I witnessed exactly this at work at a prior company. Odds were good that each year Apple would reserve space for or specifically invite (one year onstage) folk

I witnessed exactly this at work at a prior company. Odds were good that each year Apple would reserve space for or specifically invite (one year onstage) folks from the company to WWDC. And each year the founder of the company and usually at least 2-3 developers would buy the latest iPhone or Mac, and that would become the new development flagship. Sometimes they’d get advance access to new hardware, and they’d always take advantage of face to face time with Apple’s platform developers. Now it made sense for new features like Touch ID, then Face ID. There was good reason to test that support on real hardware. But we’re talking every year. I try to use my devices until they’re no longer in support at least. Sometimes I’ll upgrade outside that cadence, but rarely. I learned the impact that has on the end user real quick. In 2018 I was rocking a 2015 MacBook Pro that was not maxed out on RAM and CPU, and our flagship product ran like shit on it because all the developers were running new MacBook Pros with as much RAM and CPU as they could buy.