By Jason Snell

April 30, 2025 8:57 AM PT

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Apple in the Enterprise: A 2025 report card

In 2021, device-management startup Kandji approached Six Colors to commission a new entry in our Report Card series focusing on how Apple’s doing in large organizations, including businesses, education, and government. We formulated a set of survey questions that would address the big-picture issues regarding Apple in the enterprise. Then we approached people we knew in the community of Apple device administrators and asked them to participate in the survey. We are especially grateful to the members of the Mac Admins Slack for their participation.

This is our fifth year doing the survey. Over the last few weeks, we took the temperature of 124 admins, roughly half of whom report that they manage more than a thousand devices. They rated Apple’s performance in the context of enterprise IT on a scale from 1 to 5 in nine broad areas.

Below, you’ll see the survey results, plus choice comments from survey participants. Not all participants are represented; we gave everyone the option to remain anonymous and not be quoted. Though Kandji commissioned this survey—and we thank everyone there for doing so again—it had no control over the survey results or the contents of this story.

Also, I stopped by the Mac Admins podcast to discuss the report card with hosts Tom Bridge and Marcus Ransom as well as Kandji’s Weldon Dodd.

Overall scores

Just as in the past two years, Apple’s strongest scores came in hardware and in the company’s commitment to security and privacy. But as hardware scores continue to soar, Apple’s performance on the software side has dropped precipitously.

For the fourth straight year, we also asked about the pace of operating-system adoption.

After a major upswing last year in panelists reporting that their organization adopted Apple’s operating systems faster than usual, this year that number fell back to match the number of panelists reporting that things were “about the same” as usual.

While it’s possible that this is just showing a reset in expectations after last year, it’s probably more likely that the pace of OS updates slowed a little bit during this cycle—especially since the “slower than usual” score was up quite a bit as well.

This was the year that Apple Intelligence arrived, at least somewhat. We decided to ask three different questions about the current state of affairs, gauging the attitude our panelists have about how they might choose to manage their users’ use of Apple Intelligence, what might be on the table for the future depending on how Apple rolls out more fine-grained control, and generally how they feel about using AI in their own jobs.

Right now nearly two-thirds of our panel says they’re actively managing Apple Intelligence for their devices; only 19% said they weren’t, and another 18% are undecided.

We asked our panelists if, theoretically, Apple allowed granular control over what kind of AI functionality could be used on managed devices, where they would choose to draw the line. (Note that Apple currently does not allow this level of control.)

Of those expressing a preference, a third said they’d only be comfortable with allowing on-device running of AI models; nearly half said they’d be okay with on-device models and those that run in Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers. Only 18% said they’d be comfortable with everything—on-device, Private Cloud Compute, and third-party AI in the broader cloud.

Finally, we asked our panel how they personally use AI technology in their own jobs. More than half answered in the affirmative, with 19% saying they use it quite a lot. For the other half, it’s a no—and for 16% it’s a hard no.

Read on for category-by-category scores and comments from participants.

Enterprise programs

Grade: B- (average score: 3.5, last year: 3.6)

After a few years of consistent improvement, the score for Apple’s enterprise programs slid backward this year. Panelists praised incremental improvements to Apple Business/School Manager (ABM/SM), particularly around features like Activation Lock management and Managed Apple Accounts. But the lack of comprehensive APIs hinders automation and efficient management for large organizations. Documentation is seen as improving in some areas, but still needing more depth and consistency.

Here are six key topics that emerged from the commentaries, along with supporting quotes:

ABM/ASM improvements and limitations:

• “Apple’s Enterprise Programs—and especially Apple Business Manager—remain critical for IT Admins everywhere. The work to make ABM a stronger and more reliable platform has definitely paid off.” — Tom Bridge
• “Being able to turn off ‘find my’ from ABM is great.” — Martin Piron
• “Being able to disable a device’s Activation Lock from Apple Business Manager/Apple School Manager is a much-welcomed feature that has saved us a lot of time and inconvenience already.” — Luke Charters

Lack of APIs for automation:

