Tag: News

• Luxury fashion brands have been opening restaurants around the world.
• The move may help brands appeal to millennials and Gen Z, who increasingly value experiences over things.
• Here are six brands that have opened restaurants in the US, Europe, and Asia.

In 1999, when designer Ralph Lauren opened his first restaurant concept in Chicago, industry analysts noted it was a novel concept but wondered about the wisdom of the brand getting into the notoriously challenging restaurant business.

Twenty-five years later, RL is still open, sitting right next door to the largest Ralph Lauren store in the world. In fact, Ralph Lauren's restaurant arm has only expanded. Meanwhile, other luxury brands have followed in his footsteps and opened their own restaurants and cafes.

Getting into the restaurant business could be a way for fashion brands to appeal more to millennials and Gen Z, who increasingly value experiences over things.

Osmud Rahman, an associate professor at the Toronto Metropolitan University's School of Fashion told the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail that brands could use restaurants to appeal to consumers who otherwise can't afford their physical products.

"It's affordable luxury," Rahman said. The restaurants aren't exactly cheap, but they may still be accessible in a way that a $3,000 handbag isn't.

Here are six luxury brands that have opened restaurants around the world.

Ralph Lauren

After the success of RL on Chicago's Michigan Ave., Ralph Lauren opened its first coffee shop, Ralph's Coffee, in New York City in 2014. Today, Ralph's Coffee has multiple New York locations and has expanded to Chicago, Miami, Virginia, and several European and Asian countries.

Ralph Lauren opened what's perhaps its most well-known restaurant, The Polo Bar, in New York in 2015. Since opening near the brand's Fifth Avenue flagship, the stylish space has attracted celebrities and fashion icons. Ralph Lauren also has restaurants in Milan, Paris, and Chengdu, China.

Coach

In March, Coach opened its first-ever restaurant, called The Coach Restaurant, in Jakarta, Indonesia. The restaurant is located in Jakarta's Grand Indonesia Mall and is next door to a Coach store. The brand also opened The Coach Coffee Shop, which is also attached to the store.

Both concepts are inspired by New York City. The restaurant is inspired by a New York steakhouse and literally has an upside yellow taxi cab coming out of the ceiling while the coffee shop serves pizza slices.

Louis Vuitton

In 2020, Louis Vuitton opened its first restaurant, Le Café V, inside the French fashion house's four-story location in Osaka, Japan. The brand opened a second location in Tokyo in 2021, in its seven-story flagship in Ginza.

Louis Vuitton opened a stand-alone restaurant — not attached to one of its stores — in Saint Tropez in 2022, on the terrace at the White 1921 Hotel. In 2023, the fashion house brought on a three-Michelin-starred chef, Arnaud Donckele, and pastry chef, Maxime Frédéric, to lead the restaurant.

The brand also opened Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton, a cafe and chocolate shop, in Paris in 2022 at LV Dream, an exhibit and gift store.

In March, Louis Vuitton launched LV The Place Bangkok in Thailand, which includes an exhibition of the brand's history, a store, a cafe, and a fine-dining restaurant.

Dior

Dior has several Cafe Dior locations in Europe, the US and Asia, including in Seoul, Paris, and Miami, as well as one at the Kansai International Airport in Japan. Dior also has the Mediterranean restaurant Dior des Lices in Saint Tropez.

At its Paris flagship, the French luxury fashion house has La Pâtisserie Dior and the restaurant Monsieur Dior. Dior has also announced plans to open another Monsieur Dior location in Japan in 2025, led by Anne-Sophie Pic, known for receiving the most Michelin stars of any female chef.  

Gucci

Gucci opened its first restaurant, Gucci Osteria, in Florence, Italy, in 2018 in partnership with Massimo Bottura, the Italian restaurateur and chef at Osteria Francescana, a three-Michelin-star restaurant consistently ranked among the best in the world.

The Italian fashion house opened a US location of Gucci Osteria in Beverly Hills in 2020, and also has locations in Tokyo and Seoul.

The Florence, Beverly Hills, and Tokyo locations have all earned a Michelin star.

Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co. opened the Petrossian at Tiffany restaurant in partnership with the caviar brand in 2022 at South Coast Plaza, a high-end shopping mall in Costa Mesa, California. The restaurant's focus is Champagne and caviar.

The American luxury jewelry brand also has the Blue Box Cafe by Michillen-star chef Daniel Boulud, located at Tiffany's flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City.

The brand also has The Tiffany Blue Box Cafe at the luxury department store Harrods in London.

• Donald Trump's attorneys moved for a mistrial Tuesday over Stormy Daniels' testimony. 
• The judge quickly denied that motion and said the defense should have objected more. 
• Daniels, the porn star at the center of the trial, detailed the sex encounter she says she had with Trump. 

Donald Trump's attorneys moved for a mistrial over Stormy Daniels' graphic testimony on Tuesday, but the judge swiftly denied that motion.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said most defense objections were sustained and that he had, for the most part, granted any defense requests to suppress testimony.

"As a threshold matter, I agree, Mr. Blanche, that there were many things that would have been better left unsaid," Merchan said. "In fairness to the people, I think this witness was a little bit difficult to control."

Merchan told Trump's lead attorney, Todd Blanche, that he was surprised the defense did not raise more objections during Daniels' testimony.

While on the witness stand, Daniels told jurors how she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006 and, later that night, wound up in the then-"Apprentice" star's penthouse hotel suite after accepting a dinner invitation.

She said she and Trump had sex in the suite without a condom and said how they used the "missionary position," before Trump's attorneys objected. That objection was sustained by Merchan.

Daniels also testified about a 2011 day when she was going to a "mommy-and-me" workout class in Las Vegas. She said she was approached in the parking lot by a man who "threatened" her not to tell her story.

Blanche took issue with the testimony about that encounter.

"There's no way to unring the bell in our view," Blanche had told the court as he called Daniels' testimony, which included details from the 2006 sexual encounter she says she had with Trump, "unduly prejudicial."

Merchan ultimately ruled that Daniels' testimony did not rise to the level of scuttling the trial.

"I don't believe we're at the point where a mistrial is warranted," Merchan said.

• A $418 million legal settlement in March upended the residential real estate market.
• Self-representation is set to become more popular, with agent-free transactions.
• Startup Hiizzy is trying to capitalize on this shift by offering an online marketplace for buyers and sellers.

In March, a $418 million legal settlement changed the real-estate market forever. Fat agent commissions are out. Representing yourself is in.

If you want to fire your real-estate agent, the startup world is already working to help you.

One new offering is from Hiizzy, which is building an online marketplace where home buyers and sellers come together to complete transactions themselves.

The startup got going earlier this year. It's the brainchild of Lewis Buckley and Allan Wood who met during a private home sale process that — you guessed it — involved no real estate agents.

Having seen how simple the process could be, and how much cheaper, they wondered why more people don't buy and sell their homes this way. That's when they started building Hiizzy together.

Hiizzy works like this for home sellers:

• On Hiizzy.com, they can create a property listing with uploaded photos and a website URL for sharing. This is free for now, but the startup plans to charge a small flat fee in the future.
• There's access to recent local property sale price data to help sellers set a realistic asking price.
• It comes with an AI writing tool so sellers can easily generate a compelling property description.
• The service lets sellers communicate directly and securely with buyers.
• It offers a tool to book viewing requests and respond to offers 24/7.

In the US, commissions on home transitions have hovered between 5% and 6% of the sale price for decades. In the UK, real estate agents charge a 1% to 3% of the property sale price, and then sellers usually have to hire someone else to handle the legal stuff.

Hiizzy is starting in the UK, where it plans to introduce a £395 ($496) flat listing fee for home sellers in the future. At the moment, listings are free, but even with the full fee, selling a home on Hiizzy.com without an agent could be way cheaper.

Take a £500,000 property as an example. Even with the lowest 1% commission rate of a traditional estate agent, a homeowner would save £4,605 if they paid Hiizzy's £395 flat fee. For a £750,000 home and a 3% commission, the savings would exceed £20,000.

Traditional estate agents mostly handle these tasks: They value the property; they photograph it; then create the listing and the advertising. They also communicate with buyers and handle viewings and price negotiations.

This can all be done online now without agents.

Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, recently bought a property himself, saving $50,000. He has a simple formula for those thinking of taking the jump.

"Do you have an internet connection? Do you have at least a seventh-grade reading level? Do you like saving money? If your answer yes to all three, you're in fantastic shape to be your own agent," he wrote in a recent Business Insider essay.

• Rachel Maeng Brown is a former NCAA rower who now works with student-athletes at her firm Gen Agency.
• The agency has provided NIL education and consulting to college athletes, collectives, and schools.
• Brown shared a presentation with five strategies to help athletes price and negotiate brand deals.

Knowing your worth is a struggle many college athletes face now that they can make money from their name, image, and likeness, known as NIL.

To help athletes understand their value, influencer-marketing-and-production company Gen Agency has been educating and consulting college athletes on NIL.

"Our big focus is creating a sustainable NIL marketplace at each university," Rachel Maeng Brown, the founder and CEO of Gen agency, told Business Insider.

Brown, a former NCAA rower, said the NIL side of Gen Agency educates universities to help them build curriculums. The agency also offers athletes on-site and virtual workshops about NIL marketing.

In April, Gen Agency hosted its first NIL-educational summit for University of Michigan influencers in partnership with Reach, a student-driven organization helping content creators grow their platforms and connect with brands. The presentation, which was shared with BI, covered how athletes can understand their audience, price sponsored content, post properly on social media, and protect themselves with a contract.

The summit also featured a panel of guest speakers, including former NFL player Isaiah Johnson. Johnson told BI that social-media followers and engagement are more important to brands who work with athletes than on-field performance.

"Followers, everyone wants to know how many people are following you and then two, just how genuine you are," he said. "If you are genuinely using a product, this could be a wonderful fit."

Johnson said athletes with the best media presence are natural and real with their followers. He said sports fans love behind-the-scenes footage they can not get from somewhere else, like athletes' day-in-the-life videos.

Here are five key slides from Gen Agency's NIL presentation on how athletes can brand themselves and negotiate fair pay:

Learn about your audience

Brown said knowing your target audience is key to working with brands. It helps companies understand who they can reach by recruiting you. 

During the summit, Brown showed athletes where to find key stats on their Instagram audiences, including follower count and growth, location, age, and gender.

A formula athletes can use to estimate the price of a brand deal

The presentation offered a formula student-athletes can use to calculate how much to charge brands for a sponsored post. It's based on a $10 CPM, which refers to the cost per every 1,000 impressions, though CPMs can vary.

To calculate what to charge per post, take the average number of views over the last 30 days and divide it by 1,000. Then take that figure and multiply it by the CPM.

Using that math, an athlete with 600,000 average views over the last days would charge $6,000 per post, based on a $10 CPM, per the presentation's example.

Know your copyright rules

Athletes, like other influencers, need to comply with brand, platform, and regulatory guidelines for social-media posts and ads, such as copyright rules and what kind of content is permitted on a platform.

Student-athletes also need to abide by NCAA rules because posting inappropriate content can result in losing scholarships, eligibility, and future career opportunities, according to the NCAA.

Brown said college athletes should also exercise caution and not include other brands or anything illegal in a sponsored post. She advised double-checking the spelling before posting, too.

Dos and don'ts for sponsored posts

The agency also emphasized the importance of double-checking disclosures for paid ads, partnerships, and more so athletes do not have to delete or redo sponsored videos.

"This is really important to student-athletes as well as smaller influencers because a lot of brands will try to bully them," said Brown, "to say, 'You don't need to put hashtag. You don't need to disclose that we're sponsored.' But it's actually illegal across social media."

She said failing to disclose a sponsored post could result in an athlete's account being banned or messing up their average views and algorithm.

Things to know about payment

Brown also talked about contracts and W-9s, which are tax forms for independent contractors. The presentation emphasized in capital letters that athletes need a contract to make sure they get paid for their work.

They should also be mindful of terms such as "usage" and "ownership" because it could mean their videos could be posted on any social-media channel or site.

Brown said brands are not going to protect the athletes, so they need to look out for themselves.

• Economist Frances Donald told Bloomberg TV that a sharper Fed pivot is ahead.
• With a slowdown in the US labor market, two negative quarters of growth could hit at the end of the year.
• When that happens, the central bank will have to ease quickly and beyond what markets expect.

Markets are right to price in a Federal Reserve policy pivot but should brace for a rate-cutting cycle that's sharper than expected, economist Frances Donald told Bloomberg TV.

"What we haven't bought into is that this would be like a two or three and done situation, that these would be insurance cuts," she said. "We believe we are heading into a proper downturn that will require a proper easing cycle." 

Futures markets are eyeing two 25-basis point cuts closer to the end of this year, reflecting a newfound optimism among investors after April's jobs report came in weaker than expected, undoing fears that the Fed may need to keep rates high or even raise again. 

But to the Manulife Investment Management chief economist, such weakness should also trigger some concern, as it makes a recession look all the more probable. 

"Just about everything in the labor market that explains where we are in the labor cycle is pointing to a deterioration," Donald said. "We're not saying it's a big crisis, we're calling for two quarters of negative GDP — Q3 and Q4, could be Q4 and Q1."

Though she acknowledged that her team has held recessionary outlooks for a while now, incoming data continues to reconfirm that downturn odds are much higher than chances of a reacceleration, she said. 

That includes household and temporary employment stats, consistent job loss data, dropping quit rates, and a pullback in small business hiring.

The labor market's wear down also underpins recession calls made by the veteran forecaster Danielle DiMartino Booth, who told Bloomberg on Monday that the US is already in a downturn. That's based on an indicator that tracks unemployment across a 12-month period.

As the US economy slows down, Donald expects current interest rate levels to be increasingly intolerable, explaining why the Fed will have to pivot quickly. 

"The average time between the first rate hike and its impact on businesses and consumers is two years. So we're not exiting the period in which rate hikes become really impactful in the economy," she said. "We're entering that period."

Previously, she noted that the Fed's inability to cut rates sooner than later is adding risk of something breaking in the near term.

• Disney CEO Bob Iger plans to limit the number of Marvel films and TV shows released each year.
• The decision follows underperformance and criticism of the quality of Marvel content.
• This year, there will only be one MCU film released: "Deadpool & Wolverine."

Disney CEO Bob Iger's turn-around tour continues, and he let us in on the plan for what is arguably the House of Mouse's most successful IP: Marvel.

In Disney's first earnings call since successfully fending off a proxy battle from Nelson Peltz — and former Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter — Iger delineated the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The studio will now put out two or three films and two television series a year rather than four of each.

"I've been working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus more on quality," Iger said on the call.

As it undergoes a sort of reset, the only MCU movie to come out this year will be "Deadpool & Wolverine" in July. "Echo," "X-Men '97," and "Agatha" will be this year's television releases. The next Avengers film — "Avengers 5" — is scheduled for 2026.

The CEO has not been shy about his thoughts on the diminishing quality of Marvel films and television shows — something he seems to blame mostly on his short-lived successor and predecessor, Bob Chapek, even though Iger was in charge when several of them were developed.

"Some of what is coming up is a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume," he said on the call.

Between 2021 and 2023, Marvel released 10 feature films and 13 TV series, which appears to have left superhero fans fatigued.

MCU movies, which were once fail-safe, have struggled. Last year's "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" grossed less than $500 million globally on a combined production and marketing budget of about $300 million — meaning it failed to break even at the box office. "The Marvels" fared even worse, grossing only $206 million worldwide on a reported $270 million budget. Both films received poor reviews.

"I'm mindful of the fact that our performance, from a quality perspective, wasn't up to the standards we set for ourselves," Iger said on an earnings call last year.

But investors seem less confident than Iger: Disney's stock is down about 10% today.

• Disney's earnings report on Tuesday shows that Wall Street cares about one thing: streaming growth.
• The company's stock fell as much as 11% despite a report that looked mostly strong.
• Investors elected to focus on lighter-than-expected streaming-subscriber additions.

Disney seemed to do nearly everything right when it reported fiscal second-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

The company announced better-than-expected profits and only a slight revenue miss, raised its full-year earnings growth guidance to 25% from 20%, and communicated to investors that its streaming division would be profitable by its fiscal fourth-quarter.

