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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.)

AFAIK, it works with subdomains, so you can use something like employees.example.com as your domain, and capture over that.

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?

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

Who would pay them for it before "developers fixed their stuff"?

Seems like par for the course for a product launch like this. I'll see where they are in a year.

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.

>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.

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.

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.

They need to _commit_ to this, and execute, though. This feels very much like yet another half-hearted Apple initiative.

$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.

*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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Maybe also 200 countries included, instead of just the USA?

There’s a grey one. So obviously, it was timed.

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.

Thousands in annual savings?

Apple always had a B2B component. This is just the latest attempt to not make it completely subpar.

They need to go OEM.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Such a huge bummer.

Hey, Big Ad Tech, come try enshitify my Rand McNally.

I thought that's now considered creator productivity software.

they had an opening in search with Siri and AI and missed it.

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.

I would expect, much like the App Store, they will not. Their maps will give you directions to navigate the enshittification curve.

Yes, and it works with a user agent switcher extension for Firefox, which is always the cherry on top.

  Supported browser:  
  Safari (14.1 or later)  
  Chrome (87 or later)  
  Microsoft Edge (87 or later)

We live in fantastic times

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.