[HN Gopher] Apple Business
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Business
Author : soheilpro
Score : 447 points
Date : 2026-03-24 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| georgeburdell wrote:
| One of the last great consumer companies is going B2B
| dagmx wrote:
| Apple always had a B2B component. This is just the latest
| attempt to not make it completely subpar.
| furyofantares wrote:
| This sucks. This page makes it clear this is the motivation
| for "Ads on Maps", as they talk about it prominently here -
| they are now directly selling the attention of their device
| consumers to their business customers.
|
| I guess they were doing that before in the App Store, which
| is of course also awful.
| Barbing wrote:
| Their voice assistant is somewhat opinionated about how it
| will search the App Store for you
|
| https://i.ibb.co/zV8d9gbc/IMG-2177.jpg
|
| They dynamically reveal 1-3 results and only show a "see
| more options in App Store" button when they feel like it.
| lvspiff wrote:
| its the only path to go to be able to continue to support their
| pricing models - they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of
| the market prettymuch and so B2B is the more sustainable paying
| population.
| kstrauser wrote:
| The company that just made a $600 Macbook?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Yes, the phone company that is known for taking home a
| bronze medal in personal computing for the past 30 years
| running.
|
| Apple knows the score internally, this won't change the
| world any more than the 12" Retina Macbook did.
| mpweiher wrote:
| The world's firs trillion dollar and three trillion
| dollar company. Yes, completely insignificant.
|
| The company that captures 60-70% of the global PC
| industry's profits. Definitely completely insignificant.
|
| Apple has known the score internally for decades and is
| laughing that score all the way to the bank.
| bigyabai wrote:
| None of that refutes anything that was said. macOS is a
| third-class citizen measured by market share, and the
| _total sum_ of annual Mac profits is lower than what the
| iPad ecosystem makes in a year.
|
| Consumers do not want the Mac. Datacenters don't want
| Apple Silicon. People want the iPhone, they want Airpods,
| but the M-series Macs have spent 5 years changing
| absolutely nothing.
| philistine wrote:
| > and the total sum of annual Mac profits is lower than
| what the iPad ecosystem makes in a year.
|
| So the company that makes between 50-60% of all _profits_
| in personal computers has created a market where it makes
| 100% of the profits, but albeit smaller than the whole PC
| market. That 's terrrrible, what was Apple thinking!
|
| Market share is far from everything when people live in
| poverty and do not have money to spend on good hardware
| and software. Apple makes stuff for affluent people, and
| then makes a ton of money from those rich folks. Making
| Apple the most valuable company in the history of
| humanity. Boy, that's a terrible place to be in!
| bigyabai wrote:
| I shouldn't have to repeat myself; this _still_ doesn 't
| refute the claim that Apple has ceded the consumer
| compute market. Cheap Macs have flooded the used market
| for years, and people still gravitate towards plastic
| Wintel boxes and Chromebooks.
|
| > Apple makes stuff for affluent people
|
| is just repeating the original claim upthread:
|
| >> they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the
| market prettymuch and so B2B is the more sustainable
| paying population.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Consumers do not want the Mac
|
| Really? As far as I can tell, consumers mostly would love
| to use Macs, but aren't willing to pay the price of entry
|
| > Datacenters don't want Apple Silicon
|
| Do you know how many people salivate at the prospect of
| an M-based return of the Xserve?
| givinguflac wrote:
| > but the M-series Macs have spent 5 years changing
| absolutely nothing.
|
| You clearly keep up with tech news, kudos! I've seen no
| changes from other major pc manufacturers in response to
| Apple silicon, at all. /s
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market
| prettymuch
|
| I'd argue that (the low end of) Apple products are the
| cheapest they've ever been - the $599 iPhone 17e is below the
| inflation-adjusted price of the original iPhone, and at $599
| the MacBook Neo is the cheapest launch price an Apple laptop
| has ever listed at (not even adjusting for inflation!)
|
| The maximum amount you can spend at the high-end has
| certainly gone up over time, although the basic MacBook Pro
| Max config costs roughly the same as it's peer from 10-15
| years ago - nobody's forcing folks to shell out for the 128GB
| of RAM (something that didn't exist on laptops at all till
| very recently)
| amelius wrote:
| They need to go OEM.
| nhubbard wrote:
| They did it in the 1990s and it failed so hard that it almost
| took down the company.
| amelius wrote:
| Why can others do it?
| dhosek wrote:
| Who has successfully managed this kind of transition? The
| obvious case is IBM which is now essentially a consulting
| company and doesn't sell PCs anymore.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Apple's entire success story is their vertical
| integration. They can't do that and OEM.
|
| As for the PC makers: they don't innovate. Microsoft
| doesn't care who sells PCs, Intel doesn't care who sells
| PCs. Every PC maker is essentially an assembly company.
| If you appreciate Apple's innovation in the laptop space
| over the past x years, then you don't want Apple to be an
| OEM.
| mindwok wrote:
| I had the same thought. When you're a B2B and B2C company and
| you have to make a bold decision, the B wins because they hold
| the enterprise $$$.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Apple's really late to this.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Apple is "late" to everything which is why it's the leader
|
| Being early is the same as being wrong and there's no business
| value in costly exploration of new territory at least in the
| 21st century
|
| Name me a single company that is still in business and
| dominating a market based on being first to market with a new
| product.
| bitpush wrote:
| Vision Pro.
| d-us-vb wrote:
| A costly gamble for tech they really wanted that wasn't
| mature yet.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Honestly seems like a supportive argument. Yea, your
| amendment clearly shows Apple isn't always right/late, but
| Vision Pro is an example of them being early and how far
| they miss when they're early hah.
|
| _(I don 't have a side in this discussion)_
| acdha wrote:
| And I'd add that like AI, there was clearly a conflict
| inside Apple between people who wanted to be in the game
| and the people who correctly recognized that it wasn't
| yet where most consumers wanted.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Like AI, the Vision Pro would have been a better product
| if Apple told the detractors to shut up and ship out.
| NPUs and AR are not going to sway consumers or compete
| for market share.
|
| Nevermind the _godawful_ Liquid Glass UX they cooked up
| and imposed on everyone else...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Vision Pro failed
|
| Apple fails at every novel thing they try and crushes it at
| every thing they copy
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Apple Watch.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| There were literally thousands of smart watches that were
| launched prior to the Apple Watch
|
| Garmin anyone?
|
| I think Timex and Casio even had ones in the 90s
| givinguflac wrote:
| Which ones of those can do notifications, health
| tracking, sleep cycle, temperature/blood pressure? I'll
| wait.
| velocity3230 wrote:
| Garmin.
| acdha wrote:
| That doesn't fit: Apple's been experimenting with VR
| since the 90s and Vision Pro was hardly novel-well
| executed, but not novel. I think it's more complex where
| you have to think about the products executives and Wall
| Street analysts want to exist providing pressure against
| the "is it good enough to buy?" response.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| The iPhone was revolutionary. There really was nothing
| like it at the time. The closest thing (the PDA) was
| _nothing_ like it.
| spogbiper wrote:
| there were tons of smartphones on the market prior to the
| iphone. i used several of them. mostly windows mobile
| devices that required a stylus or keypad for input. they
| had apps stores, web browsers, email, etc. copy and
| paste, which the iphone lacked at release. from a
| functionality stance there were many options very much
| like the iphone available. the interface on the iphone
| was nicer for most things, and it had a nicer web
| browser. not a different world of functionality at all,
| just a bit nicer overall but also with some big trade
| offs.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| A world of difference. Completely different products.
| givinguflac wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. Those amalgam windows mobile devices
| were an interesting for the time, but hellish experience
| imho.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| They were still late, just not late enough.
| layer8 wrote:
| Dominating the market??
| sosodev wrote:
| TSMC. They dominate the semiconductor market because they're
| consistently first to market with the world's most advanced
| chip fabrication.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| But they're an example of the same phenomeon; they were
| founded in 1987, long after chip fabrication was a thing.
| They just did it _right_.
| bigyabai wrote:
| They took extreme risks on EUV lithography and
| accumulated market share by being the first to shrink
| nodes.
| sosodev wrote:
| I think it's hard to know where to draw the line between
| derivative product and something unique. If we follow
| your logic that TSMC hasn't done anything new, then
| aren't all computer manufacturers just rehashing the
| ENIAC or whatever? Is a Tesla just a better model T? No,
| arguably we would say that these products are new to
| market because they've integrated new technologies in
| unique ways and often expended massive capital on R&D to
| do so. TSMC is no different.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Absolutely not TSMC was and has always been a pure play
| "execution" of chip foundry, based on the government of
| Taiwan taking financial bets on a growing chip market.
|
| In no way was TSMC the first to market for chips or chip
| production or even any major chip fab product at its
| outset.
|
| In fact they did exactly the Apple model and took what TI
| was doing and used government money to scale it. I don't
| know a single unique product from TSMC
|
| If anything Texas Instruments (which is I grew up around in
| Houston) could be considered actually building a good
| product from scratch, look at them now...
| valzam wrote:
| Ok but "Business Email" wasn't exactly invented yesterday...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Which is my point. They did basically nothing new
| internally and will be able to capture what...10-20% of
| overall business suite market?
|
| That's genius
| jackdh wrote:
| Depending on how you define "new" but there are certainly
| examples of this, Spotify is the first to come to mind, AWS
| could be another.
