[HN Gopher] Apple Business
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Business
Author : soheilpro
Score : 718 points
Date : 2026-03-24 15:29 UTC (1 days 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.
| philistine wrote:
| The fact Apple maximizes for profits, and does not care
| about market share, does not mean it has ceded the market
| at all. It's the exact contrary. Apple's making money
| akin to the #2 position while being #4 and that's an
| issue for you?
|
| Once again you retreat to anecdata; how can you prove
| that used Mac laptops are not popular?
| 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 $$$.
| andyferris wrote:
| I think what they've announced is the best fit for small
| businesses, not large enterprises. They can still treat it as a
| B2C-style service - many tiny customers with similar needs. Mom
| and Pop can now get a domain name through Apple, with email
| accounts - for a lot of people that might be the only way
| they'd know how to do something like that.
|
| The business needs here aren't so different to family
| manangement features, say.
|
| Throwing in Entra ID / Google Workspace authentication and
| multiple Apple IDs per device is probably the most
| "interesting" part as to where that ends up in the distant
| future.
| sneak wrote:
| Apple has gone the way of AmEx and Uber. There are no
| massmarket "great consumer companies" left in the USA, as far
| as I can tell.
| 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.
| spogbiper wrote:
| i don't understand this take at all. what did the iphone
| do that the existing devices did not do?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Multitouch
| spogbiper wrote:
| thats certainly a nicer input method, but is that what
| you're referring to when you say its an entirely
| different product?
| df3dsfs wrote:
| Does anyone take this bozo seriously?
|
| He writes like.... the worst comments. I genuinely hope
| he gets much needed help. He seems like a bitter sad man.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| +1
|
| I appreciate that you made a whole ass new account just
| for this comment
|
| Cheers to that
| 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...
| grumbelbart2 wrote:
| TSMC had the first copper interconnects, kind of their
| breakthrough node at the time, and the first EV-based
| process.
| 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
| pixeldash928 wrote:
| Unfortunately, there's a reason people prefer paid office
| software over Apple's free suite. Apps like Numbers are
| chaotic in the face of Excel.
| 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.
| oblio wrote:
| I don't see why the ribbon would be inherently worse than
| a menu. It's still hierarchical, everything is labeled
| and has an icon and it's bigger. Oh, and everything has a
| shortcut that's highlighted...
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| Google does essentially everything I need. If I were more
| of a spreadsheet power user these days, Excel. And maybe
| other Office apps as needed for compatibility.
| 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?
| bigyabai wrote:
| > Open file formats didn't win out in the end.
|
| It's not "the end" yet. Many governments and sufficiently
| motivated orgs are switching to ODF - it's only over for
| proprietary file formats that pretend they can stand toe-
| to-toe with docx. By eschewing open formats you're making
| all the mistakes of .docx with none of the upsides of the
| network effect.
| 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.
| crooked-v wrote:
| You don't need an app for that, you can do it through
| through System Settings -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts
| -> App Shortcuts.
| 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.
| slashdave wrote:
| You can drag a pdf into Keynote, and get a vector quality
| image. This feature is great for science when a plot is
| made elsewhere (R or matplotlib). Or you can even drag in
| an SVG, even from something you find in a browser. Drag,
| drop.
|
| Why in heaven's name is it nearly impossible to do the same
| with Powerpoint is a mystery. You still have to paste a bit
| image.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| Personally, I like Apple's iWork. Keynote is slightly less
| fiddly than Powerpoint. I like that in Numbers you can have
| multiple movable tables on one screen without constraining
| column widths etc to each other. I also like that Pages is
| simpler than word with much more manageable styles,
| especially when copy and pasting from multiple other
| documents. But lots of people don't have Macs or like
| iWork, and in most businesses you eventually need MS Office
| to work with outside parties so for work the choice is
| really iWork plus MS Office vs MS Office.
|
| MS Office collaboration features work well these days but
| when you are using Office 365 for work, it's almost
| inevitable that different files get saved locally, on MS
| teams, Sharepoint, and OneDrive. It's a version control
| nightmare.
|
| I really like google's suite for work because it nudges
| everyone towards using only one location for all files,
| without a other places to save a copy. And it's good enough
| with Office files that you might only need a few roles to
| also need MS Office.
