Did Apple accidentally confirm the M1X MacBook Pro at WWDC 2021?

At WWDC 2021, Apple focused entirely on software, unveiling major updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, watchOS 8, and even tvOS 15. It didn’t, unfortunately, mention any new hardware, including the much-rumoured M1X MacBook Pro. Or did it?

Apparently, the metadata from Apple’s WWDC 2021 YouTube video confirmed the existence of a new MacBook Pro running a yet-to-be unannounced M1X Apple Silicon processor. Twitter user Max Balzer spotted keyword tags for Apple’s official WWDC 2021 recap clip includes mentions of “M1X” and “M1X MacBook Pro” as well as other terms like iOS 15, Apple Event, Apple Special Event, and so on.

You can see the metadata in the image below:

OK OK OK

Everyone stay calm… but I just spotted these tags on Apple’s YouTube livestream of the June 7 keynote!!!

APPLE CONFIRMED THE M1X!!!@jon_prosser you were right after all!!!

This isn’t fake, you can get the @TubeBuddy extension for YT and it shows them! pic.twitter.com/C54sBydj7u

— Max Balzer (@maxbalzer_) June 9, 2021

Does this mean Apple originally planned to announce an M1X-powered MacBook Pro during its WWDC 2021 keynote on Monday? 

Apple’s upcoming 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are both expected to feature next-generation M1X Apple Silicon with eight high-performance cores and two power-efficiency cores. These M1X laptops have been heavily rumoured for months, and were widely thought to appear during Apple’s developer conference. But alas, that never happened. Now, they likely won’t arrive until later this year.

It’s unclear if Apple scrapped the announcement at the last minute, and if so, why, but we’ve contacted the company for a comment.