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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1522076
Don’t Expect a New Apple TV at WWDC By Jesse Hollington Although significant new AI features in iOS 18 are expected to steal the show at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), each year’s event always brings the hope that we’ll also see some new hardware announced. Unfortunately, it seems that this year will be all about the software, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Writing in his Power On newsletter, Gurman flatly stated, “There’s no hardware slated to be announced at WWDC.” While he left the possibility open for Apple to “unexpectedly” preview a new device that would launch later in the year, he added that’s a long shot that he doesn’t expect to happen. With Apple’s MacBook and iPad product lineups firmly established for the first half of 2024, there aren’t too many significant hardware products that could be announced at WWDC. The iPhone and Apple Watch always land in the fall, and if the iPad and iPad mini were ready, Apple would have unveiled them alongside their M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air last month. From a Mac perspective, the only products “missing” at this point are an M3-powered Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro, but Gurman has already gone on the record saying that those will skip the M3 chip. An M4 Mac mini might arrive later this year, while the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are expected to get souped-up M4 chips around the time of WWDC 2025. That makes sense, considering that the M3 chip was released to fill the gap while Apple’s fabrication partners were getting their M4 production lines ready. Nevertheless, there’s still one product that some were hoping Apple might unveil at WWDC: a next-generation Apple TV or HomePod. Gurman himself told us in early 2023 that we should