Apple Business

georgeburdell

One of the last great consumer companies is going B2B

dehrmann

Apple's really late to this.

bitpush

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

bouk

Hopefully some actual competition against GSuite (or whatever it's called these days)

simonw

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.

SunshineTheCat

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.

martibravo

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.

throwaw12

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

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/

AlotOfReading

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.

SamuelAdams

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/

monegator

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.

creantum

I had to look at my calendar to be sure it wasn’t 2001

Brajeshwar

> 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?

minimaxir

It is very funny that a business-oriented product does not highlight Apple's business productivity software in iWork (Pages/Numbers/Keynote).

Nevermark

Machines spec’d and priced for education? Support for businesses? I remember this!

jwlake

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.

zb3

So will Apple users be able disable these ads in maps?

wereHamster

business.apple.com doesn't work in Firefox, it redirects you to https://business.apple.com/abm_unsupported_browser?reason=Br... Fuck you Apple.

alexchapman

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.