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Also, just for completeness’ sake, the keynote included a short segment on a new lens for the Canon EOS R7 camera that can shoot spatial video. I can’t see the timestamp of the press release on mobile, but it’s possible that the keynote mention occurred first. This is non-Apple hardware built to Apple’s specifications. (Outside the spirit of the question.)

As part of the Private Cloud Compute announcement, Apple revealed that it will run on publicly auditable Apple Silicon-based servers. So not hardware for purchase, but it is user-facing and technically not previously announced.

I think this goes against the spirit of the market and is a bit of a gotcha, but still a good point that wouldn't be too unreasonable to resolve on. alas, unambiguous resolution criteria are hard.

@LoganTurner No evidence it's any new hardware. In fact, the claim "Apple Silicon servers" strongly implies these are chips that already exist — they love to make announcements claims about all their new proprietary chips.

I don't think this is a gotcha either. The criteria was "announces any new hardware", and they explicitly didn't. Even if they were using new hardware, they'd need to announce it.

@andrew Agree that it's not a new chip, and that as an edge case it shouldn't count for a yes resolution. But just to clarify, the quote from the keynote is:

These models run on servers we have especially created using Apple silicon.

1:17:10

These Apple silicon servers offer the privacy and security of your iPhone from the silicon on up,

So it's not like they're using previously revealed computer hardware like Mac minis to fill this role.

@LoganTurner Why would this be “new hardware that was not previously announced“?.

It is not known that it is new hardware, it might very well not be. (I don't even think it's likely at all that it is?)

If it is new hardware, this was not announced at WWDC.

Just because they have created new servers for this doesn't mean they need to use new hardware? If they were using M2 Mac Pros they could still say “we especially created servers for this purpose“. They presumably run custom software. That also counts as “especially created a server“?

@JonathanMannhart In light of a supply chain analyst report last month that claimed (granted, it's a rumor):

Foxconn is said to currently be assembling Apple AI servers that contain the ‌M2‌ Ultra, with plans to assemble AI servers powered by the M4 chip in late 2025.

I don't think that a software-only solution is the most natural way to interpret Craig's words in the video.

@LoganTurner Your quote is still true if it's just M2 Ultra Mac Studios? You can have a rack full of them and call it “assembling a server“, that would be normal usage of that word?

And even if it was new hardware, they didn't announce it at WWDC. They announced a new service, not hardware.

Presumably AppleTV+ involves a whole bunch of hardware, some might even be unreleased (ways to film immersive content), but we would never call a new AppleTV+ announcement that includes immersive content “an announcement of new hardware“, if they don't specifically announce that hardware.

@JonathanMannhart That's a great point about AppleTV+. We know that historically Apple hesitates to reveal behind-the-scenes information unless that knowledge affects how people enjoy or depend on the offering. (Examples that come to mind are the antenna testing chambers after Antennagate, or the iPhone-recycling robot which addresses concerns about e-waste.)

In this case Apple decided to talk directly about the servers. In fact, the relevant teams released a blog post yesterday describing the service in more detail. They make their reasons crystal clear: to guarantee users that their data is private and secure, and to enable security researchers to verify these guarantees end-to-end. These details make a big difference to how you consume the service. It seems importantly different from immersive content, where knowing they built a special camera is "oh, cool" but otherwise doesn't impact the viewing experience.

Less critical to users is knowing whether the server hardware is substantially new or essentially a Mac in a rack. Maybe that's why the keynote didn't, say, show renderings of the hardware. But it's still a kind of interesting question, so I've made a market for it: https://manifold.markets/LoganTurner/are-apples-private-cloud-compute-se?r=TG9nYW5UdXJuZXI

This market should close the minute before WWDC 2024 starts, if not it is easy to cheat and trade the second the hardware (if any) is announced before it is resolved.

@AxelRthingCano That would certainly be an option for this kind of market. However, live trading is quite popular (you would expect the probability of this market to go down during the event and settle near zero at the end of the event if hardware isn't announced). Nonetheless, I wouldn't change the close date of the market at this point since some traders might have factored the possibility of live trading into their current position in the market.

@Predict I don't see how extending the close date should hurt traders in theory? Unless they had limit orders with too-long expirations, but you're the only person with a limit order on this.

@Predict I understand, just a tip for your next market.

@jacksonpolack It would be shortening the close date in this case. I'm not sure how that would hurt traders either though tbh. Last year I shortened the close time of a WWDC market the way @AxelRthingCano suggested and a strong trader changed his position because of it and complained about the change.

@Predict This is the right decision , thank you for being awesome.

@Predict I think it's maybe a good pragmatic decision to leave the market open because it's a small amount of mana and people like live betting. But in principle I believe you do not have any responsibility to leave these kinds of markets open if you set the close date late. You aren't hurting anyone by not giving away your (or manifold's) money to whoever news trades it first

@jacksonpolack Maybe @Predict will be the one to newser trade? It is their decision to be making, my mana my choice. Why are you incentivizing the greed? Some of you are so much the whiny Ṁana boys and not the alpha sPice men. I do not understand it, what is in it for you? Let the creator do as he will please!!!

@Mirek Please don't make comments like this.

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/02/gurman-no-new-hardware-at-wwdc-2024/

Given the unusual timing of Apple’s May event for new iPads, I find it hard to imagine they’d announce new hardware—pre-WWDC announcements like that tend to point to a need to get something out before WWDC and/or save space in the keynote. So a MacBook with an M4 chip feels unlikely for that reason, and also because it’s unclear if TSMC’s 2nm process has hit the appropriate scale for a larger run yet.

@huw Equally, there haven’t been strong enough rumours around a new TV product or AirPods. Maybe a slim chance for a new HomePod-style product with a display for Siri, as this has been rumoured for a while and could make sense to pre-announce for developers in an AI-focused keynote. But even then, they already have the APIs for such a device (WidgetKit) and announcing a product that would have to wait until September (for the OS) to ship is unprecedented.