| tencentshill wrote:
| They are just combining existing services: Apple Business
| Essentials, Apple Business Manager, and Apple Business Connect.
|
| It's like Microsoft now - put everything under one massive
| convoluted control panel.
| bitpush wrote:
| Who will Apple serve? Users, Apple or their partners?
|
| It has always been Apple > Users > Partners.
|
| There's a reason why Microsoft is still the king of enterprises.
| Anybody getting involved with this with Apple will deserve
| everything thats coming their way
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Thousands in annual savings?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Not on iOS, being locked into the App Store never saved me a
| dime.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Anyone who's downvoting me better pay full price for _FFVI
| Pixel Remaster_ instead of emulating it, you filthy dogs.
| bouk wrote:
| Hopefully some actual competition against GSuite (or whatever
| it's called these days)
| simonw wrote:
| I wonder if this was timed to lineup with the MacBook Neo launch,
| which makes the idea of equipping your entire company with Mac
| laptops a lot more compelling from a cost perspective.
| 10729287 wrote:
| There's a grey one. So obviously, it was timed.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| It's kinda crazy it took Apple this long to make this.
|
| I've worked with two agencies now that used only Macs across the
| business and had a really fun time signing in to and integrating
| 58 Google services every time they hired someone new.
|
| It's possible people may continue to use Google Workspaces in
| these places, however, the fact that there was never even an
| Apple option was always wild to me.
| philistine wrote:
| There is now an option _ONLY_ if you 're in the US. The mail,
| calendar etc. stuff is US-only.
| martibravo wrote:
| 599$ serviceable MacBooks, easy to use MDM, Cloud, Email and
| Calendar and flat-fee AppleCare all baked in?
|
| New businesses under 50 employees are going to eat this up like
| there's no tomorrow.
|
| I'd be scared if I was certain Redmond corporation who makes
| their money on 365 and Intune.
| selectively wrote:
| Microsoft is a giant enterprise software company that also
| publishes Candy Crush and Call of Duty.
|
| Intune and Windows are 'nice to have' but are not the business-
| business. The business is 365 (which runs on Macs and is worlds
| better than Apple's office suite + Apple's hosted email is god
| awful) and Azure.
| martibravo wrote:
| A lot of new businesses are going the Notion/Google Drive
| route for docs, tables and knowledge, plus Canva for
| presentations and more visual work. It's not the majority,
| but the market is there.
| martibravo wrote:
| Plus Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free on Macs, minus the
| new paid features. I think it's a no brainer for new
| businesses
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| That might be true for tech startups, but many businesses
| (even "new" ones) go with Microsoft 365 as a default,
| especially outside of the west coast or NYC.
| martibravo wrote:
| I'm talking about the context I know which is Barcelona
| companies
| selectively wrote:
| Exactly. 365 gets you perfect compatibility and the 'real
| tools that professionals use'. Not Google Docs or some
| weird Apple thing - the tools that always will read the
| document.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| If you can navigate the terrible UI enough to find the
| open button on the proper 'ribbon', that is. The ribbon
| makeover should have textbooks written about it so we can
| teach our future UI designers not to make the same
| mistakes again.
| oblio wrote:
| Meh. Techies keep ranting about it but regular users are
| just fine with it.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| As someone 'technical' who sat close to 'normies' who
| hated the helpdesk guys so much they would interrupt me
| with their problems, no they do not.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Google docs actually has better MS Office compatibility
| than the 365 Web Apps.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Europe here. I disagree. Many SMEs are totally happy with
| Google Workspace and Canva, as GP mentioned. I know
| people using just that. And they don't understand why
| there are people suffering from the Microsoft-Stockholm
| syndrome.
|
| The market may not yet be 365-sized but as GP mentioned:
| it's there.
|
| And there are young people arriving at an age to open a
| business who have never used a Windows computer in their
| entire life. To them Microsoft is the company that make
| the virus-infested, slow, computers full of ads they see
| at their grandparents' house. That cohort ain't buying
| Windows / buying Office / using Azure.
| genthree wrote:
| Apple's office suite is my favorite I've ever used, and it's
| not close.
|
| After that, old copies of MSOffice.
|
| Next-best would be a hodgepodge of the lighter options on
| Linux and such. Gnumeric, Abiword, that sort of thing. Not
| great, but at least they're light on resources and easy to
| use.
|
| Distantly after that, LibreOffice.
|
| Then, modern MSOffice in last place.
|
| The only reason I'd count any of them as "worse" than modern
| MSOffice is that ~perfect office compatibility and a
| bulletproof excuse when things go wrong ("I'm also using
| MSOffice, don't know why your document isn't working") is
| non-negotiable in any business context.
|
| [EDIT] Oh I forgot about Google. That's actually the true
| last-place. Modern MSOffice isn't worse than that. Christ the
| performance is awful.
| MidnightRider39 wrote:
| Crazy how different people experience this.
|
| For me it's completely inverted; Google is top place, then
| Libreoffice, then MSOffice, then anything by Apple last
| place.
| echelon wrote:
| That's my exact ranking as well.
| genthree wrote:
| I value performance and stability highly, and Apple's
| productivity programs are so light I can leave them open
| in the background and forget they're running for months
| at a time even on fairly old, weak machines. And I'm not
| sure I've ever seen any of them crash (I can't say the
| same about, say, LibreOffice or pretty much any other
| Linux-associated productivity software). That they're a
| ton more polished and stable than things like Abiword or
| Gnumeric, and have most modern features I'd expect (even
| live collaborative editing) puts them solidly above those
| other light options.
|
| I hate modern MSOffice's UI, plus it's full of slow,
| heavy webtech which deducts a lot of points from
| basically anything for me. Google's leaks memory (like
| most of their software... so do Gmail tabs) and is so
| slow that it introduces a ton of input latency, which
| drives me nuts, I hate to type in it, aside from my
| experience with most of its formatting and editing
| features being that they're very janky even by the
| standards of GUI word processors. Both are very heavy on
| resources, which means they have a huge hurdle to
| overcome on the feature side before I'd consider them
| anything but extremely-unpleasant.
|
| Old (like... '00s) MSOffice is pretty good because it's
| not such a resource hog, and the UI used to be really
| good.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I have a google sheet with less than 200 rows in it. Not
| exactly Big Data. When I load it, the first 100 rows
| appear pretty much instantly, but the following <100 rows
| take 9 seconds to load! WTF? I don't know any other
| spreadsheet that takes that long to load more than 100
| rows.
| aftergibson wrote:
| Yeah that would by my ranking too. At work is Google
| because it's the best, particularly for collabotation,
| personally all in on FOSS.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I do like Keynote (their PowerPoint alternative) but I do
| agree that everything else is absolute garbage. But I
| guess _someone_ has to like it.
| selectively wrote:
| I liked the way Pages 09 _looked_ - it was beautiful - but
| the compatibility wasn 't there. Modern Pages is hideous.
|
| And you hit the nail on the head with the whole 'Office =
| the document always opens/looks right' thing.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| It's not pretty, but both Pages and Numbers are pretty
| powerful in their modern incarnations. If you actually
| _need_ Microsoft Office, then you need it, but a lot of
| people who don 't think they could get away with just
| Apple's freebies probably could.
|
| (Disclosure: I write 99% of my stuff in Emacs now, so I'm
| not going to go _that_ far out on a limb for iWork. It 's
| just that it's the best "Works"-style suite that I've
| used.)
| selectively wrote:
| Needing VBA is more common than you think. Excel really
| has no competitor.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > If you actually need Microsoft Office
|
| I also like Apple's office suite, the problem is network
| effects. I'd even argue most people don't actually _need_
| MS Office. The amount of people using PowerQuery, VBA,
| etc. is probably less than 2% of users.
|
| The problem is, because everyone else (in business)
| already has and uses office, if you want to collaborate,
| that's what you have to use. Open file formats didn't win
| out in the end.
| Closi wrote:
| > the problem is network effects
|
| This is absolutely the problem - with the added issue of
| platform support.
|
| I'm the only Mac user in our company of 15, which means
| I'm also the only person that can open a .pages file.
| Anyone can read a .docx, and if authored in word it will
| actually look the same on both computers.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Is it 2% who author content using those tools, or are you
| also including anyone who might need to open and use a
| spreadsheet using one of those technologies?
| ireadmevs wrote:
| And below everything else is the web version of MSOffice.
| How I hate whenever I'm forced to use that...
