Feature-by-Feature System Requirements for Apple’s 2021 Operating Systems

Josh Centers, writing at TidBITS:

We’re all eagerly awaiting iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12 Monterey, and watchOS 8, but will they run on the devices you have now? Apple continues to do an excellent job of supporting old devices, but many iPhone and iPad features will require at least an A12 Bionic chip. On the Mac side, some of the new features require an M1 processor.

Overall, maintaining support for old devices while restricting certain new features to more capable recent models is a great strategy. That way, fewer people are forced to buy new hardware just to participate, but the new features encourage hardware upgrades for those who want to take advantage of them.

It’s a testimony to Apple’s commitment to device longevity that iOS 15 will run on A9-based iPhones (2015’s iPhone 6S and 2016’s original iPhone SE). Of course they don’t get all the new features. The Android world is nothing like this.

Centers’s article is a detailed rundown of which devices get which features that were announced at WWDC two weeks ago.

★ Monday, 21 June 2021