But that wasn't enough for Wall Street, with the stock diving as much as 11% following the earnings report, its worst daily decline in 18 months. The main focus of investors ended up being Disney's light forecast for streaming growth.

Although Disney+ added 6.3 million new subscribers in the quarter, its total number of streaming subscribers at 153.6 million was below Wall Street estimates by about 2 million. The company's CFO also said in the earnings call that the current quarter is pacing towards flat growth.

The sharp move lower highlights the high standard Wall Street has set for Disney's streaming portfolio, which includes Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and Hotstar in India. 

Disney investors would like the media giant to obtain a Netflix-like valuation multiple given its growing streaming business. But in order for that to happen, Disney would have to deliver incredible Netflix-like execution that's capable of shaking off investor fears about its shrinking legacy TV business.

So far, that doesn't appear to be happening, at least not at a quick enough pace that Wall Street demands.

And while Disney's streaming business is moving in the right direction overall, it will still be a bumpy ride ahead for the unit to deliver consistent profits.

"We are pleased with the progress we're making in streaming although, as we said before, the path to long-term profitability is not a linear one," Disney CFO Hugh Johnston said on the company's earnings call.

Those comments came right before Disney disclosed that it expects further streaming losses in its fiscal third-quarter due to a seasonal slowdown in Disney+ subscriber additions and added expenses related to its cricket rights in India. 

Despite the sour day for Disney on Tuesday, many Wall Street analysts defended the company and said the bullish thesis on the company transitioning to a streaming-focused company simply needs more time.

"With Disney's streaming segment turning profitable for the very first time in its history, the stage is set for an earnings inflection," Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Geetha Ranaganathan and Kevin Near said in a Tuesday note. 

• Foxtrot, an upscale convenience-store chain, shuttered its 33 locations on April 23.
• Declan Rhodes, 25, was one of hundreds of employees laid off while on shift. 
• He said the last day was like "The Purge," as workers kicked out customers and locked up for good.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Declan Rhodes, a 25-year-old former employee of Foxtrot, an upscale convenience store chain that was based in Chicago. On April 23, the company announced it had laid off its entire staff and shuttered operations across its 30-plus locations in Chicago, Austin, Dallas, and Washington DC. Business Insider verified Rhodes' employment history. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In August 2022, I moved from Springfield, Missouri, where I got a degree in musical theater, to pursue artistic endeavors in Chicago.

I've worked all the "survival jobs" in the customer service and food industries. Little Caesars was my first job. But I landed a job at Foxtrot in January 2023. I was like, "OK, I'll do this. This will be a nice little survival job while I'm auditioning."

Foxtrot was a convenience store and coffee shop, similar to an upscale 7-Eleven. We sold and made different drinks as well as grab-and-go food, a lot of healthy alternatives, and gluten-free snacks.

I worked at the biggest location in Chicago. We had a wide range of clients — from older clientele, who I could smell old money on, to younger clientele, who either would come and study in the morning or work remotely.

I was brought in as a shift lead, a step below the assistant manager. It was not a salaried position, but I was doing full-time hours.

The silver lining was the queer-friendly environment and accepting atmosphere that I had with my coworkers.

But there was a disconnect from the corporate side.

A great example of this: We had a wonderful coworker who was in his 60s, maybe early 70s, one of the sweetest humans I've ever met. He was our main receiver. He would receive all of the products we would get. We used to have a working elevator that made it easier to load stuff onto a cart. Eventually, that elevator ended up breaking down. It was never fixed, never made a priority. We had several people young strapping people who would help him out. But eventually, this wonderful human ended up leaving.

The next day, one of the corporate people comes in and says, "Oh, I guess we've really got to get that elevator fixed now."

They had a facade of caring for their workers, but it felt like a lot of us were expendable.

There were red flags before the company went bust

Looking back, the biggest red flag was an eviction notice we'd gotten a week before the company closed.

It was explained by my assistant manager, who was told by his district manager, that there was some turnover at the corporate level, and it would be taken care of.

We had also gotten a message in our work group chat from my general manager the weekend before saying that we were having supply-chain issues.

On April 23, I got up at my usual time, 4:45 a.m., to get there at 5:30 a.m. We opened the store as normal and started making lattes. At 8 a.m., my manager instructed us to stop selling gift cards. At 9 a.m., my manager attended an emergency company meeting. Every manager across every Foxtrot was on this Zoom call, I believe. They didn't know what it was about.