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I used word for windows 2.0 well into the early 2000s. My
| needs aren't crazy and I don't think word has added a
| single feature I've cared about since. Pages is my current
| go-to.
| AnonC wrote:
| > Apple's office suite is my favorite I've ever used, and
| it's not close.
|
| I've written many comments criticizing this. Do you use a
| lot of keyboard shortcuts when you use Numbers or Pages or
| Keynote or do you use the trackpad/mouse a lot? I generally
| find these apps and others lacking on the keyboard front,
| by which I mean that it's almost impossible to use them
| without a trackpad or a mouse. I can completely live with
| just a keyboard on Excel or LibreOffice Calc.
|
| BTW, I hate all the MS Office applications (and find them
| quite buggy and annoying) except for Excel. Maybe I'm just
| a lot more used to using Excel.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| Can't you set up keyboard shortcuts for basically any
| action in a MacOS app?
| crooked-v wrote:
| As long as it has a menu item (easy) or is exposed to
| Automator/Shortcuts (more complicated).
| cyberge99 wrote:
| There are apps to assign a key combinations to any
| menubar dropdown menus.
| bt1a wrote:
| You may want to look into Karabiner Elements.
| Understandable if one doesn't want to have to allow a
| privileged daemon access to key inputs, but it allows for
| complex, application-focus-aware shortcuts. In the past I
| used a "Windows on MacOS" config preset because it
| allowed for my 60~70 key keyboard to operate similarly
| across win/linux/macos. Finally killed my last windows
| boot drive and main linux... but I do have a ritualistic
| annual step into a windows vm to file taxes on crack err
| with a crakced turbotax hehehe. In-tooits lobbying
| malpractice is deserving of petty flippancy
| chongli wrote:
| Numbers has a lot of keyboard shortcuts [1]. Are there
| particular ones you're missing? Or is your issue that
| Numbers has _different_ keyboard shortcuts from the ones
| you 're used to in Excel?
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-
| ca/guide/numbers/tana45192591/m...
| Foivos wrote:
| Did you really have compatibility issues with MS office in
| the last 15 years?
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| >and it's not close.
|
| This line right he is where I will always stop reading any
| reply, and block any YouTube channel that uses it in a
| title. Mind numbingly overused. It's literally verbal
| clickbait.
| jimmoores wrote:
| Frankly, if you think that, you're not exactly a power user
| of office suites. Apple apps are a complete joke in the
| professional world.
| codeulike wrote:
| Exactly. So many people on hn have no idea how diversified
| Microsoft is, and have no inkling of what the enterprise
| market is like
| Petersipoi wrote:
| On the contrary, nobody here is suggesting Microsoft isn't
| really diverse. They're suggesting that Apple is going to
| start to eat into their SMB market.
|
| Nobody at Microsoft is saying, "we don't care if Apple
| chips away at SMB because we have Call of Duty"
| selectively wrote:
| Microsoft offers Office for Mac. It's a thing they do.
| It's the full fledged Office suite. They see a Mac user
| the same way they see a Windows user - a source of
| revenue.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Not always. There's no Minecraft for Mac, they even
| prohibited Macs running the iPad version. It's
| essentially been ported to Apples APIs but purposely
| withheld from macOS.
| selectively wrote:
| I'm talking about enterprise software, not games.
| Minecraft exists for Mac, grab the Java version.
| genthree wrote:
| Anyone on Bedrock Minecraft is probably there for the
| cross-platform multiplayer. The Java version doesn't
| substitute for that. (MS made Bedrock and Java
| incompatible so they can rent-seek on closed mod and
| server-hosting "marketplaces"; can't let people share
| things and have fun without paying a middleman after all,
| think of the wasted "productivity"!)
| Foivos wrote:
| Office for Mac is increasingly getting feature parity
| with the windows version, but it is not fully there yet.
|
| For example, if you want to use "data model" in Excel, it
| is only available in the windows version.
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| No way. Intune and Entra are _the_ vendor-lock in
| technologies that cement a business via m365 for the long
| haul.
| downrightmike wrote:
| No, it isn't 365, it is 365 + (forced ai)
| 999900000999 wrote:
| *499$ with an EDU discount which definitely means they have
| margin for business deals.
|
| Revenge of the Mac. Theirs simply no reason for any normal
| person to buy anything else. The year of Linux is deferred yet
| again.
| martibravo wrote:
| Agreed. I'd love to see what prices companies get for volume
| purchases. I'm the IT Manager in a small team and if the Neo
| and this was available last year when we set up
| MDM/Exchange/SharePoint I would have considered it. Specially
| on the hardware side, ROI/longevity on an Apple Silicon
| Macbook is times higher than any given Windows laptop.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Less stuff to go wrong.
|
| One point of contact for support.
|
| Microsoft isn't going to get it together anytime soon, it's
| a new dawn.
| RussianCow wrote:
| > Theirs simply no reason for any normal person to buy
| anything else.
|
| My wife currently has an old MacBook with 8GB of memory, and
| she hits the memory limit somewhat regularly just from web
| browsing and light productivity work. But whether more
| breathing room in terms of memory is worth almost double the
| price...
| alcidesfonseca wrote:
| The next neo might have the SSDs of the current pros,
| making swapping less problematic.
| dhosek wrote:
| Intel or Apple Silicon? The latter manages memory much
| better.
| RussianCow wrote:
| Intel. That's good to know! Do you know why this is?
| Presumably because of the shared memory pool across
| CPU/GPU, or are there other factors?
| dangus wrote:
| I keep shouting from the rooftops the fact that the Neo is
| really not that disruptive or even necessarily that good of a
| deal.
|
| Like, have any of you actually looked at street prices at
| Micro Center or Best Buy recently? In the price range of the
| higher model Neo you can get a Yoga 7 with an OLED
| convertible touch screen, 1TB storage, 16GB of RAM, along
| with a processor with better multicore and iGPU performance
| (Ryzen 7 AI 350) in a 2-in-1 convertible package that has
| better battery life doing office tasks.
|
| Yes, the Neo is a cheap machine, with a lot of the exact same
| cheap machine compromises that are all over the $500-800
| laptop market. Not really the best CPU, extremely cut-down
| battery, missing features, etc.
|
| It even loses keyboard backlighting which is such a standard
| feature that it might be the only laptop on sale without it.
|
| Losing the haptic trackpad means that the Acer you can buy at
| Micro Center for $530 with double the RAM and way better I/O
| (USB4, USB-A 3.0, microSD, and HDMI) has a pretty similar
| quality of trackpad experience. Yes, I tried both in store,
| the MacBook Neo's trackpad is really at the same level of all
| the PC competition.
|
| MacBook Pro/Air Trackpad: 10/10
|
| Best PC haptic trackpads available: 8/10
|
| MacBook Neo trackpad: 7/10
|
| Typical PC mechanical trackpads: 6 or 7/10
|
| Hell, the older generation HP EliteBook 840 G10 that Micro
| Center sells as a business laptop makes a bunch more sense in
| a lot of ways. It's also an all-aluminum build thin and light
| system, comes with more RAM, which is upgradable, has a
| fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, etc.
| selectively wrote:
| The trackpad on the Neo is at the level of a Surface
| trackpad, which is to say it is worlds better than the
| typical budget junk you can pick up from Acer.
| dangus wrote:
| I disagree strongly. Again, I tried it in store at the
| exact same time as trying other laptops.
|
| Yes, it's a little bit better than the alternatives, but,
| critically, _not by much._ Not by enough to sway a
| purchase decision.
|
| It's not better than diving board mechanical trackpads by
| enough of a margin for most consumers to notice.
|
| Also, macOS over-relies on trackpad gestures. You don't
| really need them anywhere near as much in Windows or
| Linux. This is Apple's intention: to try and sell more
| proprietary trackpads, because they know if their OS was
| optimized for normal mice consumers would just buy the
| cheap $20 mice that are better than their $100+
| accessories.
|
| The PC industry barely has to adapt to compete with the
| Neo. I think we'll start seeing that in late 2026 and
| 2027 when competitors arrive on Apple's doorstep.
| selectively wrote:
| One of the things is an Acer. The other is a Mac. That
| sways purchase decisoons - one is a nice thing, the other
| one is a low end PC.
|
| I have used countless modern PC devices, including some
| from Acer. Few PCs have a trackpad of the level of the
| Neo and none from Acer.
|
| Your logic with "Apple's intentions" reveals a person who
| is incapable of decent analysis; macOS relies on gestures
| a lot because the vast majority of macOS devices are
| laptops. The desktop market is an after thought because
| the people keep buying laptops. That's it. There's no
| conspiracy, just a focus on the devices that the users
| choose to buy.
|
| The PC industry has almost no shot of competing with the
| Neo. You have to spend much more than $1000 to get a nice
| object that looks and feels _nice_. Right now, the PC
| industry is selling Old Navy products when Hermes is the
| same price. That is a real problem.
|
| Microsoft is going to be fine. Companies that rely on
| selling low end devices to consumers are going to suffer.
| dangus wrote:
| My point is that Apple is in many ways _joining_ Acer,
| not bringing their luxury product down to the masses.
|
| Yes, in many ways they're bringing a very polished
| product to the space. But in many other ways, look
| closely and you'll see the cut corners.
|
| Again, I've felt the Neo in person. The chassis feels
| nice, sure. It's not built to the same level as Apple's
| other products, though.
|
| The bottom plate is not CNCed, it's a stamped aluminum
| plate. That means there is variation in the gap along the
| bottom of the laptop between the man case and the bottom
| plate that doesn't exist on the Air or Pro.
|
| Again, the trackpad is good but is worse than many haptic
| trackpads offered by PC manufacturers like Lenovo.
|
| Again, if you think the PC industry has no chance of
| competing, go to your retailer website and look at street
| prices. Look at laptop reviews from places like Just Josh
| Tech on YouTube. PC manufacturers aren't making trash.
|
| Acer is actually a great example of a really solid PC. I
| felt the $530 model Micro Center is selling and it seemed
| to do the job: thin and light enough, felt sturdy,
| similar trackpad to the Neo, better specs and I/O. I'd
| say I only wanted the display to be a little better,
| though on the plus side it was bigger than the Neo's
| cramped 13".
