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.
(I don't have a side in this discussion)
Nevermind the godawful Liquid Glass UX they cooked up and imposed on everyone else...
Apple fails at every novel thing they try and crushes it at every thing they copy
Garmin anyone?
I think Timex and Casio even had ones in the 90s
In no way was TSMC the first to market for chips or chip production or even any major chip fab product at its outset.
In fact they did exactly the Apple model and took what TI was doing and used government money to scale it. I don’t know a single unique product from TSMC
If anything Texas Instruments (which is I grew up around in Houston) could be considered actually building a good product from scratch, look at them now…
That’s genius
It's like Microsoft now - put everything under one massive convoluted control panel.
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
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.
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.
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.
After that, old copies of MSOffice.
Next-best would be a hodgepodge of the lighter options on Linux and such. Gnumeric, Abiword, that sort of thing. Not great, but at least they're light on resources and easy to use.
Distantly after that, LibreOffice.
Then, modern MSOffice in last place.
The only reason I'd count any of them as "worse" than modern MSOffice is that ~perfect office compatibility and a bulletproof excuse when things go wrong ("I'm also using MSOffice, don't know why your document isn't working") is non-negotiable in any business context.
[EDIT] Oh I forgot about Google. That's actually the true last-place. Modern MSOffice isn't worse than that. Christ the performance is awful.
For me it’s completely inverted; Google is top place, then Libreoffice, then MSOffice, then anything by Apple last place.
I hate modern MSOffice's UI, plus it's full of slow, heavy webtech which deducts a lot of points from basically anything for me. Google's leaks memory (like most of their software... so do Gmail tabs) and is so slow that it introduces a ton of input latency, which drives me nuts, I hate to type in it, aside from my experience with most of its formatting and editing features being that they're very janky even by the standards of GUI word processors. Both are very heavy on resources, which means they have a huge hurdle to overcome on the feature side before I'd consider them anything but extremely-unpleasant.
Old (like... '00s) MSOffice is pretty good because it's not such a resource hog, and the UI used to be really good.
And you hit the nail on the head with the whole 'Office = the document always opens/looks right' thing.
(Disclosure: I write 99% of my stuff in Emacs now, so I'm not going to go that far out on a limb for iWork. It's just that it's the best "Works"-style suite that I've used.)
Nobody at Microsoft is saying, "we don't care if Apple chips away at SMB because we have Call of Duty"
Revenge of the Mac. Theirs simply no reason for any normal person to buy anything else. The year of Linux is deferred yet again.
One point of contact for support.
Microsoft isn't going to get it together anytime soon, it's a new dawn.
My wife currently has an old MacBook with 8GB of memory, and she hits the memory limit somewhat regularly just from web browsing and light productivity work. But whether more breathing room in terms of memory is worth almost double the price...
Like, have any of you actually looked at street prices at Micro Center or Best Buy recently? In the price range of the higher model Neo you can get a Yoga 7 with an OLED convertible touch screen, 1TB storage, 16GB of RAM, along with a processor with better multicore and iGPU performance (Ryzen 7 AI 350) in a 2-in-1 convertible package that has better battery life doing office tasks.
Yes, the Neo is a cheap machine, with a lot of the exact same cheap machine compromises that are all over the $500-800 laptop market. Not really the best CPU, extremely cut-down battery, missing features, etc.
It even loses keyboard backlighting which is such a standard feature that it might be the only laptop on sale without it.
Losing the haptic trackpad means that the Acer you can buy at Micro Center for $530 with double the RAM and way better I/O (USB4, USB-A 3.0, microSD, and HDMI) has a pretty similar quality of trackpad experience. Yes, I tried both in store, the MacBook Neo's trackpad is really at the same level of all the PC competition.
MacBook Pro/Air Trackpad: 10/10
Best PC haptic trackpads available: 8/10
MacBook Neo trackpad: 7/10
Typical PC mechanical trackpads: 6 or 7/10
Hell, the older generation HP EliteBook 840 G10 that Micro Center sells as a business laptop makes a bunch more sense in a lot of ways. It's also an all-aluminum build thin and light system, comes with more RAM, which is upgradable, has a fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, etc.
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 much in Windows or Linux. This is Apple's intention: to try and sell more proprietary trackpads, because they know if their OS was optimized for normal mice consumers would just buy the cheap $20 mice that are better than their $100+ accessories.
The PC industry barely has to adapt to compete with the Neo. I think we'll start seeing that in late 2026 and 2027 when competitors arrive on Apple's doorstep.
I have used countless modern PC devices, including some from Acer. Few PCs have a trackpad of the level of the Neo and none from Acer.
Your logic with "Apple's intentions" reveals a person who is incapable of decent analysis; macOS relies on gestures a lot because the vast majority of macOS devices are laptops. The desktop market is an after thought because the people keep buying laptops. That's it. There's no conspiracy, just a focus on the devices that the users choose to buy.
The PC industry has almost no shot of competing with the Neo. You have to spend much more than $1000 to get a nice object that looks and feels nice. Right now, the PC industry is selling Old Navy products when Hermès is the same price. That is a real problem.