| 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.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yeah and ms access is completely missing. It lacks the
| full version of onenote too.
|
| The one thing that shines is Mac outlook where on windows
| you'll soon have to put up with that joke of a web app.
| 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.
| qmr wrote:
| ... the Yoga doesn't run MacOS though.
| 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.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| But this isn't some quarters or years, it's been
| _fifteen_ years. I think we've seen enough genuine
| innovation (Apple silicon, to name the major one) that
| it's clear Apple isn't shutting down the innovation
| pipeline to squeeze margin out of revenue.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Apple Silicon started under Steve didn't it? He died in
| 2011, first A4 was out in 2010 IIRC? That implies to me
| that Steve had a hand in it -- because he reputedly had a
| hand in everything.
|
| But that's it, thats the innovation. The singular one
| since he died. I think my point stands tbh: everything is
| half-hearted since Steve died.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Only looking at these numbers and not the general
| sentiment around the company, I'd say yes, it matters.
| Myopically focusing on profits and assuming profit = good
| is, well, its super common but also pretty nutty.
|
| At this point to take part in modern life a smart phone
| is required. Having captured a market for an essential
| "luxury good" doesn't mean they're doing something right.
| It just means we have no other choices.
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| 160 ppi is not pitiful, it's the same as a 27" 4K
| monitor.
|
| Is "clarity of purpose" ghost of Steve Jobs speak for
| refusing features to customers?
|
| Why is it so hard to conceive of a student wanting to
| write hand-written notes on a 2-in-1 laptop? Apple would
| rather sell you a second device.
|
| Why are we assuming the hinge on 2-in-1 laptops can't
| survive? These are not new products. These are well-
| regarded, highly reviewed products from the #1 PC
| manufacturer in the world (Apple is #4).
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > What's better about a Neo than a Yoga 7?
|
| If you already have an iPhone, there are lovely little
| integration things that sound like small beans but are
| really valuable over time, eg.:
|
| - copy-paste text between devices
|
| - get verification codes from text messages to auto-fill
| in Safari on Mac
|
| I don't know if Yoga 7 is good in this regard, but when
| you open the lid on a Macbook, it's awake and interactive
| before you've finished swinging it open. And battery life
| is outstanding. I'd miss things like that.
| dangus wrote:
| So the Apple advantage is, essentially, the evasion of
| antitrust rules. Nice. In any event, I use KDE Connect to
| send my clipboard around between iOS, Windows, Android,
| and Linux.
|
| The whole "instant on when you open the lid" thing is not
| impressive in 2026. Even with Linux my laptop is instant-
| on from sleep in a very similar fashion.
|
| And, again, here I am as a broken record repeating this
| since nobody is listening because they've been
| indoctrinated by Apple marketing:
|
| _The MacBook Neo does not have as good battery life as
| the more expensive models! In comparison testing with
| other similar PC laptops the battery life is very middle
| of the road!_
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| So what you're saying is that the same 8GB of RAM that
| MacBook Air M1 had 6 years ago is a good idea for a brand
| new laptop?
|
| Like I said, the MacBook Neo is squarely a low-end device.
| Make excuses all you want, it trades RAM, storage, keyboard
| backlight, and battery size for a nice chassis and
| portability.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Yes, it's an excellent idea. For normal people a computer
| is a tool to get things done, and any 8GB Apple Silicon
| machine will serve them very well.
|
| Think about it this way: If you loose 5 days of
| productivity then you have lost $500. A Windows or Linux
| machine is guaranteed to cause many more days than that
| of productivity loss per year.
|
| And with "normal people" I mean everybody who is not a
| developer or hacker, including millions and millions of
| people who work professionally with computers.
|
| The RAM doesn't matter as much as people here insist.
| What do I care that my computer has half the RAM, when it
| completes any and every task blazingly fast and never
| freezes up or crashes? RAM turns into an abstract.
|
| Look at it this way: You're arguing that a diesel truck
| is always better than a motorcycle because it has more
| horsepowers. Okay, but the motorcycle gets me where I
| want twice as fast and is more comfortable, and doesn't
| break down all the time. That's what I care about.
| 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!
| gtvwill wrote:
| 8gb on a apple is not enough and its not surprising at all.
