Not to rain on everyone's parade, but for those people with pre-Haswell systems currently able to run macOS Monterey via OpenCore/OCLP, it may serve well to consider a reality check of how many (or few!) features / improvements will actually be gained in macOS 13 Ventura over what Monterey provides for Intel-based Macs:
- Stage Manager - Apple's new graphical task/window switching manager, but you'll need a capable (and compatible) GPU for it to be worth it
- Passkeys - Allows online account access with Touch ID and Face ID instead of passwords, but most pre-Haswell systems very likely won't be able to make use of this feature
- Continuity Camera - Allows iPhones to be used as a wireless webcam for the Mac, but only works with certain iPhone models, and there's a very good chance this won't work on pre-Haswell systems anyhow
- Metal 3 - This new graphics API will only work on systems with AMD Vega / 5000-series / 6000-series GPUs or Intel UHD Graphics 630 / Iris Pro Graphics, and even then it may not work if the drivers/other software components include Intel AVX2 instruction code
- FaceTime Continuity - Allows hand off of FaceTime calls to/from a compatible iPhone
- Mail app - Minor improvements including undo / schedule send, suggestions, Remind Me, and overhauled search
- Safari app - Minor improvements including Shared Tab Groups
- Settings app - Replaces System Preferences app with a much iOS-style UI
- Software Update - Improved for smaller/faster delta updates, but any system updates may and likely will require re-extracting the Rosetta 2 x64 emulation dyld cache library found in Apple Silicon Ventura installations to replace the updated Intel x64 dyld cache that has AVX2 instruction code incompatible with pre-Haswell CPUs.
These new features will
only work on
Apple Silicon Macs:
- Live Captions
- Emoji Dictation
- Reference Mode with Sidecar
Keep in mind that any Apple or 3rd party apps, drivers, (or kernel extensions not included in the Rosetta 2 x64 emulation dyld cache library) which use AVX2 instructions will in most cases
not work on any pre-Haswell systems, unless someone manages to find a way to incorporate a working AVX instruction emulator - an extremely difficult (if not impossible) task. User
@Syncretic already created an AVX emulator over a year ago (see
this thread for more details) but has not yet found a way to properly integrate it into macOS Monterey, and that was
before the 12.4 update that included a few kernel extensions / components updated with AVX instructions.
macOS Ventura's use of AVX instructions is on another whole level, running deep throughout key components of the system software, such that Syncretic describes it as a "minefield". As he described in
this post, his preliminary scan of beta 1 of Ventura turned up over
1.6 million AVX+ instructions across 172 files.
Given that Ventura beta 2 already includes at least one key AMD GPU driver update compiled with AVX2 instructions as
@Ausdauersportler announced
above, it's not a big leap to expect more of other macOS components to be updated to include AVX2 instructions in the latest / future Ventura betas and the release version.
As a happy 2010 MacPro5,1 user running macOS Monterey, I personally would love to see Ventura on my machine, but I realize I have to look at the diminishing returns Ventura provides considering how likely it won't be even remotely operable on such an old machine.