• “It would be nice to have customer-facing APIs for removing and adding company-owned assets.” — Brian LaShomb
• “The biggest gap for me is the lack of a proper API so I can connect to my operations and create automations.” — Rod Christiansen
• “ABM/ASM really needs an API at this point. Being able to programmatically change a device’s assigned MDM server, move App licences between locations, and renew MDM and Content tokens would be a major benefit to many organizations.” — Luke Charters
• “There’s still no API for getting info/assigning/managing/releasing devices.” — Robert Hammen

Managed Apple Accounts:

• “The changes to allow greater functionality with Managed Apple Accounts is… a net positive.” — David McMonnies
• “[There’s] a continued struggle MDM vendors seem to have with Managed Apple Accounts on macOS — a still-shocking contrast to how this is implemented on iOS in my opinion.” — W. Andrew Robinson
• “Managed Apple ID is almost there. Maybe close enough for us to consider adopting. (Because it can be a hassle, or so I understand.)” — Chris Carr
• The fact that now it’s possible to migrate standard Apple Accounts to Managed Apple Accounts is a good thing. However, I still find incredible that it’s still impossible to order in-app purchases with VPP, making many apps unavailable.” — Guillaume Gete

The pace of Enterprise development and prioritization:

• “What I see from Apple is very incremental improvement. It’s slow, but more and more they are acknowledging the need for Enterprise deployment, management and procurement services.” — Chris Chipman
• “Apple is continuing to show signs of better Enterprise support and feature enhancements, though I don’t think they are prioritizing the most-asked for features, like an API for Apple Business/School Manager.” — Nicolas Wendlowsky
• “[Apple has] still left a lot of space for improvements, but clearly the focus isn’t Enterprise environments.” — Marian Albers

Enterprise service and support

Grade: B (average score: 3.6, last year: 3.7)

Service and support is another category that has trended down after a few years of growth, with a mix of praise and frustration. The Feedback Assistant tool is a major point of contention, widely described as a “black hole” with little transparency or visible impact on bug fixes and feature changes, leading to a lack of trust and discouragement among admins who invest time in submitting feedback. Communication from Apple, particularly regarding the status of feedback and detailed technical information, is an area where many feel significant improvement is needed.

Feedback Assistant:

• “Feedback Assistant is still ignored, so why bother? AppleCare Enterprise has no sway over Apple’s engineers to get bug fixes into releases.” — Cameron Kay
• “Feedback Assistant continues to feel like shouting into the void.” — Bart R
• “The Feedback assistant feels like a placebo. No real response. We want to be part of the solution and part of change but this feels useless.” — Craig Cohen
• “Providing feedback continues to be a black hole. I checked on the Feedback I [have] created since September and found that I have about the same number of resolved and unresolved items, with the unresolved items receiving no comment or status change from Apple.” — Anthony Reimer

Documentation:

• “Documentation is good, feedback is poor.” — Martin Piron
• “It feels like the technologies are there, but finding good documentation on what they are and how to use them can be frustrating, and likely limits usage.” — Chris Pommer
• “Documentation for Mac Admins continues to be a strength” — Anthony Reimer
• “Apple’s enterprise docs are solid. Not quite as good as Microsoft’s but good.” — John Welch

Enterprise Support:

• “Enterprise Support is excellent, as long as you can get a hold of an actual person to talk to.” — Bart R
• “Our overall experiences and responsiveness with Apple’s Enterprise Support has been great, but they still often struggle to debug complex interoperability network issues.” — Casey Jensen
• “AppleCare OS support is actually really good and worth the investment, if you have enough Macs.” — Robert Hammen
• “We rarely open cases with support, and when we do the assigned tech doesn’t seem to give us much attention, but as soon as I email our regional SE, it’s fireworks!” — Erik Kramer

AppleSeed:

• “Apple’s AppleSeed Notes for the IT Beta program continue to provide valuable information as to what is coming, and current known issues.” — Tony Young
• “While I’m very glad to have AppleSeed for IT, with this release cycle we had some rather surprising changes.” — Morgan Schönberger
• “AppleSeed and specially the Mac Evaluation Utility has been paramount in preparing organization for Apple as a choice.” — Craig Cohen
• “The AppleSeed and documentation teams should be applauded. Their work has been noticed, along with the enterprise workflow team.” — John Wetter

Hardware reliability and innovation

Grade: A (average score: 4.4, last year: 4.3)

After a slight dip last year, this category rises again. It had the top score in the entire survey again. Clearly hardware is a high point for Apple. Panelists highlighted the exceptional build quality and longevity of Apple devices, and noted a significant reduction in hardware issues and maintenance compared to previous generations and competing platforms. While Apple silicon chips and even the Vision Pro got praise for innovation, some questioned the pace of innovation in other product areas. The increased base RAM on Macs and improved external display support were frequently mentioned as positive developments.

