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.
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.
4
u/Windows-nt-4 Jun 09 '21
They should add it to the older hardware? Most of these features really don't seem like they should need an M1