Apple Business Essentials

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced Apple Business Essentials, an all-new service that brings together device management, 24/7 Apple Support, and iCloud storage into flexible subscription plans for small businesses with up to 500 employees. The company also unveiled a new Apple Business Essentials app that enables employees to install apps for work and request support. […]

In addition to streamlined setup and onboarding, Apple Business Essentials provides a dedicated iCloud account for work, providing simple and secure storage, backup, and collaboration on files and documents. Business data in iCloud is automatically stored and backed up, making it easy to move between devices or upgrade to a new device.

Fascinating. Unless I’m misreading this, Apple is entering the same market as Jamf and Kandji (editor’s note: both are previous sponsors at DF) and the other MDM companies that specialize in Apple devices. I’m curious what they mean by “backup” here, because iCloud only does backup for iOS devices. Does this program somehow back up Macs to iCloud, or is Apple just pretending that’s not a problem?

Update: Nothing magic here. It’s just like consumer iCloud, where iPhones and iPads can be backed up, and for the Mac, it’s just iCloud Drive (which, of course, can include your Desktop and Documents folders).

★ Wednesday, 10 November 2021