Reliability and longevity:

• “Apple’s hardware is honestly incredible… the hardware is really good and lasts forever.” — TJ Draper
• “Apple’s hardware continues to excel, with Macs in particular lasting years longer than comparable PCs.” — Chris Pommer
• “We have had 0% hardware related issues with our fleet of Apple Silicon devices.” — Edward Munn
• “With a device count in the thousands (Mac, iPhone, iPads) the number of reliability problems is exceptionally low, leaving physical damage such as dropped devices the main cause of outages.” — Morgan Schönberger

Apple Silicon:

• “Silicon remains a great product… and overall reliability and performance is excellent.” — David McMonnies
• “The M4 MacBook Air is an absolutely incredible product and we’re going to buy a whole lot of them.” — Tom Bridge
• “Apple Silicon computers have been pretty solid for our small team.” — Chris Carr
• “Our hardware issues or tickets for repairs are down to one or two a year from a fleet of 700 Macs.” — Rod Christiansen

Increased Base RAM:

• “RAM increases across the lineup were welcome.” — Brian LaShomb
• “We also must thank Apple Intelligence for forcing 16 GB of RAM to be the minimum across the Mac range.” — Luke Charters
• “The minimum increase to 16 GB of RAM across the board is a game changer.” — Trevor Sysock
• “[I] am especially glad they finally boosted the base RAM for all Macs to 16 GB. That was beyond time, and now more easily allows us to use standard SKU’s rather than resorting to build-to-order.” — Robert Hammen

MacBook Air as an Enterprise Workhorse:

• “I have a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro and honestly an upgrade is not even something I’m considering.” — TJ Draper
• “MacBook Air continues to amaze me as a go-to business machine, replacing the MacBook Pro for most employee roles except software development, graphic design and other roles that have high-performance tasks.” — W. Andrew Robinson
• “The MacBook Air is a true enterprise workhorse now. The combination of speed, build quality, and reliability at its price point can’t be beaten.” — Luke Charters

External Display Support:

• “The M4 multi-screen changes are a net positive.” — David McMonnies
• “I’m very glad Apple worked on increasing the number of external displays supported by MacBook Air, which was a main holdback for the deployment of those devices.” — Morgan Schönberger
• “I was happy when the M3 MacBook Air supported two external displays when the built-in display was off. Seeing the M4 MacBook Air support it with the built-in display on is a dream come true.” — Luke Charters

Software reliability and innovation

Grade: C (average score: 3.0, last year: 3.4)

In a bit of a (not entirely unexpected) whiplash, the panel’s feelings about Apple’s software side diverge strongly from the praise given to hardware. This was the lowest score in the survey, with the biggest drop. Large sites and businesses were even more critical than the overall survey. A prevalent theme was a perceived decline in software quality (a “continued downward spiral”) and an increase in bugs and instability in recent macOS and iOS releases. Apple Intelligence, despite being a major focus, is widely seen as an enterprise “miss” due to concerns about control, limited features, and a confusing rollout. iPadOS in particular was singled out for its lack of capabilities needed for enterprise work.

Declining reliability:

• “While overall I’d rather be in Apple software than, say Windows, the gap is narrowing. This is largely due to Apple’s continued downward spiral in software quality and care.” — TJ Draper
• “Software reliability has gotten a lot worse in macOS 15 and iOS 18.” — Cameron Kay
• “The rapid pace of software releases is starting to show its downsides—we’re seeing increasingly buggy software. The days when a .3 release felt rock-solid seem to be behind us.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “macOS 15 has had some rough update cycles.” — Trevor Sysock

Apple Intelligence in the Enterprise:

