diff --git a/platformio/__init__.py b/platformio/__init__.py
index ff315caf..0e4bb5a5 100644
--- a/platformio/__init__.py
+++ b/platformio/__init__.py
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
 # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 # limitations under the License.
 
-VERSION = (6, 1, 16)
+VERSION = (6, 1, "17a1")
 __version__ = ".".join([str(s) for s in VERSION])
 
 __title__ = "platformio"
diff --git a/platformio/dependencies.py b/platformio/dependencies.py
index 331c1bdb..0a81f868 100644
--- a/platformio/dependencies.py
+++ b/platformio/dependencies.py
@@ -12,8 +12,6 @@
 # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 # limitations under the License.
 
-import platform
-
 from platformio.compat import is_proxy_set
 
 
@@ -52,12 +50,10 @@ def get_pip_dependencies():
     ]
 
     extra = []
-
     # issue #4702; Broken "requests/charset_normalizer" on macOS ARM
-    if platform.system() == "Darwin" and "arm" in platform.machine().lower():
-        extra.append(
-            'chardet >= 3.0.2,<6; platform_system == "Darwin" and "arm" in platform_machine'
-        )
+    extra.append(
+        'chardet >= 3.0.2,<6; platform_system == "Darwin" and "arm" in platform_machine'
+    )
 
     # issue 4614: urllib3 v2.0 only supports OpenSSL 1.1.1+
     try: