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Comment by recuter | Hacker News Reader

They recently made a Jamf-like called Apple Business Essentials:

https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/

ABE isn't free, sadly (and iirc you need a DUNS number). Two month trial, but then $2.99 per device. Jamf Now is at least free for the first 3 devices, then $2.00 per month per device after that.

Another idea is perhaps Mosyle Business, which gives you the first 30 devices for free [1].

[1] https://business.mosyle.com/pricing

I'd second Mosyle Business. We pay for about 40 licences. It costs us very little and they provide quick support.

We were really exited by the Apple Business Essentials plan… until we saw you still needed an MDM. I thought it was an MDM run by Apple.

Looking back and forth between the Profile Manager / MDM capabilities and the new Business Essentials, I have a hard time understanding what the benefit is beyond automatic setup.

Does anyone else understand the business case?

Not sure where you saw this. ABE is an MDM in its own right, and can manage device configuration and push apps from VPP. It is otherwise fairly limited, but you don’t need an MDM for ABE.

Which might have been from the Fleetsmith acquisition.

No "might" about it. On a related note, Apple sent out a notice today that they're shutting down Fleetsmith 6 months from now.

Not surprised, we dropped them the week after apple acquired them and destroyed our processes and controls overnight.

Fleetsmith pre apple was fantastic. I'm concerned that with Apple you're forced into only using App Store apps which simply doesn't work for in-house binaries and or third party tools you don't acquire through the App Store.

Apple likes to do a half in half out dance without consulting with teams that use the tech. Hopefully this doesn't impact too many people.

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