After the fact, I was informed by my manager that the phone call quite literally lasted 10 minutes. It was just: "Kick everyone out of the store, take out the trash, lock doors, and close the store officially." There was no "good luck" or "sorry" or well wishes in the next chapter. They were just as blindsided as we were.

At about 10:10 a.m., on a Google Hangout organized by my manager, we were instructed to close the store and leave the premises with all our personal belongings by 12 p.m. Not everyone who worked at my store was on that call. It's possible people did not realize they were losing their jobs until the companywide email was officially sent out at 11:38 a.m.

We were not given any clear direction. I'd probably say we had 20, 30 people in the store. It was pretty busy. Two guys looked like they were having a business meeting. My manager said, "Sorry, guys, we are closing forever."

It felt like "The Purge." My manager ended up taping two notices to our glass doors that said something along the lines of, "Thank you for letting us serve you. We are closing our doors for the final time."

A mob of people started collecting outside. I could see them taking videos and pictures of the sign.

Foxtrot employees are trying to hold the company to account

If I could talk directly to the CEO, I would say, "First and foremost, thank you for instilling an environment that felt accepting and tended to be warm and welcoming to new workers. On the flip side, a caveat: Shame on you for the way that you handled this, and absolutely shame on every single person who had an inkling that this was coming and did nothing."

The next day, my former coworkers and I went to my manager's boyfriend's restaurant. One of my other former coworkers is a teacher, but works on the weekends as a barista. He put his teacher cap on and printed out full documents with the WARN Act.

It is Illinois state law that for mass layoffs, you are to provide 30 to 60 days' notice of termination. Clearly, they didn't do that. We are full force taking part in a class-action lawsuit. It's surreal.

My next move after Foxtrot

It's back to square one in terms of finding a survival job.

I was trying to manifest — not the closure of the entire company, but a career shift in that I could be making an income doing fully creative projects. But the universe works in mysterious ways.

I have comfortable-enough savings. I should be OK for at least a few months. I might pick up some side hustles or gigs.

I'll donate plasma twice a week, and that's a nice little check there.

I tend to be a pretty optimistic person. I feel I will find another job. I'm just really trying to adapt and shift direction.

• Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari suggested interest rates are likely to stay put for an extended period.
• Resilient housing inflation shows that Fed policy may still not be restrictive enough, he said. 
• Strong housing demand suggests the neutral rate for the housing market may have risen since the pandemic.

There are signs that the Federal Reserve's inflation crusade may still not have restricted policy enough to bring down high prices, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said Tuesday. 

Kashkari said in a note released on Tuesday that the housing market is surprisingly resilient in the face of tighter monetary policy, raising doubts about whether policymakers and the market are misjudging what the neutral rate may be in the near-term. 

"My colleagues and I are of course very happy that the labor market has proven resilient, but, with inflation in the most recent quarter moving sideways, it raises questions about how restrictive policy really is," he wrote in the note released on the bank's website. 

The Minneapolis Fed chief pointed out that since the 2008 Financial Crisis, the US has built fewer homes than needed to match population growth, resulting in a prolonged housing supply shortage.

Furthermore, COVID-19 spurred a rise in remote work, fueling higher demand for housing in many markets, while recent immigration influxes have added to the pressures on supply, Kashkari said. 

Meanwhile, Fed policy has helped push 30-year mortgage rates higher by approximately 3.5 percentage points, climbing from about 4% prior to the pandemic to roughly 7.5% today.  

"Perhaps that level of mortgage rates is not as contractionary for residential investment as it would have been absent these unique factors which are driving housing demand higher," he said, adding that the neutral rate for the housing market might have increased since the pandemic.

Kashkari said at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday that the most probable scenario for the US economy involves interest rates remaining high "for an extended period of time," while mentioning that a rate cut would be necessary if inflation dips or the labor market weakens significantly.

"Or if we get convinced eventually that inflation is embedded or entrenched now at 3% and that we need to go higher, we would do that if we needed to," he said during the conference.