|
| This isn't 2005. There is a misguided assumption to
| assume that PCs are still trash like they were 10 years
| ago. They just aren't.
|
| One little random bit to point out: there are 100 million
| Mac users globally as of 2024. There are more than 900
| million PC gamers globally.
|
| So, if I'm a high school student or college student who
| has money for one computer and I am a member of that
| group of 900 million PC gamers, I might just go get a
| last gen Lenovo LOQ with the RTX 4050 or something
| similar in the current gen from someone like MSI with an
| RTX 5050.
|
| I would deal with a chunkier plastickier laptop but it
| would get similar battery life to the Neo for office
| tasks and I could actually play games. 16GB RAM. Modular
| storage. Price is around $700.
|
| And I'll be honest, that trackpad ain't gonna be much
| worse than the Neo. And I'll get to keep my backlit
| keyboard and have some I/O.
| selectively wrote:
| You are deeply confused (you do not understand public
| perception/you do not understand how choosing a ''good
| pc'' is hard for most people/you don't grasp that a
| luxury brand versus Acer for the same price is a no
| brainer for most people, regardless of I/O or whatever)
| and - frankly - you are not worth discussing anything
| with. Have a good rest of your day.
| givinguflac wrote:
| >Look at laptop reviews from places like Just Josh Tech
| on YouTube
|
| I stopped reading here.
| givinguflac wrote:
| I will be absolutely _shocked_ if any current pc company
| can even approach the neos build quality
| /performance/price combo. See you next year, happy to
| wait .
| 999900000999 wrote:
| And it comes with Windows.
|
| Back in the normal world people don't use Linux. If you
| have the funds you can get an M4 Air with 16GB for 800$.
|
| I still have a 8GB M1 air, it's fine for filling out paper
| work and watching YouTube, which is the extent of what most
| people do
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Hell, the older generation HP EliteBook 840 G10 that
| Micro Center sells as a business laptop makes a bunch more
| sense in a lot of ways.
|
| And the best thing is that you can format the drive,
| install Linux, and be completely free of Microsoft and
| Apple.
| bombcar wrote:
| $599 per device? Redmond will make more profit _the first year_
| selling a 365 subscription than Apple does on the Neo.
|
| The real competition is going to come from companies using the
| $599 Neo + Google Workgroups or whatever they're calling it -
| now Microsoft is cut out entirely.
| nolok wrote:
| > The real competition is going to come from companies using
| the $599 Neo + Google Workgroups or whatever they're calling
| it - now Microsoft is cut out entirely.
|
| The companies doing that are cut in two groups. The one that
| don't fully plan it and they need to do with complex excel or
| whatever files here and there and they're still in
| microsoft's grasp, or those that fully do and move to
| disposable chromebook.
| rconti wrote:
| They need to _commit_ to this, and execute, though. This feels
| very much like yet another half-hearted Apple initiative.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Everything is half-hearted from Apple since Steve died. He
| was the beating heart. Who has stepped into that role? Like
| for real? Anyone? I'm just not seeing it
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| Does it matter? Apple's revenue/profit was $108B/$25B in
| 2011. It was $416B/$112B in 2025. They're clearly doing
| something right.
| theonemind wrote:
| I think the average idiot can take a really strong
| business and weaken the bones for some quarters or years
| of extra profit, possibly insane profit, before lack of
| focus on what really made the company strong starts to
| erode the fundamentals. I think we're seeing that with
| Apple personally. It's just colossal though so there's a
| lot of squeezing and a lot of profit before it really
| catches up. And they don't even disappear. They just
| become lumbering monsters like Microsoft, IBM, and HP
| that people don't use because they want to. HP was
| legitimately a great company.
| dangus wrote:
| Serviceable != upgradable or long-lasting.
|
| So many people are going to get burned by the hypnotism of
| these Neos. They're going to be gateways into being traded in
| within 2-3 years to get something with more RAM and storage
| when their owners find out how much they struggle with basic
| tasks due to insufficient RAM and storage.
|
| If you actually go on Best Buy or Micro Center websites and
| look at street prices you'll realize that the Neo isn't
| actually that disruptive.
|
| The trackpad is mid. I've tried it. It's mid enough that
| basically any PC can compete with the trackpad experience.
| There are multiple $500-800 PCs that are easy recommendations
| as alternatives, all with 16GB of RAM, all with modular
| storage.
|
| The battery in the Neo is so small that even with the extremely
| efficient iPhone processor inside, basic Windows laptops can
| beat the Neo in battery life. Grab a Yoga 7 and you've got
| double the RAM, 2-in-1 convertible touch screen, and better
| battery life. Oh yeah, and you get a better OLED panel, too.
| Petersipoi wrote:
| $500 for 2-3 years is great. And it will last much longer
| than that in reality.
|
| It's pretty plain to see that the Neo eats any competitors
| lunch at that price point. It isn't close.
| dangus wrote:
| The computer is $600. It's only $500 on the education
| store. Many Apple customers will not have access. Anyone
| who walks into a physical Apple Store will have to prove
| their eduction status.
|
| I am not sure why it's eating competitors lunch when many
| very well-regarded competitors are in the price range
| available at stores.
|
| What's better about a Neo than a Yoga 7? Same price range.
|
| https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-
| yoga-7-2-in-1-copilot...
|
| This is $40 more than the Neo's top model and you get
| double the RAM and an OLED convertible touch screen.
| philistine wrote:
| Aside from the pitiful screen resolution for a 14-inch
| screen and the fact that the Lenovo has a fan, they are
| indeed similar.
|
| But I don't know why you cannot see it as terrible for
| the PC makers that Apple finally has entered the
| sub-1000$ market. Since Apple has existed they've been in
| the high-end of the market, and now they're not. The
| Lenovo I'm sure is fine, but what it doesn't have is
| clarity of purpose. The Neo is a laptop and nothing else.
| Which leads me to question whether that very complicated
| Lenovo hinge will survive the 7 years my Mac laptops give
| me.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| My phone costs twice as much and I replace it every 2-3
| years.
|
| You know what people who outgrow their applebooks are going
| to do? Buy a macbook air or pro. They aren't going to buy a
| windows machine. Some might buy a linux machine.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Millions and millions of normal people have used 8GB M-series
| Macbooks for the past 5 years, and nobody has those problems
| you describe. In fact, everybody is happy to have machines
| which don't have the usual problems that PCs have.
|
| Computing tasks related to real world scenarios don't need
| giant RAM repositories, as evident in that people could do
| these tasks just fine when 32 _megabytes_ of RAM was enough.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I think you might be very surprised by what you can do with
| eight gigs of RAM on Apple Silicon. Apple does hardware
| compression into memory - it performs as well as a 16 GB
| machine did with an Intel chip.
| dointheatl wrote:
| I don't think you get it, OC tried the trackpad in a
| MicroCenter. It's game over.
| givinguflac wrote:
| Thank you, point well made!
| p_ing wrote:
| This ignores that Apple is unable to manufacture enough
| computers per year to be disruptive.
|
| 25m Macs in calendar year 2025. Lenovo manufactured 19m PCs in
| Q4 2025.
|
| Apple simply lacks volume.
| dijit wrote:
| Weird, never had an issue getting my hands on an Apple laptop
| of any desired configuration, even odd keyboard layouts for
| the region (UK and Sweden).
|
| Had plenty of issues getting specific specification
| Thinkpads: because they are largely sold through resellers
| and they don't stock all SKUs I suppose.
| p_ing wrote:
| No where did I say you can't get a hold of one, I said they
| don't have the volume. They're behind Lenovo, HP, and Dell.
|
| The x86 market is massive and dwarfs Apple's Mac
| manufacturing.
| dijit wrote:
| I don't buy this reasoning until there is evidence of
| orders going unfulfilled.
|
| I could make 20M units of something and leave my
| resellers as bagholders who then have to sell years old
| hardware at a discount- and by the internal consistency
| of your logic: I would have the volumes.
| mlsu wrote:
| Isn't this an artifact of the demand side and not the
| supply side?
|
| Yes, apple shipped fewer laptops than dell in 2025.
| That's because Apple laptops started at $1100 in 2025.
|
| They won't have a problem securing the chips for Mac
| Neo's, they're the same SOC as the iPhone. What, Apple is
| going to have an issue manufacturing a few million
| motherboards?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| okay dude, how many phones did it manufacture in Q4 2025?
|
| 87m
|
| https://www.semiconductor-
| today.com/news_items/2026/mar/tern...
|
| do you think lenovo would rather manufacture 19m PCs or 87m
| phones? i don't know, you raise an interesting point that is
| wrong.
| p_ing wrote:
| It looks like you have this discussion confused. This is
| about Macs, not phones.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| Sure, Apple's dominance in sourcing, manufacturing and
| all other aspects of logistics surely has no place in
| this conversation. '
|
| The NEO is a masterclass in how integrated these systems
| actually are.
| tengbretson wrote:
| I imagine the company that currently ships 250m iPhones a
| year can figure that part out.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Especially due to Apple having a lot less SKUs (compared to
| Lenovo) and having a lot more control over important parts
| such as CPUs.
| odiroot wrote:
| So Lenovo wins in both quantity and quality (at least for T/X
| series), let alone configurability.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _I 'd be scared if I was certain Redmond corporation who
| makes their money on 365 and Intune._
|
| scared of what? microsoft doesnt need to care about new
| businesses with under 50 employees at all. they have
| governments, banks, universities, colleges, and large non-tech
| enterprises completely locked down. small business with 10-50
| devices are a drop in the ocean.
