Yesterday, the tech media was alight with speculation that Apple had “leaked” an update for the M1 Apple Silicon and MacBook Pro in the metadata for the YouTube stream of the WWDC 2021 keynote.
In the metadata for the video are the tags, and you can see them in the source of the page, or on the page if you use an extension (such as Social Blade) that displays the tags.
The two tags in question were “m1x MacBook Pro” and “m1x.”
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It sure looks like someone at Apple messed up, right?
Not really.
First off, the event was pre-recorded, so it was known what would be in it. It’s not like someone at Apple pulled the plug on the unveiling of the new MacBook Pro at the last minute and got Craig Federighi to tell a few extra jokes to cover up for it.
Also, the tags are still there almost a day after they were first spotted, and if this was some kind of mistake, someone at Apple would have edited them out by now.
So, if not some foul-up, what happened?
One of two things.
First, when generating the search tags for the video, “m1x MacBook Pro” and “m1x” scored highly and were included because they were popular search terms at the time. Search data suggests that they were getting some traction in the lead-up to the event.
The other option is that Apple is trolling the tech press. In the same vein that sees every pixel of event invites scrutinized, it’s one of those ways to get people to talk about Apple and the keynote after it’s finished.
While I’d like to think that Apple was trolling, the more mundane explanation is the most likely. Those tags might even have been automatically generated based on what a YouTube optimization service suggested, and no one bothered to look.
