Not in terms of money—Apple is not rate-limited by money. But in terms of attention. Getting everyone on site for this, namely the engineers, while they are also in final iPhone cycle prep must be a drag.
I have worked on design and events for user conferences for several medium-size-ish software firms. Last year, our long-standing annual conference went online-only. And I tell ya: night and day differences in terms of stress levels.
There is still that crunch to get things to MVP state to show off, and people still need to record talks and hold Zoom meetings, but something about not having to deal with physically preparing a space just made it all so much easier. (And our event space was literally across the street.) No machine/projector drama, no conference wifi falling apart, nobody with late flights…
One of my favourite live SJ scenes, at the QA of a new-hire meeting:
Person thinking they're clever: What would you do differently if you had unlimited resources?
SJ, after short pause: I do.