macOS 12 Monterey: The Ars Technica review

System requirements and compatibility

Monterey still straddles the architectural divide between the outgoing Intel Macs and the incoming Apple Silicon models, but it drops support for quite a few machines that are currently running Big Sur. The complete list of supported Macs:

• Early 2015 and later MacBook Air
• Early 2015 and later MacBook Pro
• Early 2016 and later MacBook
• Late 2015 and later iMac
• Late 2014 and later Mac mini
• 2017 and later iMac Pro
• Late 2013 and later Mac Pro

Generally, Apple is dumping Macs that used fourth-generation Intel Core processors (codenamed Haswell), which powered most Mac models released in 2013 and 2014. But there are Macs on both side of this dividing line—the 2014 Mac mini uses Haswell processors, and the 2013 Mac Pro uses a high-performance server-oriented variant of the older Ivy Bridge architecture. Both of them are still supported. The 2015 12-inch MacBook, on the other hand, uses a fifth-generation Broadwell CPU, and it isn't supported. Apple sold the 2014 mini and 2013 Pro for years and years, so the decision not to drop support for them makes more sense. And the 2015 MacBook was never a fantastic performer even when it was new, so dropping it is aggressive but arguably justifiable (though maybe I wouldn't feel that way if I'd spent my own money on one).

It's hard to say from one release whether Apple is dropping Intel Macs more proactively now that the Apple Silicon transition is well underway. But Monterey is the first time in a while that Apple has dropped support for a significant chunk of Macs for two years in a row. Sierra and High Sierra ran on all the same Macs, as did Mojave and Catalina, so you would expect Monterey to run on anything that could run Big Sur. There's no readily identifiable technical reason why that isn't the case, since there are fourth- and fifth-generation Intel Macs on either side of the support line.

Apple still hasn't committed to a support timeline for Intel Macs beyond the "years to come" boilerplate we got back when Big Sur came out. For the last few releases, the company has generally stopped supporting older Macs right around the time that they land on the "obsolete" hardware list. Apple declares products obsolete around seven years after it has stopped selling them, which fits for some of the 2013-era hardware, but it does not cover most of the 2014 Macs or the 2015 MacBook. Per usual, Apple wouldn't get into specifics with me about what is and is not on the support list.

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I wouldn't be worried about Intel Mac support being dropped from the next macOS release, or the one after that, or probably even the one after that, especially if you're using a T2 Mac. But Apple also isn't being as generous with new updates for older Intel Macs as it has in the past, and I think we can expect that to continue until the transition is finished.

What should I do with my unsupported Mac?

If your Mac isn't on the support list, it hasn't necessarily reached the end of the road. If you can run Catalina or Big Sur, Apple is still supporting your Mac with security updates and new Safari versions. This will be Catalina's last year as a supported operating system, but Big Sur should still have two years of support left. (All of these support timelines are informal, though—Apple doesn't document them anyway. But this is a long-standing unofficial policy going way back to the earliest versions of Mac OS X.)

A second, riskier option for the technically inclined is to force Monterey to continue to run—various patching tools exist that keep Big Sur and other versions of macOS running on older Macs. The OpenCore Legacy Patcher leverages OpenCore, a Hackintosh bootloader, to keep Big Sur and Monterey booting on older Macs by patching old hardware support back into the OS. This method is fraught because installing these patches sometimes requires you to disable macOS security features—and because updates can break things. It also only really works with Macs that have a Metal-compatible GPU, which excludes most Macs older than 2012 or so.

Moving beyond macOS, Windows 10 is still probably your best option for installing a modern operating system on an old Mac. You may need to contend with old, outdated drivers, but the Boot Camp driver packages for these older Macs should at least be good enough to get you up and running. You obviously lose access to iMessage and most iCloud functionality, aside from what's available in the browser-based version of iCloud and iCloud for Windows. But older versions of macOS are already missing out on newer iCloud features.

Windows 11 is also an option, but no Intel Mac meets Windows 11's more stringent hardware requirements, since they don't expose the Intel CPU's firmware TPM module or support Microsoft's Secure Boot implementation. That said, the same tricks that you use to get Windows 11 running on unsupported PC hardware can work just as well to get it running on an Intel Mac. You just have to be OK with the possibility that your PC may stop getting updates at some point (so far, Windows 11's updates have installed on my unsupported PCs just fine).

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Another option that may work especially well for very old Macs with slower processors and less RAM might be the operating system CloudReady. It uses the open source parts of ChromeOS to turn old PCs and Macs into more-or-less fully functional Chromebooks. CloudReady may also be a better choice than Windows if you don't want to pay for a Windows license or if you're setting up a computer for someone who already uses ChromeOS on their work or school computer.

Other system requirements

Most macOS releases include at least a few new features that will only work on newer Macs, usually related to their wireless capabilities or video encoding and decoding support. Monterey is no exception. The dividing lines are all over the place:

• Portrait mode in FaceTime, 3D Landmarks in Maps, and the interactive globe view in Maps require an Apple Silicon Mac.
• The Spatial Audio feature in FaceTime works with lots of Macs but is more flexible the newer your Mac is. If you have an Apple Silicon Mac, it works using the internal speakers, wired headphones, or AirPods. If you have an Intel Mac laptop with an Apple T2, it will work using the internal speakers or wired headphones, but not AirPods. If you have an Intel iMac from 2018 or later, it will only work using wired headphones.
• The "Voice Isolation" and "Wide Spectrum" mic modes in FaceTime require a Mac from 2018 or later. This encompasses all Macs with an Apple T2 chip, plus the T2-less 2019 iMacs.
• Universal Control requires a Mac with a sixth-generation (Skylake) Intel Core processor or better. Or, if you prefer Apple's terminology: "MacBook Pro (2016 and later), MacBook (2016 and later), MacBook Air (2018 and later), iMac (2017 and later), iMac (5K Retina 27-inch, Late 2015), iMac Pro, Mac mini (2018 and later), and Mac Pro (2019)." There are separate hardware requirements for iPads and iCloud account requirements, but we'll get into those later.
• AirPlay to Mac requires a 2018 or later MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, a 2019 or later iMac, a 2020 or later Mac mini, the iMac Pro, or the 2019 Mac Pro.
• Low Power Mode requires a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro with USB-C or Thunderbolt 3/4 ports.