• “Apple Intelligence has not been a positive experience. Most organizations do not want to use it, and the overall feature set is limited when they do.” — David McMonnies
• “Trying to block Apple Intelligence is messy, with keys to control these features sprinkled throughout every minor release in the Sequoia release cycle.” — Brian LaShomb
• “Apple Intelligence is a huge miss for me due to the way the restrictions were built.” — Tom Bridge
• “The elephant in the room is, of course, Apple Intelligence, which has been the most disappointing ‘rollout’ of a subset of features I can remember.” — W. Andrew Robinson

iPadOS limitations:

• “iPadOS’s inability to do much of anything, and certainly not anything well, is despair inducing.” — TJ Draper
• “Modern iPads have great hardware but the software should be better for allowing more sophisticated tasks: better multitasking, more ways to use audio, etc.” — Jeff Richardson
• “Another issue with software is iPadOS. Apple still seems hesitant to go in a direction with this product, and so far it’s impossible for me to consider moving to an iPad for my daily work.” — Guillaume Gete
• “iPad OS is still hamstrung by quirks and limitations of iOS’ memory and performance management algorithms. It lacks a full-fledged file management app; Files is NOT Finder. It lacks a windowing system like WindowServer on a Mac.” — Brad Chapman

macOS issues:

• “The constant bags from macOS about permissions I’ve already granted are infuriating.” — TJ Draper
• “The evolution of the UI on macOS, and the ‘get out of your way’ philosophy, creates more work for support staff, as what should be simple functions to find are often buried behind mouse/swipe gestures.” — Chris Pommer
• “macOS 15 and iOS 18 have had a lot of hiccups this last year: multiple issues with upgrade failures, black screens, and AI features being gradually rolled out where admins have to block them on-the-fly since there’s no single Off switch for a feature that most security-focused orgs will not allow.” — Nicolas Wendlowsky
• “macOS System Settings app is still a spaghetti piled mess with terrible discoverability and confusing placement of some items.” — Gabriel Sterritt

Rapid release cycles:

• “The rapid pace of software releases is starting to show its downsides -we’re seeing increasingly buggy software.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “While oftentimes Apple has fixed… various bugs, it has made us more hesitant to quickly push/enforce updates.” — Tony Young
• “The unfortunate trend of unreliability has picked back up.” — Mark Lynch

Security and privacy

Grade: A- (average score: 4.0, last year: 4.1)

The panel clearly views Apple’s commitment to security and privacy as genuine, and one of the company’s strongest aspects. However, the score in this category has dropped for three consecutive years, which is troubling. Significant frustration exists around the practical implementation of security features in an enterprise context. A major pain point is the excessive number of user prompts, which can lead to “dialog fatigue” and inadvertently reduce overall security effectiveness. Panelists also raised about recent software changes potentially impacting the functionality of third-party security tools and the handling of user data across devices in managed environments.

A commitment to security and privacy:

• “As strong as ever.” — Martin Piron
• “I have virtually zero concerns about hackers gaining access to to our attorneys’ iPhones and iPads because of inherent security advantages and frequent operating system updates to address potential flaws.” — Jeff Richardson
• “Device and overall software security remains generally fine overall.” — David McMonnies
• “As an enterprise IT administrator, I often curse that Apple’s hard lines on privacy conflict with the business needs; as a user and employee, I appreciate that they often find their way to the correct balance.” — Andrew Laurence

Excessive user prompts and PPPC:

• “Nag dialogs lead to banner blindness and actually make security worse.” — TJ Draper
• “The number of user prompts are beyond ridiculous at this point. ‘Dialog fatigue’ is now a first-party feature of macOS.” — Brian LaShomb
• “My biggest frustration continues to be user-space prompts. They are overused, confusing, and they train users to click ‘allow’ without thinking.” — Grant B
• “Managing Privacy Preferences Policy Control (PPPC) continues to be incredibly complicated and difficult with the number of alerts users receive.” — Nicolas Wendlowsky
• “I love the PPPC idea, but it’s complicated and at the end of the day our users are suffering notification overload and just blindly clicking things away. In this regard macOS truly ought to be named Vista.” — Gabriel Sterritt
• “PPPC management remains complex, contributing to alert fatigue.” — Adam Tomczynski

Issues with third-party software:

• “Apple keeps breaking third-party security software and their own software update system, so it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep our Apple devices secure.” — Cameron Kay
• “I find that Apple has been making changes at the OS level that seem to break third party security software and while I understand the need for Apple to make changes to improve security, it is difficult to manage security when these tools are breaking.” — Marcus Rowell
• “Another frustrating issue that seems to have become a constant battle with Apple is them breaking third-party security tools.” — Rod Christiansen

Deployment

Grade: B (average score: 3.7, last year: 3.6)

Whoa, deployment! A young star, on the rise! This is a category that’s noticeably improved over the past few years, though it lags behind among education customers. Panelists recognized that core features like Automated Device Enrollment (ADE) are essential, but there are notable concerns about recent reliability and consistency. Specific features like Declarative Device Management (DDM) and software update management are seen as still maturing and occasionally unstable. The process of managing OS updates, enforcing minimum versions during enrollment, and the overall complexity of navigating Apple’s deployment ecosystem across various models and tools were frequently mentioned challenges.

Automated Device Enrollment (ADE) reliability:

• “ADE enrollments via our MDM seem to be less reliable in the last 12 months. The number of Macs that only partially enroll and aren’t managed had more than doubled. This added significantly to the workloads of our IT support staff and disrupts the users.” — Cameron Kay
• “ADE and DEP are great programs that are fundamental to our deployment process. However, we are experiencing more failures with enrollment than in years past.” — Mark Lynch
• “ADE is the key to a seamless onboarding experience and unfortunately that experience was not seamless this year.” — Joel Housman
• “ABM/ASM has been a little flakey this year and ADE has definitely had some problems which impact deployment for us.” — Adam Tomczynski

Software Update and patch management:

• “Overall patching frameworks still require further improvement to reliability.” — David McMonnies
• “OS software update issues have also increased. Devices are not installing updates even through they’ve received the DDM command.” — Cameron Kay
• “DDM software updates has ~85% success rate.” — Martin Piron
• “Automated updates for macOS is still a challenge.” — Peter Thorn

Minimum macOS version enforcement:

• “Requiring minimum version of macOS during Automated Device Enrollment has been problematic for our organization and we have been unable to pinpoint whether it’s an MDM vendor specific issue or a macOS issue.” — Tony Young
• “The ability to enforce versioning at enrollment time is a great and long demanded feature.” — David McMonnies
• “Requiring minimum macOS version at enrollment is still too restrictive, particularly in situations with slow internet or limited bandwidth.” — Nicolas Wendlowsky
• “There are still limitations with enforcing minimum OS versions during DEP/ADE enrollment.” — Adam Tomczynski

Lack of robust tools:

• “Apple Configurator and physical access to devices are still required to add devices into ABM, one at a time.” — Brian LaShomb
• “The biggest issue with deployment is the lack of a proper API for ABM/ASM which I’ve already mentioned.” — Rod Christiansen
• “There’s still no API for getting info/assigning/managing/releasing devices. It’s still very basic.” — Robert Hammen
• “There is still no way for us to automatically add a device to ABM from a reseller unless they specifically support the Apple Reseller API.” — Grant B

Documentation:

• “Apple’s exacting documentation of only what is … is often a source of frustration. Too often, the holistic theory of operation is a divination exercise left to the reader.” — Andrew Laurence
• “Documentation from Apple continues to be a challenge when implementing new deployment workflows.” — Mark Lynch
• “Their documentation for enterprise deployment continues to be incomplete.” — Justin McMahan
• “I’m always able to find documentation that explains ‘how to set something up’, but the ‘why’ and ‘what if’ aspects are usually missing, requiring experimentation or guesswork.” — Chris Pommer

macOS identity management

Grade: C+ (average score: 3.3, last year: 3.6)

Identity management is on a bit of a roller coaster, as it gave back its sizeable score game from last year’s survey. The panel expressed a strong desire for modernization and simplification, alongside frustration with the current state of available tools and implementations.

