Technology is always moving forward and sometimes, in order to move on to the next great thing, some devices are left out. In the case of Apple, some of the new features introduced for macOS 13 Ventura and iPadOS 16 will not be available on older Macs and iPads because these features require technology found in Apple’s M1 and M2 chips. S, if you have an Intel Mac or iPad A series, you won’t be able to use these features in the fall:

Features macOS Ventura M1/M2

The following features will not work on Intel-based Macs and require a Mac with an M1 or M2 SoC:

Live subtitles

Announced back in May, Live Captions relies on the Neural Engine in Apple’s M-series chips to create real-time captions during phone calls, FaceTime calls, and video conferences.

Emoji support for dictation

When using dictation in Ventura, you will be able to insert emojis, but only if you’re using a Mac with an M1 or M2 processor. It also requires downloading speech models and works with Cantonese, English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish.

Reference mode with Sidecar

If you have a 12.9-inch iPad with a 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 like video production, print, and web design.

Apple

Features iPadOS 16 M1/M2

These features only work on iPad with an M-series chip (11-inch iPad Pro, 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and iPad Air).

Producer

According to Digital Trends, Stage Manager’s new multitasking feature is based on the M1’s fast memory swap. Stage Manager is so dependent on this that it can’t run on A-series chips in other iPads.

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 iPad M1, you can connect a display and use resolutions up to 6K, as well as drag and drop between iPad and apps running on the external display.

Reference Modes

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Liquid Retina display can be set to display different colors in reference mode for use in video production, web design, print design, and more. Also, as mentioned above, this iPad is the only one that can be used as a reference mode display with an M-series Mac.

Other Exclusive iPadOS 16 Features

There are a few other features in iPadOS 16 that won’t work on every iPad. Here’s the bottom line.

• Magnifier app: Announced in May, the Magnifier app for iPadOS 16 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 11-inch iPad Pro (2nd generation or later).
• Virtual memory swap: If you are using an iPad app that requires more memory than is available in RAM, Virtual Memory Swap will work and temporarily use the iPad’s built-in storage (up to 16GB) as RAM. This works on 12.8-inch iPad Pro (5th generation or later), 11-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation or later), and iPad Air (5th generation) with 256 GB of storage.