2021 Hardware Round-Up for Developers
A Look Back at the Year’s Innovations
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Even with the supply chain–constrained impacts of port logistics coupled with the lingering effects of the COVID pandemic, hardware innovations were made in 2021. If you were lucky enough to beat the crowd and sniping bots to acquire any of these devices, you were also lucky enough to see glimpses of technologies to come before they were fully distributed. Following is a sampling of products that intrigued my tech tinkering sensibilities in 2021.
Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max Laptops
Apple made the right decision to couple its latest generation processor with an earlier winning formula of keyboard and I/O ports that kept many developers from leaving the Apple ecosystem for a Dell, Lenovo, or System 76 laptop. With enough GPU cores to mine crypto combined with a beautiful screen and Dolby Atmos speakers to be entertained while doing so, the M1 Max clearly demonstrated why Apple is still considered the premium computing experience for developers.
Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max Smartphone
Much like their laptops, Apple also released their latest flagship camera attached to a smartphone. While the company battles sideloading and right-to-repair arguments, there’s no doubt that their garden-walled platform is still more trusted and far more elegant than any competing Android counterpart. While it still galls my developer sensibilities to have to pay Apple for the privilege to write apps for their iOS platform, it’s nonetheless a formula that has worked for the company since the inception of the App Store. It’s also because of those annual dues that help pay for Apple curators to filter out a number of schlocky, highly questionable apps from their store distribution, thereby keeping the platform cleaner and arguably more secure than the alternatives.
Google Pixel 6
While not as polished as the iPhone 13, Google continues to compete with iterations with their own smartphone. The Google Pixel 6 is a clean-room implementation of the company’s custom Tensor SoC that boosts on-board AI processing of images, performance, and security. While still lagging far behind Apple from a mass consumer perception and long-term maintenance perspective, Google nevertheless keeps jumping back into the ring to at the very least give customers a choice between being locked in Apple’s ecosystem versus a more open environment for mobile app development.
Microsoft Surface Pro 8
For those developers firmly ensconced in the Microsoft platform, the Surface Pro 8 is the Microsoft equivalent of Apple’s MacBook Pro. In some ways, it actually exceeds what Apple has to offer, in that its touch screen experience combines a laptop and tablet into a single device, it runs Microsoft Visual Code and Visual Studio used to create and compile cross-platform applications, and new to this model, finally has a Thunderbolt 4 port that can connect to and take advantage of external GPUs. This enhancement turns this thin computing machine into a mega-computing powerhouse. While it still runs on Intel’s less-than-optimal chipset for on-the-go all-day computing, the latest Surface nevertheless has a battery life decent enough to last on a flight from NYC to LA. And until the rest of the application community catches up with native compilation for the M1 architecture, Intel still offers the broadest support for legacy and new computing languages and paradigms.
New AMD and Intel CPUs
AMD Ryzen 5000 series chips versus Intel’s Alder Lake i9 CPUs is the battle that consumers need. AMD is continuing to chip away at Intel’s market dominance, and the Ryzen 5000 shows how nimble and hungry AMD is compared to Intel’s safe bet strategy.
While Intel tries once again to break out of its legacy chains to regain lost ground, AMD continues to hoover up more market acceptance that makes Intel Inside not only less appealing but even stodgy — especially true among younger developers who see Intel as, “the CPU that my parents use.”
Nintendo Switch OLED Model
Even though the Switch’s chip architecture hasn’t changed from its original release four years ago, the latest release featuring a gorgeous seven-inch OLED display offers developers a portable gaming break after a long day of coding. Nintendo has sealed the portable gaming market with the Switch, and the OLED model will continue to lock in that market until the supply chain eases up enough to let them release the long-rumored Switch Pro. This will be necessary once Valve releases their Steam Deck handheld PC gaming device, originally slated for release in December 2021, but delayed until the second quarter of 2022 due to supply chain constraints.
PinePhone Pro
If you’re a true Linux advocate looking for a mobile platform not dictated by a mega-corporation, the PinePhone Pro provides a true open-source smartphone that can run a variety of Linux distros. While nowhere near as powerful as Apple or Google’s flagship devices, the PinePhone Pro offers freedom and full-stack access that is expected from a Linux OS. And like early releases of the Linux distros on PC, the mobile implementations have a lot of work ahead of them to be viable alternatives for a larger audience. But for now, Pine provides curious developers with a mobile computing solution they can tinker on without boundaries.
Raspberry Pi Zero W 2
The Pi Zero has always been a favorite of mine given how this tiny half gum stick-sized wafer encapsulates an entire Linux PC. This second-generation Zero brings its computing capacity roughly equivalent to a Raspberry Pi 3 that is roughly eight times larger than the Zero. I upgraded all my Zeros to the Zero W 2 simply by swapping out the microSD cards from my old Zeros and was impressed just how much more performant this upgrade proved to be. For now, the Pi Zero W 2 provides the absolute best bang for the buck in terms of computing capability and developer tinkering possibilities.
So that’s my list. If you have other favorites that weren’t mentioned, please add them to the comments. I am looking forward to new hardware innovations that will make developers excited in 2022!
If you enjoyed this article, check out these articles from Mike Riley:
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