|
| Source: dealing with dozens of Mac devices with 8gb memory
| that clients had which all can't handle their workloads.
| I've switched whole companies from Mac back to pcs. And
| I've watched companies try switch to Apple and go from
| reasonably problem free operations to a nightmare of broken
| systems. Want to use apples data transfer to migrate from
| windows to Mac? Good luck it just plain doesn't work.
|
| Device management on macs is an absolute nightmare along
| with the hell hole that is apple ID and the app store. Not
| to mention their absolutely abysmal performance with rmm.
| You can literally configure a machines permissions to allow
| remote access apps to work then a week later they just
| break the software and your access to manage the device is
| broken too.
|
| Apple products are absolutely terrible for business from
| phones to laptops to their entire office suite.
| dangus wrote:
| I don't know where this myth has come from that macOS
| magically uses less RAM even though you are using the same
| applications as everyone else.
|
| The Just Josh Tech review of the MacBook Neo demonstrated
| that the Neo cannot do a fractional resolution playback of
| a very simple Adobe Premiere project. We are not even
| talking about doing any editing work, simply playing back
| the project in the timeline.
|
| The ~$500 Acer loaded with 16GB of RAM performed much
| better on that workflow.
|
| I think it's worth pointing out that the base RAM on a
| MacBook Air was 8GB _six years ago_.
|
| The Neo is a low end machine that trades RAM, storage,
| keyboard backlight, I/O and battery capacity for fit and
| finish and aesthetics.
|
| It is a machine that will introduce many people to the Mac,
| and it will be very successful, but I also think it is a
| machine that for many people will not last them a very long
| time. And who knows, that might have the same negative
| impact that cheap Windows PCs have had for Microsoft in the
| long run, which was the whole reason they started their
| premium Surface brand.
| kube-system wrote:
| > I don't know where this myth has come from that macOS
| magically uses less RAM even though you are using the
| same applications as everyone else.
|
| Well, you're certainly not running _the same code_ on
| both systems. Some applications absolutely use less RAM
| on MacOS... some use less on Windows.
|
| Some of this is due to the various builds of the software
| itself, some of it is due to architectural differences in
| memory management, CPU instructions, differing memory
| access capabilities, etc.
|
| 8GB is tight for power users, definitely. But it is
| certainly very usable for on a Mac for the average
| person.
| kube-system wrote:
| My last Windows laptop was a 2-in-1 Yoga. It was the reason I
| switched to Macs.
|
| Sure, the specs were good... on paper. But all of the little
| firmware bugs really destroyed the experience. Mine had both
| throttling and display output issues, which really suck for a
| development machine. Also Windows kind of sucks in general
| these days -- and when I installed Linux on the thing, then I
| got the classic lackluster power management issue where it
| would slowly discharge in my backpack. So there goes the
| battery life advantages.
|
| Apple benefits from great vertical integration so their damn
| firmware usually works, and if there are issues, they tend to
| fix them, where as Lenovo and most PC integrators seem to be
| happy just abandoning products from last quarter and
| releasing fifteen new models instead. And it's posix and
| doesn't put ads in my start menu, right out of the box.
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| The Neo is a phone with a big screen.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Does it matter if the main difference is the OS?
| Chromebooks are way worse spec wise, and they're still
| "phones with big screens" and a different OS. If someone
| made a windows laptop that was actually good without
| compromises in an ARM SoC, I'm sure it'd sell well too.
| The Qualcomm ones seem to have too many compromises today
| with the OS/driver layer unfortunately.
| bombcar wrote:
| That last part is the stumbling block for sure - the
| Microsoft Surface Laptops are _nice_ machines but damn if
| the driver thing doesn 't continually piss me off.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-
| lapt... but at $900, and the Neo _literally_ just being a
| Mac and doing everything any other Mac does (except some
| hardware related limitations like driving a 6k monitor,
| but doing 4k is "enough for most") means you save $300
| and don't run into annoyances like "can't install my
| printer driver".
| 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.
| TheGamerUncle wrote:
| It really depends on the context and the context within the
| context. I used to manage a medium sized IT firm in Colombia
| on a hybrid manner.
|
| One of our biggest clients had a sort of high end boutique
| set of businesses and two bigger businesses that interacted
| quite more with the regular public.
|
| For the high end boutiques he asked us ONLY and ONLY to use
| mac's both because down there they are synonym of "prestige
| and class" and because the (very attractive) women that he
| hired for most roles were only familiar, or preferred mac's
| and were consumer's exclusively of apple's walled garden.
|
| We had a bunch of customers like that, the real issue is that
| if this were on place I would have made it an option for my
| clients, eventually some things like security or software may
| move a significant number of users there, specially after the
| new mac mini, the neo and the ma air become budget options
| compared to a lot of what microsoft is offering in latam and
| some parts of Europe.
| 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.
| moondance wrote:
| Live gas prices on GMaps is the only feature yet to make it
| over to Apple Maps, as far as I can tell. Once Apple integrates
| that one, my phone will finally be free of Google services.
| 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.
| gregoriol wrote:
| By excellent, you mean excellent at not being able to
| talk to someone about your real world problem and need to
| rely on your linkedin contacts to find someone to talk
| to?
| 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.
| Shank wrote:
| I would say that most SMBs don't need Jamf because they provide
| overlapping features. The most important thing you want is
| remote erasure of company data (for compliance purposes), app
| assignment, and ensuring your devices have screen lock. This
| basically makes the most important parts of MDM for Apple
| devices totally free.
| 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.
| foresterre wrote:
| This is annoying, but that they use user-agent solely to check
| irritates me even more; even (alternative) Chromium based
| browser like Vivaldi don't work out of the box. I usually use
| Vivaldi as an alternative when Firefox doesn't work.
|
| It's 2026. I think we can expect more from Apple. It's not a
| small indie company after all.
| 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.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| True, I remember looking at jamf at one point and the
| mandatory consulting was so annoying because we already
| had it dialled in on the free trial.
|
| In the end we just made do with intune. It's a lot less
| capable for Mac but these days you can get by with it.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| hopefully there's no kill switch for macs on intune, if
| not, the threat of wiping machines with one click is
| real, just ask stryker;
| https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/stryker-attack-
| device...
| 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.
| lynx97 wrote:
| If my employer did that to me, I would seriously consider
| sueing them.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| You've never been issued a work computer that's not yours
| to fuck around with?
| ghaff wrote:
| I haven't. Did have issued laptops that were company
| managed but I basically didn't use and, in any case, I
| like many others reinstalled a clean operating system
| image and did my own support.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| You could do that in our place but you'd lose access to
| everything due to not being in compliance.
|
| In a small shop that might work but not in an enterprise
| with ISO norms and security certifications to meet.
| bacheaul wrote:
| At most decent sized companies with a cyber security and
| network admin team, this is probably the fastest way to
| get disconnected from the internal corporate network with
| no way to reconnect.
| PxldLtd wrote:
| I always seem to end up with local admin at the bigger
| places I've been at because I'm so annoying with
| onboarding and requesting access to download development
| tools.
| ghaff wrote:
| This was a larger company and they did not care so long
| as you followed policies like turning on encryption.
| Companies do differ.
| lynx97 wrote:
| I was talking about domain capture. If you own my apple
| ID just because I used the company email to register it,
| I will definitely consider sueing you.
| onion2k wrote:
| Just on a personal note, tying your personal devices to
| your work email account is a very silly thing to do.
| _Even if it 's your company_ you could be locked out of
| your company email account at any time (HR grievance, SEC
| investigation, hostile takeover...) Losing access to your
| devices and not being able to access things like reset
| emails at the same time would not be fun.
| pavlov wrote:
| Sue for what? Do you think you own the company email
| address?
| Anon1096 wrote:
| Yep. Truly horrid policy. Where I work our issued iPhones
| suck to use without App Store access; no Bitwarden was
| the killer for me personally. Everyone I checked with
| uses their personal email/Apple ID instead of the MAID,
| and there's a sword over your head if you ever accidently
| copy/paste something from internal emails to something
| like Notes which has iCloud sync (we're semi serious
| about leaker). Absolute failure of an MDM setup by Apple.
| wpm wrote:
| MDM can restrict pasteboard from managed apps to non-
| managed apps, as well as allowing iCloud sign-ins but
| restricting which iCloud services are allowed.
|
| It's an absolute failure of the MDM server administrator
| for allowing such things, not on Apple.
| 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.
| geoffharcourt wrote:
| I did not. If I had known what would happen when we tried
| this we would have skipped the process entirely. Our staff
| (roughly 125) was so confused and it wasted a lot of time
| communicating about it, then trying to roll it back, etc.
| 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.
| rescbr wrote:
| Employee needs to download Microsoft Remote Desktop (sorry,
| Windows App) that is only distributed through App Store.
|
| Employee does not trust the company having access to
| everything else in their personal iCloud account - photos,
| mails, messages, calendar, reminders, etc.
|
| Employee registers a new Apple ID with company email, as it
| would be only used for downloading one single app.
| wil421 wrote:
| Got it. It's registering with the company email first,
| not their personal one.
| 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.
| yabutlivnWoods wrote:
| > I think this could work if you did this at the time your
| company launched
|
| This should not be a surprise. Greenfield services have not
| existed long enough to resolve edge cases that inevitably
| arise while integrating existing operating models already in
| use.
| AdamN wrote:
| That's why Enterprise vendors try so hard to get startups
| using their stuff. Lock-in is so strong. I can't imagine
| having a working system at a 100 person company and then
| trying to migrate to something else unless the current
| situation was truly awful.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > 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
|
| So give all the employees an email alias they can use to
| create a new Apple ID for this purpose?
| 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?
| gregoriol wrote:
| In any serious business, you don't want people to use their
| personal Apple IDs: that could lock their company provided
| devices for ever when they leave, you also don't want to buy
| them apps that you won't be able to re-use when they leave,
| ...
| cj wrote:
| > that could lock their company provided devices for ever
| when they leave
|
| MDMs like JamF offer override codes to disable activation
| lock. Hasn't been an issue in my experience.
| 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.
| bitwize wrote:
| Dun & Bradstreet is a business credit agency. Having a D-U-
| N-S number, which they issue, is like table stakes for being
| taken seriously as a business.
| 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.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| Can you expand on this, specifically how it compares with
| jamf? It is a direct competitor to jamf right? Essentially
| Apple vying to eat their lunch right?
| 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
| ezfe wrote:
| I'm just gonna go ahead and say that I'm not sure what
| happened there but either you or your mom signed in with your
| account on the other device.
|
| I have a lot of technical understanding with how CloudKit
| works and there's not a pathway for what you're describing to
| come out of a family group.
| ukuina wrote:
| Hence, "buggy".
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Maybe Something to do with Family Purchase Sharing. I
| didn't realize when I bought an audio book it would appear
| in my dad's library. Kind of embarrassing. Apple's help
| pages make it sound very opt in but I think there are bugs
| where libraries are merged by default. Some say on a quiet
| night you can still hear Bono singing "sexy boots"...
| nuodag wrote:
| I also organised this process at work, and it went rather well,
| (300ppl 10 year old), but of course no one had health data
| connected under the company domain, thats a crazy idea and it's
| probably good apple enforces that to be deleted / moved /
| disentangled.
|
| It is also clearly described how to move an account that is
| used privately to a different domain / mail.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| >The process is also impossible to cancel.
|
| This sort of thing should probably be illegal.
| cyptus wrote:
| some years ago i tried this setup for a german company with a
| special char in its name (,,a") and failed because Apple was
| not able to match it against DUNS. It took months of support to
| get it done.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| It's completely impossible for a 60k employee shop too yeah.
| They also want you to rearrange the azure ad the way Apple
| wants. Also impossible for us.
|
| And we have like 20k or so users with manually created Apple
| IDs on their company email and every one of them has to be
| manually resolved. It's a joke.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Be warned.
|
| This is exactly what I would have expected from an Apple
| "business" offering. Apple's whole shtick is to take away most
| of your choices so that they can focus on the limited number of
| things they still allow you to do. Businesses need the opposite
| of that.
|
| Businesses will show up needing integrations with multiple
| existing third party (often legacy) systems with inherent
| complexity and then want something that allows them to manage
| that complexity since it can't be eliminated. It's not really
| possible in that context to have the experience people
| otherwise expect Apple to provide, and the thing Apple normally
| does will often make it worse by removing choices you may have
| needed in order to make interaction with a third party system
| less of a pain.
| clawoo wrote:
| I had a "wonderful" experience as well.
|
| I wanted to evaluate it for MDM purposes so I applied for an
| ABM account for a company I work for, got soft-approved,
| created an entirely new Apple ID (as required by the ABM), used
| it to log on a test device I intended to manage, then sort of
| forgot about it while awaiting for Apple to conclude their
| hard-approval for the ABM account creation.
|
| Apple was supposed to contact the business owner to verify
| company details and finalize the process over the next few
| days, but they never did.
|
| 30 days later they canceled the ABM company account and deleted
| all the associated users along with the Apple ID which I used
| to log into a testing device, which now became a fairly
| expensive paperweight.
|
| I had very little expectations about the experience and I was
| still disappointed.
| TimByte wrote:
| This is the kind of failure mode that makes people nervous
| about tightly coupled identity + device management
| tom1337 wrote:
| Ohh we had a similar experience with Google Cloud. Added our
| organization and Domain into their Auth system and suddenly all
| users were migrated into a (invisible / transparent) workspace
| and could no longer use their calendar or google drive as the
| workspace had no free usage like you have on a normal free
| tier.
| thepratt wrote:
| Our recent (ongoing) experience with Apple Business Manager is
| just as bad. With no reason or contact they've sent "we can't
| verify so we've disabled your account because you don't meet
| the requirements". We ring support and they tell us to try
| again with no additional information. We then get "we can't
| verify so we've deleted your accounts" with no information.
| "Amazing" "experience".
|
| This is also after they've verified us (and our DUNS number)
| for app signing and distribution. We already have a verified
| account in another service of theirs!
| TimByte wrote:
| Apple's clean separation model only really works if you start
| that way from day one
| classified wrote:
| Apple really seems to go out of their way to show users the
| middle finger.
| 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
| connorgurney wrote:
| I've been doing exactly this with Jamf Pro for my personal
| devices. I'll be interested to see if I can scrap it now.
| 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.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I think the burden of evidence is with you in this case.
| It doesn't make sense for Apple to do their accounting
| with such a method.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Apple famously doesn't have conventional business units.
|
| https://www.apple.com/careers/pdf/HBR_How_Apple_Is_Organi
| zed...
| 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.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't disagree with that. But equally most business units
| in Apple are not tied to revenue streams. From R&D though
| to developers for other non-subscription software. And
| that's before you then factor in the non-delivery team (eg
| finance, HR, lawyers, etc).
|
| So it's not like a review stream is a requirement.
|
| Moreover, even back when they did have back office tooling
| as a revenue stream (eg OSX Server), Apple still left it to
| slowly rot before finally discontinuing it.
|
| So I just don't think this is something anyone's Apple
| cares enough about. If they did, then we wouldn't be having
| this conversation to begin with.
| 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.
| connorgurney wrote:
| Doesn't Shared iPad enable that already?
| 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.
| connorgurney wrote:
| Mac requires separate users as other have said.
|
| However, for iOS and iPadOS, the answer is "Sort of".
|
| As taken from https://support.apple.com/en-
| gb/guide/deployment/dep4d9e9cd2...:
|
| > If a user is signed in with a personal Apple Account and
| Managed Apple Account, Sign in with Apple automatically uses
| the Managed Apple Account for managed apps and the personal
| Apple Account for unmanaged apps.
| 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.
| andyferris wrote:
| I believe it said it will be free, starting April 14.
| 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.
| general_reveal wrote:
| Apple will probably deliver the best unified AI experience for
| productivity. Digging into Microsoft's domain (which has been
| seriously selling off). Your workers will want iOS and right
| now its perfect timing to sell LLM subs. This is a very
| aggressive and opportunistic move.
| bitpush wrote:
| True, like Siri.
|
| Sorry Apple Intelligence.
| weslleyskah wrote:
| Why people bother with all of this to lock the environment into
| some kind of corporate nightmare? Why not allow some freedom
| for the worker. I don't see the appeal, it feels like a
| claustrophobic cage
| Arainach wrote:
| There are many reasons.
|
| * Preprovisioning - devices have the right certificates and
| know about your corporate networks. They have the necessary
| apps and just work.