Platform SSO:

• “Platform SSO remains a product in Apple’s lineup. Its limits, though, and the pathways to adoption, appear confusing, and the patchwork approach to anything other than a local password (for the love of god, just call it a passcode!) plus a Secure Enclave key with Microsoft Entra makes this a rare bird in the Enterprise.” — Tom Bridge
• “Platform SSO user registration still can’t be enforced and there is no automated process for registering shared Macs as a replacement to binding to Active Directory.” — Cameron Kay
• “Platform SSO is fantastic.” — Christopher Cook
• “Platform SSO is a game changer for binding and going away from Active Directory.” — NC

Login Experience and modern authentication:

• “Face ID, Touch ID, federated identity, whatever…..something needs to happen to get rid of password login to a local account at the FileVault login on boot.” — Bart R
• “Create a plugin architecture or something. All the SSO integrations are great but hopefully with all the talk about passwordless and passkeys etc makes its way to FileVault unlock.” — Bart R
• “Password login to a local account with FileVault on boot is archaic and frustrating.” — Richard Glaser

Need for native tools:

• “I still yearn for being able to completely deprecate accompanying tools like Jamf Connect to instead opt for a native approach.” — Mark Lynch
• “I’d love to move completely away from something like Jamf Connect or NoMAD and just rely on Apple’s native IdM tooling.” — Grant B
• “Platform SSO is getting closer, but still feels clunky and relies on adoption from IdP vendors like Okta and Ping that feels incomplete.” — Grant B
• “A native, robust solution for cloud-identity driven authentication is desperately needed.” — Joel Housman

Identity management for shared devices:

• “Platform SSO user registration still can’t be enforced and there is no automated process for registering shared Macs as a replacement to binding to Active Directory.” — Cameron Kay
• “Identity management for shared devices remains a challenge, with no clear native solution for seamless user switching and management.” — NC
• “There needs to be a better story for managing identities on shared carts of Macs in education.” — Christopher Cook
• “The current methods for shared device identity management are clunky and require third-party workarounds.” — Richard Glaser

MDM protocol and infrastructure

Grade: B+ (average score: 3.8, last year: 3.7)

This is a category that can’t be stopped. Apple’s MDM score has increased every year we’ve done the survey. Declarative Device Management (DDM) is viewed as a promising future, but its slow adoption by MDM vendors and reliability issues are major points of concern. The core MDM protocol is seen as lacking essential controls needed for comprehensive enterprise management, and many feel that communication and collaboration between Apple and MDM vendors need substantial improvement to ensure timely and stable support for new features.

Declarative Device Management (DDM) adoption and reliability:

• “DDM changes are excellent, however a greater rate of their adoption into the broader ecosystem would be nice.” — David McMonnies
• “DDM has been around for enough time that I had hoped we would see far more functionality and capabilities with it over the past year, and we haven’t.” — Tony Young
• “It’s great that Apple keeps expanding DDM. Where’s their enterprise partnership with MDM vendors, though, if it takes a year after the features debut to enter into MDMs?” — Tom Bridge
• “DDM Software update continues to be a bag of hurt. While I detest our MDM’s implementation, there is something fundamentally broken between Apple and its MDM partners that so critical a service is so untrustworthy.” — Christopher Cook

MDM protocol limitations:

• “The MDM protocol lacks many key controls. For example, with newly introduced Apple Intelligence there is a significant and detrimental lack of easy control over the feature set as a whole.” — Mark Lynch
• “There are still many basic management features that are missing from the MDM protocol, such as the ability to manage local user accounts or have more granular control over system settings.” — NC
• “We still need more granular controls within the MDM framework to truly manage our diverse fleet effectively.” — Richard Glaser
• “The core MDM framework gets the job done, but doesn’t go the extra mile in providing the deep level of control needed for complex enterprise environments.” — Grant B

Communication with MDM vendors:

• “It’s great that Apple keeps expanding DDM. Where’s their enterprise partnership with MDM vendors, though, if it takes a year after the features debut to enter into MDMs?” — Tom Bridge
• “There needs to be better communication and collaboration between Apple and MDM vendors to ensure new features are supported in a timely and stable manner.” — Cameron Kay
• “It feels like MDM vendors are constantly playing catch-up with Apple’s OS releases and changes to the protocol.” — Tony Young
• “The disconnect between Apple’s rapid OS changes and the slower pace of MDM vendor support is a constant source of frustration.” — Adam Tomczynski

