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Apple Business

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Re: Apple Business

#251

Post by yolo3000 »

razakel wrote: post #215
meego wrote: post #77

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 perso…

I gave up when it wanted a Dun and Bradstreet number (whoever they are) and the website to get one didn't work.

Afaik every company has a DNB number. It's a credit risk company which sources company data from every country.

Re: Apple Business

#252

Post by poemxo »

This is cute but it's missing programmable documents (Microsoft) or hooks to use AI (Google) to really challenge either competitor.

Re: Apple Business

#253

Post by philistine »

bigyabai wrote: post #216
mpweiher wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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!

Re: Apple Business

#254

Post by legitster »

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.

Re: Apple Business

#255

Post by aetherspawn »

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!

Re: Apple Business

#256

Post by npilk »

julianozen wrote: post #214

Does Apple support multiple iCloud accounts on a device yet?

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.

Re: Apple Business

#257

Post by givinguflac »

quietsegfault wrote: post #145
meego wrote: post #77

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 perso…

This was my experience switching from GMail to Apple’s mail service. I switched back after a few days.

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

Re: Apple Business

#258

Post by givinguflac »

x0x0 wrote: post #192
martibravo wrote: post #17

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.

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.

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

Re: Apple Business

#259

Post by bigyabai »

philistine wrote: post #253
bigyabai wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 g…

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.

Re: Apple Business

#260

Post by givinguflac »

dangus wrote: post #113
selectively wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 m…

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 .
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