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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.

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.)

> 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Apple's clean separation model only really works if you start that way from day one

some years ago i tried this setup for a german company with a special char in its name („ä“) and failed because Apple was not able to match it against DUNS. It took months of support to get it done.

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!

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

Apple really seems to go out of their way to show users the middle finger.

>The process is also impossible to cancel.

This sort of thing should probably be illegal.

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.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*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.

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 is now an option ONLY if you're in the US. The mail, calendar etc. stuff is US-only.

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.

For home use I think you can just generate configuration profiles manually ? If you don't want to pay

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.

Doesn’t Shared iPad do exactly this?

Thousands in annual savings?

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

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.

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 $$$.

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.

so they can fire the IT department and save $500k+ / year

you wouldn't. a business without an IT department would choose this.

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!

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.

Such a huge bummer.

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

Worth repeating as well: Never tie your work stuff to Apple.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No, there's no mention of MDM.

I believe it said it will be free, starting April 14.

I thought that's now considered creator productivity software.

Custom domains (BYO or buy through Apple) and email hosting is in the announcement, too.

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.

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.

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

We live in fantastic times

Doesn’t Shared iPad enable that already?

Of course, that's only fair.

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).

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.

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