Intel Macs miss out on Apple Intelligent features

There’s good news and bad news for Intel Mac owners. The good news? If your Intel Mac isn’t too old (think newer than 2018), you can still upgrade to the latest macOS Sequoia, also known as macOS 15. The bad news? You won’t get the coolest new features, specifically the ones powered by something called “Apple Intelligence.”

A slide from Apple's WWDC 2024 event. Text boxes promote features including "A more personal Siri," “Private Cloud Compute,” “Reduce Interruptions,” “Image Playground,” “Genmoji,” “Summaries in Messages,” "Clean Up in Photos," "Image Want," "Audio Recording summaries," "Priority Notifications," "Priority messages in Mail," “Natural language search,” and big one box in the middle promote features "Apple Intelligence." — Image: Apple

Let’s rewind a bit. Every year, Apple releases a new version of macOS, its operating system for Macs. Historically, most Macs that could run the previous version could also run the new one. This year, that holds true for Intel Macs – they can still upgrade to Sequoia. However, there’s a catch. Apple Intelligence, the star attraction of Sequoia, won’t work on Intel-based Mac machines.

This isn’t entirely surprising. Apple Intelligence seems pretty powerful, and it requires the muscle of Apple’s own chips, the M-series, to run. Intel processors just can’t handle it.

Apple M4 chipset features overview — Image: Apple

So, what does this mean for the future of Intel Macs? Here’s the thing: nobody knows for sure. But there are some clues.

Studies show that in the past, Macs have gotten software updates for an average of six to seven years, with a few extra years of security updates after that. Some Intel Macs released after 2016 are already falling short of that average. This suggests that Apple might be slowly phasing out support for Intel machines.

Jan 10, 2006; San Francisco, CA, USA; STEVE JOBS at Mac World in San Francisco announces a new laptop, the Macbook Pro. Seen here with PAUL ORTILINI , CEO of Intel. Mac is nowphasing in Intel chips. — Photo by Steve LaBadessa / ZUMA Press

Here are three guesses about what might happen next year:

Scenario 1: the end of the road — Sequoia might be the last version of macOS to run on Intel Macs altogether.
Scenario 2: a short reprieve — Apple might support a few newer Intel Macs in the next version of macOS (macOS 16) but drop support for everything else.
Scenario 3: one more year — Apple might keep supporting most Intel Macs for one more year before ending support entirely in macOS 17.

The truth is, it’s anyone’s guess. But one thing’s for sure: if you have an Intel Mac, you’re not getting the coolest new features Apple has to offer.

While Apple is still offering updates for Intel Macs, the reality is that the most compelling reason to upgrade to Sequoia is Apple Intelligence, and that’s exclusive to Apple Silicon Macs. This year, even a lower-powered M-powered MacBook Air might be a better choice than a super-powerful but outdated Intel MacBook Pro. If you’re thinking about upgrading and your budget allows it, the choice seems clear.