|
| > _New businesses under 50 employees are going to eat this up
| like there 's no tomorrow._
|
| i seriously doubt people outside of the tech or design spheres
| (i.e. most people) are going to go with apple for their
| businesses. when you are starting a business, you dont want to
| also have to teach all of your employees (and possibly
| yourself) how to use a new operating system.
|
| you are going to look up "local IT company" or "local MSP", ask
| them to set you up, and they will integrate you into their
| existing microsoft ecosystem and send over some thinkpads,
| while you focus on your business.
| monster_truck wrote:
| The companies I know of that would be most likely to do this
| would never buy these because of the integrated webcams, and no
| "you can disconnect them easily" is not acceptable, as a matter
| of policy.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I recently switched from a Microsoft heavy company to an Apple
| heavy company.
|
| Since the early 2000's, I've been bad mouthing Outlook, for a
| whole lot of reasons.
|
| Let's just say: I miss Outlook. And it's still terrible.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Apple would be near the top of my list of companies incapable
| of building software that will do this. I cannot believe anyone
| who has tried Mail.app would be interested in using that for
| their business. I tried it for 3-ish months and had immense
| trouble reliably threading, seeing responses, with search, etc.
|
| There's 0 way they have competent, reliable, working group
| calendaring.
| givinguflac wrote:
| Are you talking Mac or iOS? I have never had an issue on
| iPhone's mail app, though my desktop is Linux so I don't
| know? Hence the question. I've never experienced any of that.
| Thanks
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I have had plenty of issues with outlook, I had to force
| close it at least once per day. Macos mail app was very good
| for my business need, it was a small one but had to deal with
| hundreds of mails everyday.
|
| Plus you don't get that proprietary format pst when you
| backup the mails.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| I assume this is a SaaS by Apple which covers some parts of
| Workday and Google suite for the beginning
|
| They're basically planning to enter the market where Microsoft
| has dominant position.
| giobox wrote:
| How does this differ from the existing "Business Essentials"
| tool? The landing page for each looks like much the same product,
| at least the MDM stuff does?
|
| > https://business.apple.com/preview
|
| > https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/
| martibravo wrote:
| Email, Calendar and company directory built in, custom domains
| in emails I think... It's more like a MS365 basic version.
| Which for most small teams is more than enough
| workfromspace wrote:
| Maybe also 200 countries included, instead of just the USA?
| jacobgkau wrote:
| One of the footnotes at the bottom of the page says:
|
| > Apple Business Essentials, Apple Business Manager, and Apple
| Business Connect will no longer be available once Apple
| Business launches.
|
| So it's a consolidation. They call out Business Connect data as
| "including claimed locations, place card information, photos,
| organization information, account details, and more," so that's
| some of what differs from Business Essentials.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I occasionally trial complete switches to Apple services to see
| if they're viable as Google alternatives. This weekend was Apple
| maps and it's finally met my standard of "usable", though not
| quite "good". One of the places it beat Google maps was the lack
| of integrated advertising places, which have enshittified the
| latter.
|
| I'm glad Apple announced their own plans to enshittify before I
| got my hopes up.
| Barbing wrote:
| Such a huge bummer.
|
| Hey, Big Ad Tech, come try enshitify my Rand McNally.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| So do enterprises still need Jamf [1]? For context, Jamf is one
| of the most common MDM tools for organizations.
|
| [1]: https://www.jamf.com/
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Big yes. Enterprises need support and a relationship with their
| supplier where their needs can change product direction.
|
| Jamf will do that. Apple will not.
| drcongo wrote:
| Dunno if you've ever had a business relationship with Apple
| but they're really good on that front. Proactive and helpful,
| along with always trying to sell you stuff, but proactive and
| helpful nonetheless.
| bigyabai wrote:
| A B2C relationship and a B2B relationship are not the same
| thing. Apple does well with the B2C pipeline, but they will
| only surpass Jamf in the B2B department if they play dirty.
| drcongo wrote:
| By business relationship I meant B2B. They're excellent.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| I have managed multiple relationships with Apple business
| and the only thing I can think you could possibly be
| talking about is having a local store reserve devices for
| you to buy.
|
| As far as identifying a bug in the software and getting
| it fixed, or requesting a feature, you run into a brick
| wall. Taking that feedback from customers is not the
| Apple way. This is why there is a market for third party
| MDM companies in the first place.
| drcongo wrote:
| I've decided you're probably right, I retract my earlier
| comments.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Relative to what? The top comment in this thread is a
| 3-person chain explaining how their B2B accounts were
| locked with no communication or recourse.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Yep. People who have never tried to add Mac support to an
| existing organization do not realize how freaking expensive it
| is.
|
| There are basically two cases. If you use Microsoft, you are
| often already paying for Entra ID and Intune, then still adding
| the Apple-side pieces for Mac support: Apple Business Manager
| and often Jamf or Kandji. If you do not use Microsoft, you are
| buying the full stack yourself: Okta or JumpCloud for identity,
| Jamf or Kandji for device management, and Apple Business
| Manager for enrollment. Apple Business Manager is free, but the
| rest is not, and the cost adds up fast.
|
| This means that, in practice, a managed Mac can easily end up
| costing close to twice as much to support as a Windows device.
| xbryanx wrote:
| Totally agree on the hidden costs. We've seen some great
| value in going with Mosyle for this. Lots cheaper, and it
| "just works."
|
| https://mosyle.com/
| wpm wrote:
| The only thing you _need_ out of any of those to correctly
| support the Mac is an MDM, of which there are free ones and
| expensive ones and everything in between. So long as it can
| deploy configuration profiles and declarative management
| configs, you can spin up Munki to be your pkg /script runner
| and script the rest. Installomator to install and patch
| applications.
|
| But if you also wanted identity, there are plenty of free
| selfhostable SSO/ID providers out there. If you're just
| starting out and not at the scale where a big Microsoft
| CoPilotM365OfficeWhatever contract makes sense, you probably
| don't even really have a need for a lot of this stuff. A
| minimum contract for Jamf Pro is like $5k a year or
| something. That's two well kitted developer MacBook Pros per
| year in license costs.
| 9dev wrote:
| Actually Intune handles MacOS reasonably well, you don't need
| Jamf; that's the way we went, and it's okay-ish for the most
| part. By far the annoyingest thing is getting Macs bought
| before we went down the Business Manager integration route
| into MDM.
|
| You think there's a standard way to do that? Just install
| company portal? That worked in exactly 1/20 cases. It's an
| exciting new error on every single device. Awful. Just awful.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| It's not apparent that this apple mdm will do internal
| distribution or just provide for encouraging a set of installed
| apps already on the app store. If it does, that would be the
| biggest reason for me to jump to the free product.
| monegator wrote:
| Will we be able to change our company details? A couple of years
| ago we changed the business name, so let's change it in the
| account for billing and such.
|
| Not possible.
|
| Ok, let's ask support what to do: the only thing we can do is
| create a new account, get the approval, etc. and then ask for a
| migration that may or may not be approved and may or may not end
| succesfully.
|
| In the end we keep receiving the bills in the old name, then
| change it manually or append a note.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I guess ultimately it's easier and works better than when you
| move country and would like to update the country for PSN
| (PlayStation Network). Sony's advice? Close the old account and
| open a new one with the correct country, then buy the same
| stuff again.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Haha ah of course. It's not like you ever actually owned them
| in the first place.
| Marsymars wrote:
| A bit like the awful workflow around developer agreements in
| App Store Connect. Every few months our CI breaks because Apple
| has updated one agreement or another and someone has to go
| pester the executive who's marked as the account owner and has
| legal authority to sign new agreements to unbreak our CI.
|
| It's also impossible to delegate this authority to anyone other
| than the account owner, and there's no concept of shared or
| service accounts, so nobody other than the account owner, with
| access to their 2FA method is able to do this.
|
| Heaven forbid if the account owner was ever to put their 2FA
| method as a personal device / phone and then leave the company.
| monegator wrote:
| All of these, too. Then for some goddamn reason i no longer
| can just input the username and password: for one of the
| developer accounts it has decided that i also have to decide
| wether i want to authenticate with an apple device, or by
| password. So it's another couple of clicks i can't get rid of
| moduspol wrote:
| I'm called by a name that is not the same as my legal name. I
| somehow got an Apple Developer account during the first few
| years of it with my preferred name, but it had my parents'
| house as the mailing address.
|
| I was essentially told that I could update the mailing address
| but going through the steps for that process would result in
| the name on my account being changed to the legal name. And so
| today, it still has my parents' mailing address. Thankfully
| they haven't moved.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I've still got a phantom child on my Apple account because
| when I tried to create a child's account many years ago for
| my son it somehow messed up and used the current year instead
| of his birth year. Support said too bad, no possible way to
| fix that. So I had to create another account for my real son,
| and while he grew up and moved out, my phantom son still
| lives with us for another nine years until it is old enough
| that I can delete it.
| moduspol wrote:
| I hope he at least gets his own cake on his birthday.
| creantum wrote:
| I had to look at my calendar to be sure it wasn't 2001
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| > Starting April 14, Apple Business will be available as a free
| service in the U.S. and 200+ countries and regions to new and
| existing users of Apple Business Connect, Apple Business
| Essentials, and Apple Business Manager.