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Apple launched new iPad Air and iPad Pro models, as well as new iPad accessories, during its video-streamed online event on May 7. 

The iPad Air and iPad Pros got significant updates, including a brand new iPad Air with a larger display, and iPad Pros with a brand new Apple processor, a focus on AI, OLED display panels, and a thinner design.

Apple also revealed a new Apple Pencil Pro that can register squeezes and rolls to enable customizable functions, as well as a new Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pros with a sturdier design and laptop-like controls.

New iPad Pros with AI and OLED displays

The new iPad Pros come with several significant updates. Of them, the most notable is a previously unreleased Apple M4 processor and a focus on AI for creative work with updates of the Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro apps, as well as third-party apps. 

Almost as exciting are the OLED 11-inch and 13-inch displays for the Pro models. Apple is using its own "Tandem OLED" panels, which the company says are essentially two OLED panels layered together to achieve a high brightness level that a single panel couldn't. Apple calls its new OLED iPad display "Ultra Retina XDR." There's also a nano-textured glass option designed to reduce glare. 

We haven't yet tried the OLED displays on the new iPad Pros, but they have the potential to bring dramatic improvements to viewing videos and whatever you do on an iPad that uses the display. 

An unfortunate consequence of the superior displays is even higher price tags than the previous iPad Pro series, which started at $799 and were already the most expensive devices among the best iPads. The new 2024 iPad Pros start at $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the 13-inch model. 

Beyond a totally new display, the new iPad Pros have noticeably thinner designs at 5.3mm for the 11-inch iPad Pro, and an even thinner 5.1mm for the 13-inch iPad Pro. Apple says the 2024 iPad Pros are their "thinnest" products to date, and they're just as strong despite their new thin design. 

The front-facing cameras have also been moved to the horizontal long edge for a more centered video of yourself while on a video call.

As mentioned above, the 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999, and the 13-inch iPad Pro at $1,299. Both are available to order now from Apple, with full availability on May 15.

New iPad Airs and a first-ever large model 

Apple announced not one but two new iPad Airs, including a fairly typical 11-inch model and a brand new 13-inch model with 30% more screen space. Anyone who's wanted a larger iPad but couldn't justify the 12.9-inch iPad Pro's previous $1,100 price should rejoice at the news. 

Like the 2024 iPad Pros, Apple also moved the front-facing camera to the horizontal long edge on the new iPad Airs for a more frontal and centered video calling experience. The new iPad Airs also feature landscape stereo speakers, and the 13-inch iPad Air has twice the bass as the 11-inch model. 

The 2024 iPad Air models are upgraded from Apple's M1 processor to Apple's M2 processor, which was introduced in 2022 for various Mac laptops, like the 2022 MacBook Air and 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro. It's a welcome upgrade for professionals using the iPad Air for creative visual work, but it's unlikely to make much of a difference for basic iPad use, like video streaming, social media scrolling, web browsing, emailing, or even playing games. 

Base storage for the iPad Airs also starts at 128GB — double the 64GB storage of the previous iPad Air.

The 11-inch iPad Air starts at the same $599 price as the previous generation, and the 13-inch iPad Air starts at $799. You can order both now, with availability on May 15.

An Apple Pencil 'Pro' you can squeeze

The brand new Apple Pencil Pro contains a new squeeze sensor for novel interactions with the 2024 iPad Pro and Air models, like bringing up a new tool palette while drawing.

The Apple Pencil Pro delivers a haptic response when you squeeze it to give you control and feedback while using the feature. Third-party app developers will be able to add squeeze controls to their apps to offer various functions for their apps, too. 

The Apple Pencil Pro also supports Find My tracking and a new control feature called Barrel Roll that uses a gyroscope to let you roll the Pencil for more control, like changing the angle of the Pencil's input on the iPad display. 

The Apple Pencil Pro starts at $129. It's available to order now, with full availability on May 15.

An upgraded Magic Keyboard

The new Magic Keyboard designed for the 2024 iPad Pros has an aluminum palm rest and a larger trackpad. It also features a new function row for controls similar to what you'd find on a Mac laptop, like screen brightness and playback. 

The Magic Keyboard for the 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $299, and $349 for the 13-inch iPad Pro. You can order both now, and they'll be available on May 15.