Vratislav Holub At the end of October, we saw the public release of the expected macOS 13 Ventura operating system. This system was introduced to the world already in June 2022, namely on the occasion of the WWDC developer conference, when Apple revealed its main advantages. In addition to the changes regarding the native applications Messages, Mail, Safari and the new Stage Manager multitasking method, we also received other great interesting things. Starting with macOS 13 Ventura, iPhone can be used as a wireless webcam. Thanks to this, every Apple user can get first-class image quality, for which he just needs to use the lens on the phone itself.
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In addition, everything works practically immediately and without the need for annoying cables. It's simply enough to have a Mac and an iPhone nearby and then select in a specific application that you want to use your iPhone as a webcam. At first glance, it sounds absolutely sensational, and as it turns out now, Apple is really reaping success with the new product. Unfortunately, the feature is not available for everyone, and having macOS 13 Ventura and iOS 16 installed are not the only conditions. At the same time, you must have an iPhone XR or newer.
Why can't older iPhones be used?
Let's therefore shed some light on a rather interesting question. Why can't older iPhones be used as a webcam in macOS 13 Ventura? First of all, it is necessary to mention one important thing. Unfortunately, Apple has never commented on this problem, nor does it explain anywhere why this limitation actually exists. So in the end, it's just assumptions. Anyway, there are several possibilities why, for example, iPhone X, iPhone 8 and older do not support this rather interesting new feature. So let's quickly summarize them.
iPhone XR
As we mentioned above, there are several possible explanations. According to some apple users, the absence of some audio functions explains the absence. Others, on the other hand, believe that the reason may be the poor performance itself, which stems from the use of older chipsets. After all, the iPhone XR, the oldest supported phone, has been on the market for over four years. Performance has rocketed forward in that time, so there's a good chance that the older models simply couldn't keep up. However, what seems to be the most likely explanation is the Neural Engine.
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Flying around the world with Apple The latter is part of chipsets and plays an extremely important role when working with machine learning. Starting with the iPhone XS/XR, the Neural Engine received a decent improvement that pushed its capabilities several steps forward. Conversely, the iPhone X/8, which is a year older, does have this chip, but they are absolutely not equal in terms of their capabilities. While the Neural Engine on the iPhone X had 2 cores and was able to handle 600 billion operations per second, the iPhone XS/XR had 8 cores with a total potential for processing up to 5 trillion operations per second. On the other hand, some also mention that Apple decided on this limitation on purpose to motivate Apple users to switch to newer devices. However, the Neural Engine theory seems more likely.
Importance of Neural Engine
Although many Apple users do not realize it, the Neural Engine, which is part of the Apple A-Series and Apple Silicon chipsets themselves, plays an extremely important role. This processor is behind every operation that is related to the possibilities of artificial intelligence or machine learning. In the case of Apple products, it takes care, for example, of the Live Text function (available from the iPhone XR), which works on the basis of optical character recognition and can therefore recognize text in photos, of even better images when it improves portraits in particular, or of the correct functioning of the Siri voice assistant . So, as we mentioned above, differences in the Neural Engine seem to be the main reason why older iPhones cannot be used as a webcam in macOS 13 Ventura.
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iPhone 14 is almost (not quite) twice as fast as iPhone X (5 years difference in launch dates). I don't know, I probably wouldn't call it a rocket pace of performance development. Apple simply doesn't support the older phones because they want to force people to buy a newer phone. It's the same story as why the Stage Manager on iPads without the M1 chip does not support an external display, or why some Macs do not support the universal clipboard, or why the Mac Pro 2013, which has a much more powerful chip than the MacBook 12″ from 2017, does not support the new macOS, etc. Politics, business , money. We live in capitalism.