Intel Mac users: macOS Sequoia won’t give you Apple Intelligence, but you’ll still get a host of must-have features

WWDC 2024 earlier this week saw the big reveal of macOS Sequoia, and of course, Apple’s new AI platform – with the further revelation that Apple Intelligence would not be available for Mac owners with Intel CPUs running Sequoia.

While Apple had previously stated that macOS Sequoia will run on the same Mac models as macOS Sonoma, whether they had Intel or Apple CPUs, Apple Intelligence requires an M1 processor (or better) to work – and that fact likely left Intel-powered Mac owners wondering if they’d be left out in the cold with Sequoia regarding other features. Well, the good news is this isn’t the case, and in fact there are only two pieces of functionality that’ll be exclusive to Apple silicon-powered Macs.

Those are Apple Intelligence, as already mentioned, and also live audio transcription in Apple Notes is only supported for devices which have Apple silicon. This feature will enable the recording of audio right in the Notes app, and will also swiftly generate transcriptions of that audio (which are fully searchable).

Other than that, all the other features in macOS Sequoia will come to Intel Macs (and M-series Macs too, of course).

WWDC 2024 macOS Sequoia Features

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Mirroring magic and more besides

This includes the hotly anticipated iPhone Mirroring feature, allowing you to view and control your iPhone’s screen using your Mac keyboard and trackpad. On top of that, macOS 15 ushers in the ability to receive iPhone notifications on your Mac, new window layout functionality that enables you to drag and ‘snap’ windows into a grid arrangement on your screen (just as in Microsoft’s Windows OS), the Password app replacing Keychain to manage and sync passwords more easily, and an improved Safari browser.

In short, that’s a pretty good haul even if your Intel-powered Mac can’t run Apple’s new AI features. How much that’ll matter to you is doubtless a subjective thing, and it’ll also depend on how well Apple Intelligence is realized when it actually arrives – although the Mac maker is certainly putting a lot of stock in it going by the initial launch, and has some well thought out ideas behind the AI system.

As 9 to 5 Mac, which spotted this info, observes, Apple Macs with Intel CPUs have at least one more year of support with macOS.

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Google Chrome’s password manager is finally adding this must-have feature

The built-in password manager in Google Chrome is about to get even better as Google is preparing to add the ability to store notes alongside your passwords.

Besides storing your existing passwords, Chrome’s password manager also includes a password generator to help you create strong, unique and complex passwords for each of your online accounts.

While you can use a standalone password manager like LastPass or 1Password to store your passwords securely, Google Chrome and most other browsers now offer similar functionality. However, these paid solutions often come with extra features like secure cloud storage and password sharing in addition to letting you store notes about each of your passwords.

Now though, it appears that Chrome’s built-in password manager will be getting a big upgrade with the next major release of Google’s browser.

Adding notes to your passwords in Chrome

As reported by 9to5Google and first spotted by Leo Varela, the latest Chrome Canary release adds a new feature to Chrome’s built-in password manager that will allow you to store notes with your passwords.

Once this feature becomes generally available, you’ll see a new “Notes” field underneath the username and password fields in Chrome’s password manager. However, this option will only show up when adding a new password or when you go to edit an existing password. Varela also pointed out in his Reddit post that Google is working on adding the ability to securely send passwords to others as well.

Being able to add notes to each of your saved passwords can be quite useful for those with a lot of different online accounts. For instance, you can add a note to give context to the account, to differentiate between a work and personal account or even if you want to back up the answers to the security questions associated with a particular account.

Users running Chrome Canary can test out this feature now and Google has even added the #passwords-notes flag to make it easier to enable. As this feature is currently tied to the release of Chrome 101, it should arrive in the Stable channel around April or May but the timing of its arrival could change.

Via 9to5Google

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