You go there and take a bunch of meetings and then come back. That's actually very good for fundraising. Though we're close to it, we still have to drive to it. We do have a small startup scene here, but there isn't a massive momentum of startup culture here like you'd see in any major city. It is a three-and-a-half-hour drive to the Bay Area. So when we thought about running a tech startup somewhere else besides where we live, there's pros and cons. I mean, we live once, so we wanted to kind of dig into it. Accepting the program in London, even though it was a three-month time-limited commitment, let us actually explore the waters - wanting to not just see more of the world, but honestly experience different cultures in different environments and different sides of the world. When you have the opportunity to actually move somewhere else, you start to consider it seriously. (Rumor has it the iPhone 14 could inject some excitement into the lineup this September, but we'll see.) Meanwhile, the last few years of iPhone upgrades have delivered useful features - better cameras, 5G connectivity and MagSafe wireless charging, to name a few - but nowhere near the dramatic overhauls we've seen on the Mac side of things. Case in point: the new Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, which promises 3.8 times faster processing power than the 27-inch, Intel-powered iMac released in 2020. The company has since overhauled its Mac lineup with custom silicon, in the process making entry-level MacBooks more useful with dramatically longer battery life and its pro-level Macs more powerful. Though the iPhone will remain the company’s breadwinner for the foreseeable future, Apple knows it needs to diversify: with more affordable products, with subscription services and with Macs people are actually excited to use. Bringing all of its chips in-house proved a turning point: The company could use the overhaul to address years of criticisms over underwhelming (or outright bad) Mac features and also wow pandemic laptop shoppers with bold performance and battery-life claims. The company had long been rumored to be planning a move away from Intel, with the goal of building on its chip development for iPhones with custom Mac processors. When the COVID-19 pandemic began and buyers started snapping up laptops in droves, Apple got serious about upgrading the Mac. Apple continued to release new models with slightly upgraded specs each year, but "innovated" on Mac design with near-universally loathed butterfly-switch keyboards, a weird Touch Bar feature and bodies so slim they had basically no ports, forcing users to buy dongles to attach peripherals. Until Apple introduced its custom M1 chip in 2020, its computers were languishing.
Altogether the announcements indicate that reinventing the Mac continues to be high priority for Apple - perhaps more so than even the iPhone. A new M1 Ultra chip will power Apple's most advanced computer: a square aluminum box called the Mac Studio, which is designed to be paired with the new Studio Display, the first relatively affordable (at $1,599, emphasis on relatively) external monitor Apple has made in years. But then the event swiftly turned into a Mac showcase.