|
| Does this mean -- Always Free or Introductory Free for now?
| martibravo wrote:
| I understand it's free to set up the business but iCloud,
| AppleCare and Email/Calendar storage past the free (I suppose
| tiny) allowance are paid. As Apple loves, freemium with in-app
| purchases!
| minimaxir wrote:
| It is very funny that a business-oriented product does not
| highlight Apple's business productivity software in iWork
| (Pages/Numbers/Keynote).
| steve1977 wrote:
| I thought that's now considered creator productivity software.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Machines spec'd and priced for education? Support for businesses?
|
| I remember this!
| jwlake wrote:
| A non-terrible MDM that actually works would be really nice. The
| rest I doubt they get much traction on. Gmail is too easy, Google
| docs and sheets if you don't need Microsoft is also way better
| than Apple's free apps.
| rjrjrjrj wrote:
| Is it possible to make a non-terrible MDM?
|
| Not a particular area of expertise for me, but the times I've
| had to deal with it just seemed like an inherently complex and
| messy problem.
| jwlake wrote:
| I would expect Apple to actually simplify the problem and not
| overreach and just do activation / provisioning /
| deactivation / lock and none of the other stuff MDMs try to
| do that introduces the complexity.
| p2detar wrote:
| That's because it is a complex and messy problem. Especially
| MDMs that try to unify the experience for fundamentally
| different platforms like Apple's and Google's, and even
| Microsoft's. I think if it's a platform-dedicated solution it
| actually does have the chance to be much easier to operate.
| So this thing by Apple looks interesting.
| joshstrange wrote:
| They've had a MDM solution for a number of years now, i've not
| used it because the price was higher than I could afford so I
| can't speak to if it actually works or how it is compared to
| their competitors.
|
| I can say that the MDM solution I went with leaves a lot to be
| desired, but it works and it's cheap. Since I'm only managing
| iPads, I really wanted to go with Apple for the simplicity,
| but, like I said, the price was too high (at the time at
| least).
| zb3 wrote:
| So will Apple users be able disable these ads in maps?
| cdrnsf wrote:
| I would expect, much like the App Store, they will not. Their
| maps will give you directions to navigate the enshittification
| curve.
| lowdude wrote:
| The nice thing about many of the native apps compared to their
| Google pendants is the absence of ads, with the glaring
| exception of the app store, which looks like a dumpster-fire.
| It is so disheartening to see the trend of shoving ads
| everywhere continue with Apple as well. I guess the profits are
| just too tempting to stick with idealistic UX decisions, if
| there was any of that left in the first place.
| wereHamster wrote:
| business.apple.com doesn't work in Firefox, it redirects you to
| https://business.apple.com/abm_unsupported_browser?reason=Br...
|
| Fuck you Apple.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Supported browser: Safari (14.1 or later)
| Chrome (87 or later) Microsoft Edge (87 or later)
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-business-manager/progr...
|
| We live in fantastic times
| lowdude wrote:
| Yes, and it works with a user agent switcher extension for
| Firefox, which is always the cherry on top.
| alexchapman wrote:
| Wow, Apple's finally competing with Google and Microsoft, I can
| see businesses adopting this everywhere lol, then again Idk as a
| lot of companies are already in Google and Microsoft's ecosystem.
| jryio wrote:
| When Apple vertically integrates it works for them. All the way
| from the cloud to the OS to the hardware. Pretty sure this will
| beat out tools like JAMF on user privacy alone by running trusted
| MDM adjacent tools in kernel space.
|
| Yes sure you can use a different tool for any of these, defaults
| dominate for the same reason Google pays ~15 billion to be the
| default search engine on iPhones.
| meego wrote:
| I recently tried setting Apple Business Manager for our [?]20
| people SME.
|
| The first step was "Domain Lock/Capture" which takes over all
| Apple accounts for a specific domain.
|
| I've never had a worse experience from Apple.
|
| The process is buggy, filled with foot-guns and dead ends. It
| expects huge amounts of work from users who have had their
| account for more than a few weeks and are expected to remove a
| lot of their personal data before their account can be migrated
| (e.g. do you know how to delete all your Health data?). The
| process is also impossible to cancel.
|
| Phone support was par for the course, e.g. tickets escalated to
| the abyss, suggestions to restore workstations to factory
| settings, etc.
|
| Be warned.
| geoffharcourt wrote:
| The domain lock process was an absolute fiasco at our company.
| I think this could work if you did this at the time your
| company launched, but the moment you have employees who have
| Apple IDs tied to their work email that aren't from the
| Business Essentials system you are stuck in an impossible-to-
| mange place.
|
| There are several cheap MDM solutions for Apple devices that I
| would rather pay for than be dependent on this. (We've used
| SimpleMDM and love them.)
| cocoflunchy wrote:
| I'm currently in that hellish process too... I don't know how
| to get out of it. Did you know that your employees will be
| forbidden from downloading from the App store once you
| launched that migration? It's a nightmare
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Apple and MDM has always been a shit show. In the days as
| recently as Ventura (last time I tried it), MDM bypass was
| as simple as "null route 4 DNS entries during install
| process, remove null routing after install complete, and
| never be bothered by it again". This is on Apple Silicon.
| With no workarounds or anything, upgrades work all the way
| up to Tahoe.
|
| Like really Apple, that's your device "locking"? I could
| test activate my work Mac with my personal Apple ID while
| doing this, no alarm bells, nothing, effectively "It's your
| laptop now".
| IrishTechie wrote:
| The baffling thing is that iOS+MDM has been fantastic
| over the years. macOS is a completely different beast
| though.
| jamiecurle wrote:
| MacOS used to be excellent for a short period of time
| when Fleetsmith existed. Then Apple purchased Fleetsmith
| around 2020 and killed the product not long after.
|
| Fortunately around the same time, JamF ended the practice
| of the mandatory Jamf JumpStart (PS5K fee), which finally
| made Jamf a feasible option for the company I was in at
| the time.
| wpm wrote:
| Well yeah, the idea is that if you have ABM, you have an
| MDM you can use to purchase licenses for them and install
| the apps with the MDM.
| IrishTechie wrote:
| It can be done that way, but it is definitely not the
| norm. Businesses will generally "purchase" (many for
| EUR0) apps in ABM that are to be used for business
| purposes and push those to devices, the user can then use
| an Apple ID to download any other apps they want for
| personal use.
| ndespres wrote:
| If they're using Managed Apple IDs they will have no
| access at all to the app store and won't be able to
| download their own apps anymore. IT department will have
| to buy and assign any apps that anyone needs, even the $0
| ones that only 1 person needs.
| anxman wrote:
| This was a big pain in the ass for me to figure out. I
| ended up using the free version of Mosyle and hiring
| someone on Fiverr to help me figure out how to get the
| licenses assigned to our managed devices.
| wil421 wrote:
| How does a company allow personal Apple IDs?
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I think the idea is that it happens before they lock the
| domain as a business. Before that, if you have an email
| address you can create a personal account with it.
| jamiecurle wrote:
| yes, that's exactly how it happens.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| > I think this could work if you did this at the time your
| company launched, but the moment you have employees who have
| Apple IDs tied to their work email that aren't from the
| Business Essentials system you are stuck in an impossible-to-
| mange place.
|
| I had the same thing happen but with Microsoft. A friend and
| I had started a small consulting business and were using
| Google Workspace, but I needed a Microsoft account to
| interact with a client. I made one with my business email.
| None of us knew any better, but I couldn't connect with our
| client's Microsoft setup because it was a personal account.
| So I went to set up a business account. It was a whole fiasco
| and the only way I could really fix it was create an alias
| and use that for Microsoft.
| cj wrote:
| We use Apple Business Manager. Locking a domain is not a
| requirement if you're just doing basic MDM, I'm pretty sure. (I
| also had a negative experience with it, so we didn't use it and
| everyone just uses their personal apple IDs). Is it no longer
| possible to skip this step in setting up the account?
| quietsegfault wrote:
| This was my experience switching from GMail to Apple's mail
| service. I switched back after a few days.
| givinguflac wrote:
| Genuinely curious, what were the Apple mail service issues
| for you? I hate gmail and have had zero issues with my
| @Mac.com email in 20+ years, that I've noticed. Thanks
| quietsegfault wrote:
| Lots and lots of missing messages. That was the big one.
| Anything from a SaaS just never arrived, like tickets,
| notifications, etc. I had random IMAP authentication
| failures too.
| xp84 wrote:
| Do you find that iCloud email can correctly handle both
| "true spam" (meaning the nonsense garbage kind) and
| "promotional email" effectively?
| true_religion wrote:
| AFAIK, it works with subdomains, so you can use something like
| employees.example.com as your domain, and capture over that.
| slyn wrote:
| The org I work for just makes alias's - @ourbrandmdm.com for
| ABM that forward to their @ourbrand.com emails.
| razakel wrote:
| I gave up when it wanted a Dun and Bradstreet number (whoever
| they are) and the website to get one didn't work.
| dlg wrote:
| I have had the misfortune of having to get D&B numbers (for
| various Apple things). I believe is the source for lead lists
| where you start to get dozens to text and phone spam calls
| per day. Do not pay hundreds of dollars for this if you can
| at all avoid it.
