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Comment by robinhoodexe | Hacker News Reader

Curious to see if a new MacBook Pro 15"/16" with an upgraded M1 chip is presented.

Most likely not. WWDC is for software announcements, mainly the new iOS and macOS versions, and I don't believe new hardware has even been presented (this is not true, see edit).

EDIT: I was wrong an hardware has indeed been presented at WWDC before. I still believe, however, that a new M1 16" MacBook Pro isn't a WWDC-worthy announcement and will likely be announced in October.

This is not true, Apple doesn't announce hardware at every WWDC but it's not uncommon. In 2019 they announced the updated Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR. In 2017 they announced updates to the iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro, iPad Pro, and HomePod.

> and I don't believe new hardware has even been presented.

I cant remember whom it was, but someone, an influencer or KOL on twitter or a blog started this "no new hardware has ever been presented in WWDC" madness and it has been spreading like plague ever since.

Mac Pro, Pro Display in 2019, MacBook Pro 2017, iPhone 3G and 4, and MacBook Pro 2009.

Other similar false statements were M1 has integrated memory ( For the 999th times it does not ) and AirPod were sold at cost ( this one is from Gruber ).

The “integrated memory” comes from confusion on the “unified memory” architecture. Unified just means shared by the CPU and GPU cores, but it doesn’t have to be integrated. Alas, many journalists probably wouldn’t know or understand that.

Not that it's a foolproof indicator for this year but new hardware has absolutely been announced at WWDC. The iPhone 3G is the one that immediately comes to mind but it's far from the only one. I'm pretty sure new Macbooks have been included before.

You're right! In fact, the last iPhone to be revealed at a WWDC was the iPhone 4 in 2010.

The iPhone 4 was my favorite "new iPhone", if that makes any sense. The screen was amazing for the time!

Wasn’t the 4 the first one with a “retina” screen? That was revolutionary at the time. Today, we take for granted high pixel density phones, but if you compared a 3GS to the new 4, it was mind blowing.

Yes, it was the first one with a retina screen. The change from the 3GS to the 4 was amazing. Also, the overall design was much slimmer. It seemed like a huge upgrade. Most of the upgrades since have felt much more incremental.

The iPhone 4 gave birth to front facing camera as we know it. That was practically nonexistent on any other phone at the time.

And boy was that a release! (discounting for Antennagate) Edit: And the terrible home button

The M1 devkti was presented.

The AppleTV devkit was presented.

Some upgrades are presented.

It makes a lot of sense to present "pro" hardware to developers

Many many models of macs and iPads have been announced at WWDC keynotes. Including the iMac Pro and the original Mac Pro.

You're right in general, but I do remember Mac Pro being announced at WWDC.

Isn't WWDC where "one more thing" came to be?

I believe Mac Pro was introduced at WWDC to be released at “Fall”.

That would be no surprise, since I have called it too many times before and waited and I will call it once again.

Now the M1 hype squad are becoming slightly short-sighted with their purchase, I'll just sit back and wait for the new generation to come (which is not far off) and the ecosystem to mature, (unlike what happened on November 2020) and at least this year, me and the newcomers jumping on Apple Silicon will have a much better experience.

I am bullish on Apple Silicon and looking past the M1 generation and will get the newer generation models instead and skipping M1.

Not sure what the short-sighted comment is regarding - My MacBookAir M1 is by far the greatest laptop upgrade I've ever made. Both of my last two upgrades prior to that (MacBook Air 2013 -> MacBook Air 2015), Dell XPS 9560 -> Dell XPS 7590) - we're so "meh" that (with the exception of video conferencing on the Dell, where it moved out of the Nose Cam) - I didn't really have any preference.

I can't imagine going back from the MacBook Air M1 to the 2015 MacBook Air, and, I'm pretty confident that it will be my daily driver for the next 5-6 years. Six months in, I'm still delighted every day that I use it.

I 100% understand the "Wait a few generations so you aren't a beta tester" - I didn't pick up an Apple Watch until the 3rd generation came out. But the MacBook Air M1 really feels, to me, like a 3rd generation product. So much so that it feels like Apple kind of of messed up in their product roll-out. This should have been the 2021/2022 refresh, not the initial product - but I'll take it!

Of course newer, high spec models are coming. In the meantime, I’ve spent 6 or so months developing and working on my favorite laptop I’ve ever used, and I anticipate high resale when a newer version comes out. Explain how I have been short sighted?

> I anticipate high resale when a newer version comes out.

Er, not really.