Microsoft is going to be fine. Companies that rely on selling low end devices to consumers are going to suffer.
Yes, in many ways they’re bringing a very polished product to the space. But in many other ways, look closely and you’ll see the cut corners.
Again, I’ve felt the Neo in person. The chassis feels nice, sure. It’s not built to the same level as Apple’s other products, though.
The bottom plate is not CNCed, it’s a stamped aluminum plate. That means there is variation in the gap along the bottom of the laptop between the man case and the bottom plate that doesn’t exist on the Air or Pro.
Again, the trackpad is good but is worse than many haptic trackpads offered by PC manufacturers like Lenovo.
Again, if you think the PC industry has no chance of competing, go to your retailer website and look at street prices. Look at laptop reviews from places like Just Josh Tech on YouTube. PC manufacturers aren’t making trash.
Acer is actually a great example of a really solid PC. I felt the $530 model Micro Center is selling and it seemed to do the job: thin and light enough, felt sturdy, similar trackpad to the Neo, better specs and I/O. I’d say I only wanted the display to be a little better, though on the plus side it was bigger than the Neo’s cramped 13”.
This isn’t 2005. There is a misguided assumption to assume that PCs are still trash like they were 10 years ago. They just aren’t.
One little random bit to point out: there are 100 million Mac users globally as of 2024. There are more than 900 million PC gamers globally.
So, if I’m a high school student or college student who has money for one computer and I am a member of that group of 900 million PC gamers, I might just go get a last gen Lenovo LOQ with the RTX 4050 or something similar in the current gen from someone like MSI with an RTX 5050.
I would deal with a chunkier plastickier laptop but it would get similar battery life to the Neo for office tasks and I could actually play games. 16GB RAM. Modular storage. Price is around $700.
And I’ll be honest, that trackpad ain’t gonna be much worse than the Neo. And I’ll get to keep my backlit keyboard and have some I/O.
Back in the normal world people don't use Linux. If you have the funds you can get an M4 Air with 16GB for 800$.
I still have a 8GB M1 air, it's fine for filling out paper work and watching YouTube, which is the extent of what most people do
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.
The companies doing that are cut in two groups. The one that don't fully plan it and they need to do with complex excel or whatever files here and there and they're still in microsoft's grasp, or those that fully do and move to disposable chromebook.
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.
It's pretty plain to see that the Neo eats any competitors lunch at that price point. It isn't close.
I am not sure why it’s eating competitors lunch when many very well-regarded competitors are in the price range available at stores.
What’s better about a Neo than a Yoga 7? Same price range.
You know what people who outgrow their applebooks are going to do? Buy a macbook air or pro. They aren't going to buy a windows machine. Some might buy a linux machine.
They're basically planning to enter the market where Microsoft has dominant position.
> 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'm glad Apple announced their own plans to enshittify before I got my hopes up.
Hey, Big Ad Tech, come try enshitify my Rand McNally.
Jamf will do that. Apple will not.
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.
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.
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 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.
Does this mean — Always Free or Introductory Free for now?
I remember this!
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.
Fuck you Apple.
Supported browser:
Safari (14.1 or later)
Chrome (87 or later)
Microsoft Edge (87 or later)
We live in fantastic times
Yes sure you can use a different tool for any of these, defaults dominate for the same reason Google pays ~15 billion to be the default search engine on iPhones.
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 personal data before their account can be migrated (e.g. do you know how to delete all your Health data?). The process is also impossible to cancel.
Phone support was par for the course, e.g. tickets escalated to the abyss, suggestions to restore workstations to factory settings, etc.
Be warned.
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.)
Apple Business Essentials with AppleCare+ for 3 devices and 200GB iCloud storage is $19.99 per user/mo. That's the same price as AppleCare One alone.
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.
I am sure "BUT BUSINESS AND MONEY" is the answer but that feels like a cop out in this case.
georgeburdell•2h ago
dagmx•2h ago
furyofantares•1h ago
I guess they were doing that before in the App Store, which is of course also awful.
Barbing•1h ago
https://i.ibb.co/zV8d9gbc/IMG-2177.jpg
They dynamically reveal 1-3 results and only show a “see more options in App Store” button when they feel like it.
lvspiff•1h ago
kstrauser•1h ago
bigyabai•1h ago
Apple knows the score internally, this won't change the world any more than the 12" Retina Macbook did.
swiftcoder•1h ago
I'd argue that (the low end of) Apple products are the cheapest they've ever been - the $599 iPhone 17e is below the inflation-adjusted price of the original iPhone, and at $599 the MacBook Neo is the cheapest launch price an Apple laptop has ever listed at (not even adjusting for inflation!)
The maximum amount you can spend at the high-end has certainly gone up over time, although the basic MacBook Pro Max config costs roughly the same as it's peer from 10-15 years ago - nobody's forcing folks to shell out for the 128GB of RAM (something that didn't exist on laptops at all till very recently)
amelius•1h ago
nhubbard•37m ago
amelius•29m ago
dhosek•23m ago