| keerthiko wrote:
| Definitely avoid unless you are distributing a consumer
| application through the dominant app stores (App Store and
| Google Play) ~globally, in which case you may not be able
| to avoid (or avoiding will be just as much work).
|
| Google and Apple require it for lots of mobile apps
| targeting certain consumer segments because some countries
| (eg: Brazil, IIRC? don't quote me on that) have chosen to
| use D&B as a qualified unique identifier of business
| legitimacy and it requires exposing personal information of
| your company's leadership to them.
| yolo3000 wrote:
| Afaik every company has a DNB number. It's a credit risk
| company which sources company data from every country.
| SoleilAbsolu wrote:
| FWIW, my experience doing this process for a ~130 person org
| last year was pretty painless compared to other Domain Claims
| I've initiated for other SAAS vendors (Docusign in particular),
| and MDM nightmares (expired JAMF certificates, I'm looking at
| you).
|
| We had to do it as ppl had made personal Apple accounts using
| our domain, meaning if they logged in with such an account and
| left, their iPhone magically transformed into an expensive,
| elegant paperweight. Due to a setting in our previous MDM we
| were unable to migrate data cleanly using Apple Biz Manager
| without committing to use ABM as our MDM (we couldn't) so we
| told people to "move it yourself following these detailed
| instructions, otherwise it can't be migrated." Regarding
| personal data like health on company-managed devices, I
| certainly don't share that type of info with my employer, and
| make it clear to staff that it's not our responsibility to
| migrate such data.
| czscout wrote:
| Yes, as an IT professional at a company where a few people have
| insisted on using Macs, the ABM workflow is by far the most
| frustrating, half baked product I've had the displeasure of
| using. People love to complain about Entra/Azure AD, but ABM is
| another level of obtuse.
| pseufaux wrote:
| What's bad is that it's so much better than it used to be and
| still this bad.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Same here, I never even got in. I never managed to get in. My
| account is good enough to take my money for other things but
| somehow I can't manage to onboard into the damn thing so that I
| can actually manage devices for my company. I just gave up in
| the end. Couldn't get it done.
|
| I'll try again next month see how far I get with this. This
| needs to be way simpler than it currently is. Hopefully they
| fixed a few things there.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| you only need to do the domain lock part if you plan to use
| MAIDs. For 20 people you probably didn't need to do that, at
| least not at the same time as the rest. You can do it as a
| later step, not the first step.
| matt_daemon wrote:
| Apple's cloud software has been buggy as hell for a long time,
| at least for me.
|
| I'm in a family iCloud group with my parents... one day I just
| woke up and had all my podcasts and music replaced with my
| Mum's :/
|
| Would not want this anywhere near a "business" experience
| zzyzxd wrote:
| This is interesting to me as the IT support for my family. I have
| been considering using MDM to provision Wi-Fi credentials and
| other device configurations. 3rd party solutions are a little bit
| too much for what I need.
|
| Apple Business Essentials with AppleCare+ for 3 devices and 200GB
| iCloud storage is $19.99 per user/mo. That's the same price as
| AppleCare One alone.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| I wanted to use the existing ABE product for exactly that,
| especially as you can actually lockdown apple devices properly
| to stop teens from undoing VPN settings etc ... however it's
| explicitly against their policies to use ABE for personal
| devices and I'd guess the same for this new iteration of it.
| zzyzxd wrote:
| You are right. I didn't read the terms. Looks like ABE can
| only be used by a business entity.
| Melatonic wrote:
| For home use I think you can just generate configuration
| profiles manually ? If you don't want to pay
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Incredible. What is this? Actual competition? I don't believe my
| eyes. Is Apple search next?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| they had an opening in search with Siri and AI and missed it.
| steinvakt2 wrote:
| Not necessarily missed. Maybe just late.
| dfabulich wrote:
| Strategically, Apple's not setting themselves up for success here
| by giving Apple Business away for free (with paid per-user
| storage bumps).
|
| As a lot of people on this thread have pointed out, Apple's
| Business Manager needs a lot of improvements. ("Bring your own
| device" support is terrible, for example. Changing business names
| requires a perilous migration step. Support reps don't have the
| tools to fix serious issues.)
|
| If Apple Business were a real revenue source, if they charged
| luxury prices for a luxurious business support experience, they
| could pay for developers to fix their stuff.
|
| Instead, Apple Business is a free side hustle for Apple, a hobby.
| But they're proposing to control your entire domain, to Domain
| Lock all Apple accounts for your domain, to put your businesses's
| life in their hands, for "free."
|
| Don't fall for it.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Seems like par for the course for a product launch like this.
| I'll see where they are in a year.
| gowld wrote:
| Who would pay them for it before "developers fixed their
| stuff"?
| 9dev wrote:
| People fooled by an expectation of quality extrapolated from
| their end-user experience. Alternatively, people who have to
| carry out orders from managers who never have to interact
| with it personally.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The way it works is that Apple would have committed more
| resources if the projected outcome was more revenue. By
| choosing to approach it as a free option, they committed a
| free option's worth of resourcing to it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > If Apple Business were a real revenue source, if they charged
| luxury prices for a luxurious business support experience, they
| could pay for developers to fix their stuff.
|
| Apple can already easily afford those developers. They're not
| exactly running at a loss ;)
|
| Plus given how each new iteration of macOS and iOS is a steady
| step backwards for usability, I don't have a huge amount of
| trust in their abilities to fix Business if it had become a
| strategic product tomorrow.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| The reality is that every business unit needs to justify its
| existence and when asking for headcount, it's easier to point
| to a revenue stream you're tied to rather than "we help sell
| some things to businesses"
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Are you sure Apple does their accounting in that way?
| xp84 wrote:
| Do you have a reason to believe they don't? We're not
| talking about some weird or obscure custom, it's just
| basic business ideas.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| If that were the case, the only business units that would
| ever be get funding would be the hardware sales.
|
| Even with AWS I doubt many of the service teams make enough
| money to justify their existence alone.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're not thinking it through. There's a rich enterprise
| ecosystem for MDM. Microsoft, Google, Omnissa, IBM, etc.
|
| They don't want to compete with those partners, and wouldn't be
| effective if they did. But, there's a gap of smaller companies
| and institutions where they benefit from MDM capabilities but
| don't have the budget or wherewithal to even know how to shop
| for MDM.
|
| So they spend a bit of money, give Apple Store reps something
| to do and add an incentive to buy another iPhone.
| xp84 wrote:
| Agreed, and honestly, I'm put off by the freeness because I
| agree it means that support will be nothing, just the Tier 1
| call center reps who can read you scripts of how to hold down
| the power button to reset your computer, etc.
|
| And I'd be very skeptical any business user anywhere can skate
| by on the iCloud Free Tier. Of all the stingy free tiers, it's
| that one.
|
| If they cared, they would make a Teams/Slack equivalent, a Zoom
| Killer, maybe a Confluence Killer, and charge per head, and
| offer storage tiers comparable to what MS and GOOG do.
|
| (And no, don't even joke that Messages and FaceTime are Slack
| and Zoom killers.)
| ark4n wrote:
| Feels like yet another distraction. I personally believe Apple
| would benefit from a renewed focus. Product lines are growing,
| software too, software qualify is not doing well... this is the
| same pattern that got Apple into a mess before Jobs returned.
| Sure, things are not exactly the same but it feels like time is
| echoing here.
|
| I am sure "BUT BUSINESS AND MONEY" is the answer but that feels
| like a cop out in this case.
| Hexigonz wrote:
| Hard pass on ads in apple maps. Their navigation was already
| pretty terrible, this was the reminder I needed to download
| something else
| wigster wrote:
| do they demand 30% of turnover?
| kibwen wrote:
| Of course, that's only fair.
| popupeyecare wrote:
| Will this allow iPad profiles? I think that's a feature in edu?
| Would be a game changer.
| egorfine wrote:
| Nothing like account termination with all your corporate email
| with no recourse and support because fuck you that's why.
|
| Absolutely do not touch this product with a ten-foot pole.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Capitalism works, it may work slowly enough for HN to complain
| but it works. When MSFT fails their customers, Apple picks up the
| tab...