Not if you have already used it after 14 days after purchase with Apple, 30 days with Amazon and in most cases, no returns if you have already opened it depending where you have bought it.

To see what the hype was all about, I recently bought, tried it out and subsequently returned it at 100% of the retail price. Since you used it for 6 months or so, that isn't going to come close to that and on top of that given how immature the software ecosystem was for Apple Silicon on launch day, it was pointless to jump on board with broken software.

Now that WWDC is around the corner, we'll see what Apple has to offer for Apple Silicon which is not far off.

My feelings exactly. I'm quite excited by Apple Silicon. I have been hearing stories from users of the M1 that almost sound like science-fiction (Rosetta 2 performance being one).

The M1X/M2 is going to be pretty awesome, because it will reflect the "paved bare spots" worn by the M1 being in the wild.

This means that the designers will have been able to aggregate performance and usage data, to tune the processor for environments outside the lab.

Also, most software vendors will have released Apple Silicon native versions of their applications, or tuned their non-native apps to perform well in Rosetta.

Definitely getting one, when they become available.

> Also, most software vendors will have released Apple Silicon native versions of their applications, or tuned their non-native apps to perform well in Rosetta.

We're actually pretty far along on that path already! I'm surprised at how few of the applications I have installed are still Intel-only.

Agree. Currently there is no way to run Vagrant+Virtualbox on a M1.

You’re the one missing out.

On what exactly? The recovery OS bricking M1 Macbooks because of a bad update on launch day? I'm glad I dodged that bullet and have my data safe and sound.

If that happened on your first Mac (Like many others who went all in), well its back to the Apple store for you since you would need another Mac to restore it.

For developers, nearly everything is running in Rosetta since it is not optimised or still unfinished. For example, not being able to use Docker on M1 for 6 months until it became stable, Android Studio still unable to run VMs properly, Java was unavailable for months after Nov 2020, resulting in 'workarounds' to get it 'working'. Someone else mentioned that Vargrant (which uses VirtualBox) doesn’t even run. Very happy I missed out on that chaos on waiting months if I went all in on moving to M1.

So yes, I missed out on being part of the November 2020 chaos and also waiting months for the software ecosystem to catch up to Apple Silicon. Anything other reason as to why I should buy a M1 Macbook NOW rather than waiting for M1X/M2 instead?

M1 macbooks are amazing, and you are clearly very biased.

In fact, the M1 hype squad is 'clearly very biased' than I am. 'It is faster than everything I've seen on a laptop without a fan' and 'runs (some but only approved) iOS apps' and that is it.

If the software does not run, requires a very involved workaround or is unstable enough to prevent someone doing their work, then all of the above is useless.

Evaluation of new shiny toys comes with a for and against. Let me be clear: going all in on an entirely new product with early 1.0 software is a risk that can't be ignored and it was hidden by most and not shown on November 2020 by the fanatics.

My question still remains unanswered: Anything other reason as to why I should buy a M1 Macbook NOW rather than waiting for M1X/M2 instead?

There was a supply chain leak last week that got me excited. A new chip for the macbook pros that can support 64gb RAM.

Magsafe restored

SD card restored

Butterfly keyboard still gone, which was another point of contention in the past

and touch bar still there (yay)

alongside USBC ports

hope this is corroborated by Apple, seems too good to be true

I've been expecting them to move the Touch Bar up and add a row of physical function keys. I'd be perfectly fine with that.

There are some bases of users that actually use the Touch Bar. Most of the devs on here are not among them. From what I've heard it's mostly graphics and 3d people.

The biggest issue I have with the Touch Bar is how un-customizable it is. Make it easier to do DIY customizations and I might find some interesting uses for it.

BetterTouchTool can help a little with the Touch Bar but overall I hope they kill it off. They haven't iterated on it at all since release and it's more in my way than useful. On top of that my MBP is in clamshell mode 99.9% of the time so it's completely worthless for me. I'd even be happy with just the option to not have the Touch Bar on the new 16".

I'll second the recommendation for BTT. The UI is a disaster but it's still at the top of my list for installing on new machines.

Side note: BTT is not just about the touch bar and trackpad gesture customization, it's also fantastic for mapping hotkeys and window snapping.

As for customizing, I use macvim quite a lot, and it's easy to add things to the colorbar, e.g. with

    " Touchbar
    amenu TouchBar.make :!make<CR>
    amenu TouchBar.@q @q

in your ~/.vimrc file.

Pretty sure that will be on the agenda

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