|
| * Tracking - if a device is lost or stolen, monitor where it
| is and remotely lock or wipe it
|
| * Monitoring - have a log to audit if someone does something
| malicious
|
| * Security - reduce the chance of your employees installing
| malware, spyware, etc. whether by accident or intention
|
| * Locking things down - put gates in the way of bad actions
| like copying sensitive data into public apps or clouds. Even
| if you're unable to block everything, attempts to block
| remind honest employees and provide strong evidence that
| anyone who proceeds was intentionally violating policy and
| should be fired.
|
| Etc., etc.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Because corporations like to control their peons. I'm sure
| your work laptop is laden with the same kind of corporate
| bullshit, it's just that MS Exchange stopped being a hot
| topic like 25 years ago.
| legitster wrote:
| The most clear and obvious use case is for school computers.
| You do NOT want to provision student devices en masse without
| protections (for both the students and the district). I
| envision this is a deal breaker right now that Apple is
| dealing with.
|
| Even if your Corp doesn't want to do full user surveillance,
| there's still a lot of advantages to group policy. Roll out
| new software instantly, SSO enforcement, remote
| troubleshooting, etc.
| eastbound wrote:
| SOC2 requires to ensure all computers have the software
| updates installed. While certification apps can check every
| desktop with a monitor, ABM could just do it and enforce it.
|
| SOC2 also encourages SSO.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Single-sign-on is actually useful.
|
| Most of the rest of this stuff .. well, who is responsible if
| the laptop is compromised?
| microtonal wrote:
| A lot of it is compliance. To get some types of customers you
| need to pass some security compliance certification or
| checks, which often have requirements like only giving access
| to crucial infrastructure when devices are up-to-date, the
| possibility to remote-disable/erase a device when it is
| stolen, some kind of anti-virus installed (yeah, I know),
| etc.
|
| I can understand the underlying reasons, you would be
| surprised how many employees have bad security hygiene, which
| becomes an issue when they have access to high value
| information, tokens, etc. But since they often somewhat
| draconian rules, they tend to have bad side-effects (similar
| to password reminders). E.g. Linux users will often set up
| ClamAV to fulfill the anti-virus requirement. However, ClamAV
| parses untrusted data in C code without any sandboxing, so it
| probably opens a new attack vector (as opposed to Windows
| Defender, which as far as AFAIR uses sandboxing or a micro-VM
| to parse untrusted data).
| notatoad wrote:
| ever worked in IT support? letting people customize their
| environment both increases the amount of support that users
| require, and increases the difficulty of providing that
| support.
|
| a laptop in a stock configuration can be swapped out for a
| new one when it breaks. a laptop that has three years of
| accumulated customizations installed on it means that the
| employee wants _their_ laptop back when it breaks, and they
| want it fixed ASAP.
|
| when you're supporting a user who doesn't know how to type a
| URL into their web browser, it's a whole lot easier if you
| don't have to start that call with asking what web browser
| they're using.
| umvi wrote:
| Regulatory compliance. If you want to sell your product to
| the UK, for example, you have to (see: UK Cyber Essentials).
| The more you try to expand your market, the more regulations
| you will run into that are solved with spyware and locked
| down computers.
| stephenr wrote:
| It's an announcement that they're providing first party
| integrated first party services for something that until now
| has largely relied on third party solutions.
|
| Not knowing about the exiting solutions to provision/manage
| Macs is one thing. Not knowing about them and claiming they're
| inferior because of what you didn't know is just bizarre.
|
| I don't know what it is about the type of people who end up
| doing pc support, but an irrational dislike of Macs seems to be
| systemic. I worked in an IT department when Novell was still a
| thing, an a senior guy with years of Unix experience would make
| jokes about "toy operating system" while also alternating
| between screaming at and practically fellating windows XP.
| 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.
| andyferris wrote:
| Custom domains (BYO or buy through Apple) and email hosting is
| in the announcement, too.
| 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 employees and my devices are under control, I
| guess it's not for me, whatever it is.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| It's a way to manage a fleet of corporate workstations, and
| some other things that businesses with lots of people on
| laptops end up needing.
| 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).
| fhub wrote:
| We use Jamf Pro for a small company. I'm not a big fan of the
| minimum 20 seat pricing model. I hope this will be something
| small companies can move to easily and have enough coverage to
| satisfy security reviews.
