Strategically, Apple's not setting themselves up for success here by giving Apple Business away for free (with paid per-user storage bumps).

As a lot of people on this thread have pointed out, Apple's Business Manager needs a lot of improvements. ("Bring your own device" support is terrible, for example. Changing business names requires a perilous migration step. Support reps don't have the tools to fix serious issues.)

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.

Instead, Apple Business is a free side hustle for Apple, a hobby. But they're proposing to control your entire domain, to Domain Lock all Apple accounts for your domain, to put your businesses's life in their hands, for "free."

Don't fall for it.

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Spooky23 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

[delayed]

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xp84 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.)

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hnlmorg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

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matthewfcarlson 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The reality is that every business unit needs to justify its existence and when asking for headcount, it’s easier to point to a revenue stream you’re tied to rather than “we help sell some things to businesses”

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raw_anon_1111 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If that were the case, the only business units that would ever be get funding would be the hardware sales.

Even with AWS I doubt many of the service teams make enough money to justify their existence alone.

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carlosjobim an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you sure Apple does their accounting in that way?

	▲	xp84 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Do you have a reason to believe they don’t? We’re not talking about some weird or obscure custom, it’s just basic business ideas.

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gowld 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	Waterluvian 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The way it works is that Apple would have committed more resources if the projected outcome was more revenue. By choosing to approach it as a free option, they committed a free option's worth of resourcing to it.
	▲	9dev 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		People fooled by an expectation of quality extrapolated from their end-user experience. Alternatively, people who have to carry out orders from managers who never have to interact with it personally.

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sleepybrett 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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