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.
999900000999 19 seconds ago [-]
*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.
selectively 6 minutes ago [-]
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 3 minutes ago [-]
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 36 seconds ago [-]
Plus Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free on Macs, minus the new paid features. I think it's a no brainer for new businesses
monegator 4 minutes ago [-]
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.
simonw 12 minutes ago [-]
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.
giobox 10 minutes ago [-]
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?
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 4 minutes ago [-]
Maybe also 200 countries included, instead of just the USA?
jacobgkau 4 minutes ago [-]
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.
SunshineTheCat 11 minutes ago [-]
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.
SamuelAdams 4 minutes ago [-]
So do enterprises still need Jamf?
11 minutes ago [-]
dehrmann 16 minutes ago [-]
Apple's really late to this.
AndrewKemendo 13 minutes ago [-]
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.
sosodev 5 minutes ago [-]
TSMC. They dominate the semiconductor market because they're consistently first to market with the world's most advanced chip fabrication.
ceejayoz 35 seconds ago [-]
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.
bitpush 12 minutes ago [-]
Vision Pro.
d-us-vb 8 minutes ago [-]
A costly gamble for tech they really wanted that wasn't mature yet.
throwaw12 10 minutes ago [-]
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.
georgeburdell 54 minutes ago [-]
One of the last great consumer companies is going B2B
dagmx 52 minutes ago [-]
Apple always had a B2B component. This is just the latest attempt to not make it completely subpar.
furyofantares 15 minutes ago [-]
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.
amelius 13 minutes ago [-]
They need to go OEM.
lvspiff 15 minutes ago [-]
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 13 minutes ago [-]
The company that just made a $600 Macbook?
bouk 13 minutes ago [-]
Hopefully some actual competition against GSuite (or whatever it's called these days)
AlotOfReading 6 minutes ago [-]
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.
bitpush 14 minutes ago [-]
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
pier25 6 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
dev_tools_lab 18 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 16:31:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
Revenge of the Mac. Theirs simply no reason for any normal person to buy anything else. The year of Linux is deferred yet again.
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.
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.
> https://business.apple.com/preview
> https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/
> 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.
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.
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.
They're basically planning to enter the market where Microsoft has dominant position.
I guess they were doing that before in the App Store, which is of course also awful.
I'm glad Apple announced their own plans to enshittify before I got my hopes up.
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