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Company data remains secure while employee data remains
| private, with cryptographic separation of work and personal data
| on devices._
|
| Does this mean that I'm able to enroll two Apple Accounts on an
| iPhone at once? Or does Apple actually think that I'm gonna be
| storing personal data, such as my health data, on a company
| device with a company-managed Apple Account?
|
| At the moment I just have two iPhones: my personal iPhone that
| has my data and is connected to my Apple Watch, and my work
| iPhone, which sits on a desk and does nothing. The separate Apple
| Account on the work one means that I can't connect it to an Apple
| Watch and I can't download my apps on it, so you either can't
| accumulate any personal data on the device, or you need to submit
| all of your personal data to your employer's Apple Account.
| Including whatever health data your Apple Watch produces.
| miskin wrote:
| It would be great if you could get correct invoice and pay price
| without VAT in EU as a VAT registered business. It is incredible
| they can get around without providing such a basic thing for so
| long.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| So they try to pull a Microsoft?
| dzonga wrote:
| now Apple is going for the jagular.
|
| if they can also monetize - location api - via Apple Maps +
| business messaging that's easily 3+ Billion of revenue yearly.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| It would be nice to kick google to the curb. I hope this product
| matures.
| jms703 wrote:
| Worth repeating: Never tie your personal phone to your work
| stuff.
| dandellion wrote:
| Worth repeating as well: Never tie your work stuff to Apple.
| julianozen wrote:
| Does Apple support multiple iCloud accounts on a device yet?
| jiveturkey wrote:
| no, but many apps can independently use a different Apple (nee
| iCloud) Account specifically for that app.
|
| that said, you can create multiple users per macOS device, and
| each can have a different Apple Account. that's a nightmare,
| because some significant areas of device management assume a
| single Apple Account. So for example you can use a 2nd account
| to get around Activation Lock in some cases.
| npilk wrote:
| Can you not make two user accounts on a Mac and sign them into
| different iCloud accounts? I know you're limited to one on
| iPhone and iPad, though.
| joshstrange wrote:
| It's not clear to me if the MDM is included for free as well or
| if that will continue to be charged separately (or on top). I
| looked into their MDM, but ended up going with Mosyle instead
| because the costs were significantly lower for me.
| bilsbie wrote:
| If I'm understanding this correctly it's a one stop shop for an
| entire out of the box it department.
| hu3 wrote:
| No, there's no mention of MDM.
| carlesfe wrote:
| Ctrl-F MDM
|
| "Apple Business offers built-in mobile device management
| (MDM) [...]"
| drnick1 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why would any business with an IT department
| choose this over an in-house solution built from standard open
| source components. Think email server on premises or in the cloud
| using postfix/dovecot/LDAP, maybe Nextcloud with OnlyOffice,
| Jitsi as a Zoom substitute, etc. These are all mature solutions
| that are free of vendor lock-in, and can be easily managed by any
| competent IT team.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| you wouldn't. a business _without_ an IT department would
| choose this.
| tonymet wrote:
| so they can fire the IT department and save $500k+ / year
| lvl155 wrote:
| I detest Apple for constantly bothering me at the store for small
| business sales pitch. Apple Store experience has really gone down
| the hill.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Given previous Apple adventures on the server room, not sure if I
| would bet on this staying around.
| poemxo wrote:
| This is cute but it's missing programmable documents (Microsoft)
| or hooks to use AI (Google) to really challenge either
| competitor.
| legitster wrote:
| This announcement is pretty sad. If you're wondering why Apple is
| an IT department nightmare, this announcement is more of a
| confession. Today your corporate MacBook can have ...
| preinstalled software! And user groups (for the Apple store and
| iCloud).
|
| Wait, there's more!
|
| > In addition, customers can now set up business email, calendar,
| and directory services with their own domain name for seamless
| and elevated communication and collaboration.
|
| Wow, a custom domain name!
|
| > Apple Business enables automated Managed Apple Account creation
| for new employees through integration with an identity service
| provider, including Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID, and
| more.
|
| In the year 2026, I can finally start logging into my corporate
| laptop with my corporate ID. Wow!
|
| Them stapling on the announcement of advertisements for Apple
| Maps is especially hilarious. I don't think the people managing
| fleet devices at a corporation are the same people who are
| interested in setting their location ad strategy. But Apple saw
| they had two vaguely business-y things at the same time and
| thought they would really hit it off together.
|
| I have to imagine that the Apple Neo is heavily aimed at volume
| sales - low level white collar workers and education. These
| features seem to be hastily assembled to meet the needs of these
| potential buyers.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| A few months ago, on a price hike announcement for Office365
| posted here to YC HN, I made a comment that MDM is expensive, had
| high MOQs (Mosyle, Jamf) and fundamentally still doesn't work as
| well as Windows and Intune. I also lamented that Microsoft keeps
| hiking prices and that it's silly we're normalising $20+ per user
| per month when we used to pay once for these things.
|
| I lamented how Apple hardware is now the same price as the other
| vendors, yet best in class for quality and how Dell and HP are
| hiking their laptop pricing lately due to supply shortages.
| Especially on their pro lines, which have been quoted to me as
| twice the price of equivalent MacBooks.
|
| I mentioned Apple would be silly not to make a further global
| move into MDM and email hosting territory. Particularly for small
| business owners: 1-10 person shops and retail who use mostly
| cloud based POS applications.
|
| Others responded at the time, and I agreed with it, that it seems
| unlikely Apple would make a business move. After all, they don't
| have much history with business, or perhaps they did but they
| didn't like the market and wrapped it up.
|
| Well, with this announcement, and with the confirmation that
| *Apple native email hosting is coming* I am very excited to trial
| it when it lands in April. Over the last few months, our small
| business has already cracked it and downgraded most of our email
| hosting to Exchange Plan 1 and dropped the desktop Office suite
| in favour of Pages and Numbers, which are both free and
| absolutely working fine. In fact, I've found Pages to be less
| laggy and more stable than Word in very large documents such as
| 300+ pages. The logical next step for us is to fully drop our
| third-party MDM and review whether Apple's native MDM, email and
| identity systems are adequate for transition. We have saved
| thousands of $$ so far and stand to save a lot more!
| d--b wrote:
| Are they taking 30% of the payments?
| anizan wrote:
| Apple should compete with Google workplace or at the very least
| at least offer custom domain e-mail inboxes.
| arikrahman wrote:
| After bricking a 2 year old phone after a software update, I'm
| reluctant with handling my entire business with them.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| If Apple can turn it into a replacement for 365, they could kill
| microslop altogether. They rinse basically every organisation in
| the country, even though their products suck.
| eastbound wrote:
| The big news here is the MDM, for free!
|
| It used to be necessary to use a slew of dodgy providers like
| Jama, with is 2000 website (and why would I trust any small
| company with all my enterprise data). ABM didn't provide the MDM
| part and that was most annoying. It seems normal to integrate
| account management and MDM, so I'd love to use it.
|
| That ABM is full of bugs, the Apple team incompetent, and D&B
| being Dumb and Dunber is another question.
| obsidianbases1 wrote:
| Hey Siri, should I use Apple Business?
| cheriot wrote:
| Jamf shareholders got very lucky. The acquisition closed less
| than 2 months ago. Tough day for the new PE owners, though.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/francisco-partners-completes-...
| neeeeeeal wrote:
| Not so sure about this. The level of configurability in AB is
| significantly less than what is available in established
| platforms like Jamf, Addigy, etc. The AB offering seems
| squarely targeted at smaller orgs, and may be a great fit, but
| is nowhere near as mature as a midsize/enterprise customer
| would need.
|
| That said, who knows where this will go in the coming years.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| _Wow..._ I might be missing something, but _not once_ did I see
| AI mentioned! Apple is no slouch in the marketing department--
| this is _surely_ a deliberate omission. It looks like marketers
| are finally catching up with public sentiment. I'm sure a lot of
| people will say it was their abject failure to productize their
| AI initiatives driving this decision, but I doubt it: the people
| they're trying to sell business services to probably don't know,
| let alone care about that. I think this term and the industry
| hype around it is just too radioactive to be beneficial in copy.
|
| I'm happy to be corrected if I missed anything, or entertain
| alternate conclusions. I'm no expert.
| hansonkd wrote:
| Apple is terrible for business. Every portal and product require
| a new apple id. apple store and apple business can't be same
| apple id. your device id can't be the same as either. Its
| madness. Last count i have 4 apple ids that I have to shuffle
| around.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I read the first page of text of Apple's announcement, and still
| have absolutely zero idea what "Apple Business" is, apart from
| the fact that it will "manage devices" and "configure employee
| groups".
|
| Since I have no no employees and my devices are under control, I
| guess it's not for me, whatever it is.
| jimmoores wrote:
| The statement that Apple has been supporting businesses for
| decades is just the most self-serving bunch of crap. You can tell
| how thin this is by the way they push local ads on Maps as some
| kind of headline feature. What a joke.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > including a new option coming this summer that will enable
| businesses in the U.S. and Canada to place local ads in Maps
| during key search and discovery moments.
|
| It's happening. The end is near !!!
| danpasca wrote:
| > Starting April 14, Apple Business will be available as a free
| service in the U.S. and 200+ countries and regions to new and
| existing users of Apple Business Connect, Apple Business
| Essentials, and Apple Business Manager.
|
| > Apple Business Essentials, Apple Business Manager, and Apple
| Business Connect will no longer be available once Apple Business
| launches. Business Essentials customers will no longer be charged
| their monthly service fee for device management after April 14.
| Existing Business Connect data -- including claimed locations,
| place card information, photos, organization information, account
| details, and more -- will automatically migrate to Apple Business
| at launch.
|
| I don't get it. Is this free? If so this is insane value compared
| to everything else.
| nektro wrote:
| between the neo and now this, apple is setting itself to eat _a
| lot_ of google 's lunch
| Traster wrote:
| This is just Apple saying "We own all user compute now". Yeah you
| guys can fight over data centres. But every device that a user
| physically has will be an Apple device. They've now got the full
| range of price points from low cost to prosumer, and they've got
| the software stack to back it up so you can have your sales staff
| running neos logging in to their CRM, engineers running their
| Mabcook Pros.
|
| It's kind of insane the advantage Apple Silicon has brought along
| with the brutal price competition PC sales. The only question I
| have is whether this touches the sides. That is to say - they
| sell a billion iPhones, is the consumer laptop and low end
| business sales enough to bump the numbers. They're thinner
| margins, and that market has to some extent been on a downward
| trend (which is why the stock market is running to data centres
| where the compute actually happens).
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