Hi everyone, Syd here. Wednesday, I attended Apple’s “Pro and Tell” day in LA, where the tech company announced its first touchscreen MacBook Pro at an invite-only event for creators and creative professionals.
Why this launch felt different: Apple knew where attention was and how to capture it. If it announced the MacBook Pro in tandem with the iPhone Duo back in September, it would have gotten lost in the sauce of the foldable phone hype. Instead, Apple waited until a week after the phone was released, then announced the MacBook in a room full of the most prolific tech creators in the world.
Beyond the surprising product drop, the event was centered around Creator Hollywood—culminating in a roundtable where Colin and Samir spoke to Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, Kane Parsons, Petra Collins, and Issa Rae about media diets, the pressure that comes after a huge success, and the importance of authenticity over virality.
Here were some of my favorite takeaways.
Your favorite creators have lower screen time than you. When asked about their creative process, everyone mentioned some form of an “eye break.” For Insecure creator Rae, she steers clear of watching anything in the genre she’s writing. For Collins (photographer and director behind artists like Rosalía and Olivia Rodrigo), she pulls from dreams—sometimes eating a bunch of Halloween candy and going to bed. I, for one, am excited to try that one out for the newsletter.
People > Budget. When asked about working with a studio again on his next project, Backrooms director Parsons said the question isn’t studio vs. no studio. It’s having the resources to work with the people you want. He and Fischbach connected over sharing crew members between Backrooms and Iron Lung.
What breaks through is what’s real. “When people recognize themselves in the work, that's what makes it great,” Collins said. “There can be a pretty image that is perfect and works because of its ratio, but it's only going to penetrate the heart when it means something.”
Big picture: “In the attention economy, there's the kind of content that you use to pass the time and then there's the content that you make time for,” Rae said.
The internet has become a more crowded and competitive space for attention. One launch at a time is a better strategy in today’s world than ten announcements at once. This event was angled at capturing the attention of creators (and their audiences) by speaking to them about experiences that affect them, like the convergence of creators and Hollywood.
