Apple today seeded the tenth developer beta of macOS Monterey, the newest version of the macOS operating system. The tenth beta comes one week after Apple released the ninth macOS Monterey beta.
Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and once the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences.
macOS Monterey will bring Universal Control, a feature that lets a single mouse, trackpad, and keyboard be used across multiple Mac or iPad devices, plus there's a new AirPlay to Mac feature. Safari has been redesigned with a new tab bar with a toggle for two different designs and support for Tab Groups, and FaceTime has gained spatial audio, a Portrait Mode on M1 Macs, and Voice Isolation for cutting out background noise. There's also a new SharePlay FaceTime feature that lets Apple users watch TV, listen to music, and share their screens with one another.
Shared With You, a separate feature, keeps track of the music, links, podcasts, news, and photos that people are sent in Messages, highlighting it in the relevant apps. Notes has a new Quick Note feature for jotting down thoughts, and collaboration is easier with mentions and an Activity View.
The Shortcuts app from iOS is now available on the Mac, and Focus helps people stay on task by cutting out background distractions. There's an updated Maps app with a whole slew of new features, and with Live Text, Macs can now detect text in photos or provide details on animals, art, landmarks, plants, and more in images.
Mail Privacy Protection hides IP and prevents tracking through invisible pixels, and iCloud Private Relay keeps Safari browsing protected. There are many other new features in macOS Monterey, with a full rundown available in our macOS Monterey roundup.
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But that's for a single thread.
For multiple threads, we'll probably see:
* Alder Lake-P, at 12-45 W, with 6 p-cores and 8 e-cores. In contrast, the M1X, likely at slightly lower wattage but for the same kind of device (e.g., a 16-inch MacBook Pro), is rumored to feature 8 p-cores and 2 e-cores. Assuming the M1X has the same clock (which I wouldn't be so sure about — don't be surprised to see it go to something like 3.5 or 3.8 GHz, for another 9-19% boost, given that there will be more thermal headroom), that already makes the M1X more powerful at multithreaded stuff — and at least equally as powerful at single-threaded.
* Alder Lake-S, at 65-120W, with 8 p-cores and 8 e-cores, for some reason. Hard to say how this compares to Apple, since they haven't released anything remotely in this area yet.
* Alder Lake-M, at 7-15W, which isn't shipping until early next year but compares most closely to M1. Except, at that point, Apple will probably have the M2, which will bring a 9% boost if the A15 is anything to go by.
I see no reason to believe any of those will "smoke" the M1. They will certainly come a little closer to catching up, but probably with quite a few asterisks attached, like:
* how much more quickly will they throttle, compared to the M1?
* likewise, what is actual wattage compared to claimed TDP?
* when will Intel ship them at scale? This went very poorly for Ice Lake, and still not too great for Tiger Lake. The longer they wait, the more likely the M2 ships first.
* and by the time the M2 has shipped, who cares?
Now, if Intel can pull another 20% next year, that could be interesting. But it isn't looking like that.