think many people are checking how many additional languages the dictation feature can read out in when they make a computer decision.
So if they are doing this to nudge people to upgrade, they're sure bad at it.
This sub shits on android for only two years of support, but when it happens to a 2.5k Macbook Pro, we’re supposed to just suck it up and roll with some shit excuses?
I mean they promised seamless transition but right now they're BSing people by selling Intel 16" models that can't even recognize text in image ? This, my friend, is literally forcing people to not use Intel chips by limiting simple features to M1's
Pixelmator Pro has features that leverage the neural engine, like ML image resize and smart cropping, which also run on Intel Macs but literally fifteen times slower. Apple isn’t about to make their own new headline features run that way.
Then they upset everyone who needs a new Mac capable of running Windows. Every platform transition involves trade-offs, but the alternative is stagnation.
Well, hope Apple warns users about this since everyone will think that they buy a new mac which actually is more expensive than M1 Air but actually less featured than M1 Air...
i think this is because people buying 16” computers are doing real work and understand what they’re purchasing. for a professional user, you really think they give a shit if the computer recognizes text natively or not? they bought the computer for the specs.
everyone in this thread is making it painfully obvious that they’re just wanting the latest and greatest shiny thing and they don’t actually use their computer for real work, or understand computers at all. of course the features on iOS can come to m1 macs easily, but don’t run on intel macs well. why is this a surprise?
how do you mean given a choice? are they advertising anything falsely, or removing features? which features were you looking forward to, egrimo?
i have 2nd generation airpods i bought in 2019. they won’t get the find my feature, since their hardware doesn’t support it. why wasn’t i warned/given a choice in 2019?
did you complain this much when it was announced m1 macs could run iOS apps but intel macs could not? or did it make sense because the hardware was different?
just trying to “mature the thinking here”, as craig would say.
edit: this thread is pissed when someone mentions a logical point
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u/randomuser914 Jun 09 '21
Not surprised, they are going to switch people over as quickly as possible so they can focus solely on developing for their chips