| cat-turner wrote:
| As long as I don't have to buy/pay for software to manage devices
| I provide to employees I am satisfied.
| astafrig 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.
|
| The enshittification knows no bounds.
| yalogin wrote:
| This is probably an attempt to retarget the education space more
| with the launch of the neo. Of course targeting a bigger
| enterprise space is not a bad idea
| wackget wrote:
| Yeah that's great and all, but can I get something which will let
| me delete iPhone contacts in bulk?
|
| It's 2026 and you have to delete contacts one at a time, or press
| and slide to select a group of them until you reach one you don't
| want to delete, delete that group, then start over again.
|
| Other basic functionality I'd like includes being able to remote
| control an iPhone from a device which isn't a modern Mac, and
| being able to plug in an iPhone and use it as a removable storage
| device.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| > Enhanced Discoverability in Apple Maps
|
| My first thought from that heading was "my company will know
| where I am at all times". Though that was not the point
| thankfully.
| loeber wrote:
| I previously tried buying Apple for Business and it was an
| endless runaround with terrible signup nterfaces and having to
| call dumb flunkies. The whole process sucked and was
| disrespectful to their business customers, who do not have the
| time to deal with such nonsense.
| kossov-it wrote:
| Considering the discussion here, i am still looking forward to,
| since it's the best solution apple provided so far with
| comprehensive management and in the end, after enrollment, what
| do you really need? the management looks very simple and
| flawless, all necessary things are covered (mail, calendar,
| icloud, backup, management). Excited!
| Zufriedenheit wrote:
| Apple future strategy seems to be to sell ad placements
| throughout their ecosystem. Very sad about that. :( I especially
| chose Apple because of the clean experience.
| bobosmrad wrote:
| Incidentally, today I saw this video of Steve giving a speech in
| 1999, published just a week ago. I hadn't seen it before and
| wouldn't be commenting weren't it for the video.
|
| You may, and probably will, call me a fanboy or argue that
| reminiscing the good old times when Apple had 4 products are long
| gone and we live in a different world now. That is true, we live
| in a different world and focusing on 4 products wouldn't suffice
| for Apple to survive.
|
| And now again, you may, and probably will, think that I'm burying
| my head in sand and ignoring many aspects a business needs to
| consider in order to survive, just to focus on the ones I like or
| am nostalgic about.
|
| But there is something very special in this simplicity
| communicated by Steve in the speech. There is something that
| makes me want to buy a product when I see clearly what it is I'm
| buying.
|
| On the other hand, there is something very repulsive when I read
| phrases like: seamless, streamline, gain valuable insights, build
| trust, in a product announcement.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I am indifferent about Apple Business,
| probably won't use it and it won't harm me either. My observation
| is just a coincidence having heard the speech and having read the
| announcement here. Link to video:
| https://youtu.be/EoM2Y2KO6kU?si=0DybhDUiqKsWG_Nz
| ryanschaefer wrote:
| > And Apple Business can help millions of companies grow their
| reach and connect with local customers across Apple Maps, Mail,
| Wallet, Siri, and more, 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. Apple
| Business will be available starting Tuesday, April 14, in more
| than 200 countries and regions
|
| Burying the lede about ADs coming to _everything_ in this
| announcement. Seems like the contract most people implicitly
| signed when choosing Apple just broke.
| TimByte wrote:
| There's a real gap for small businesses that are too big for ad-
| hoc setups but too small for full IT
| jedberg wrote:
| Can I please just have multiple users on my iPads, please?
| connorgurney wrote:
| Doesn't Shared iPad do exactly this?
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes, but you have to have MDM. I don't want to run MDM for my
| kids.
| eemil wrote:
| Would be nice if you could buy a Macbook with a proper on-site
| warranty.
|
| Dell, Lenovo, HP will gladly send a technician to your house, and
| their NBD warranties cost about the same as Applecare. And they
| don't care if you're an enterprise or an individual buying one
| measly laptop.
| sneak wrote:
| They're cheap enough and Apple stores ubiquitous enough that
| you just go and replace it as needed, and send the now-defunct
| one in for repair.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| I was hoping to see more geographies in which AppleCare would be
| available.
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