Wish list:

• “I would like to see an MDM version of ‘Erase All Contents and Settings’ (skipping the activation step). Currently an MDM erase leaves a macOS device without an OS, and is more of a security response than something admins would use to re-provision devices.” — Brian LaShomb
• “MDM changes allowed for such as enrollment version control is significant for enterprise.” — David McMonnies
• “I would love to see more options for managing devices enrolled in beta programs via MDM.” — NC
• “Better control over kernel extensions and system extensions via MDM is still needed.” — Richard Glaser

Documentation and communication

• “The public GitHub repository for DDM is excellent, more of the same would be great.” — David McMonnies
• “It would be nice if these in-line changes and consequences could be better communicated to vendors and partners in advance to allow for more proactive responses.” — David McMonnies
• “Documentation from Apple on the MDM protocol and new features can be fragmented and difficult to follow.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “We are accustomed to new features having little to no available controls, with those available seemingly hastily bolted together — either during beta or an update release. Apple has yet to internalize the notion that the end user may not be the customer; that the customer may have primacy over the user; that the user is a risk being managed.” — Andrew Laurence

The future of Apple in the enterprise

Grade: B (average score: 3.7, last year: 3.9)

After a few years of increasing optimism, this year our panel has wavered somewhat about its view about Apple’s future in the Enterprise. Panelists see a growing presence and potential for Apple devices, driven by user preference and the strength of the hardware. This is mixed with the concern about whether Apple truly understands and is willing to invest sufficiently in the specific needs of enterprise IT, including allocating dedicated engineering resources and developing more robust, native management tools to reduce reliance on third-party solutions.

Cautious optimism:

• “We have come so incredibly far since 2007, and I think Apple really wants to expand enterprise adoption.” — Jeff Richardson
• “Apple’s focus on its ongoing AI development and application bodes well for increasing its Enterprise footprint.” — Barry Caplan
• “Things are improving. I see Apple more and more in enterprise companies, so I am very optimistic about the future.” — Jonathan
• “We’re on the right trajectory, they could commit to it even more.” — Martin Piron

Questioning the commitment:

• “Its hard to tell if Apple really gets the Enterprise and is willing to employ enough engineers to implement the functionality Enterprise requires and to fix the bugs in their existing features.” — Cameron Kay
• “Apple still remains very much consumer-centric and, frankly, still way behind the world in providing Enterprise tools for Mac management.” — Chris Chipman
• “Apple’s Enterprise focus is still a bit of a mystery. Are they truly committed, or is it just a side project?” — NC
• “Apple still seems like it doesn’t quite grok enterprise.” — Grant B

Importance of improved MDM and management:

• “MDM and management capabilities are crucial for future enterprise adoption. Apple needs to invest more here.” — Richard Glaser
• “The future depends on Apple making MDM more capable and reliable for large-scale deployments.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “Apple needs to provide better native tools for managing devices, reducing the need for complex third-party solutions.” — Joel Housman
• “A first-party MDM solution from Apple would be a game changer for many enterprises.” — Andrew Laurence

Uncertainty and communication:

• “it’s never clear how Apple might change direction in a way negatively that impacts enterprise.” — Mark Lynch
• “Apple needs to provide clearer communication about their enterprise roadmap and upcoming changes.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “Their cloak-and-dagger approach to upcoming features is endlessly frustrating; there’s no customer benefit to hiding literally everything until release day.” — Nicolas Wendlowsky
• “More transparency and feedback to these communities that put up with so much would be beneficial from apple.” — Johnathan Brown

OS Adoption

See the top of this story for the results of our question about the pace of OS adoption. Here are a few related comments from the panel.

Software reliability is a barrier:

• “Major updates are blocked for 2-3 months to make sure it won’t kill our software stack and business, then required after they are vetted (usually by me for our team). Patch updates are usually allowed after a couple weeks.” — TJ Draper
• “There have been a number of showstopper bugs in macOS 15 that have preventing us from upgrading our entire fleet. Sadly it looks like Apple does not have the staff to quickly resolve these issues and so I dont expect our fleet will be able to start upgrading until Q4 2024 or early 2025.” — Cameron Kay
• “This was the buggiest macOS release cycle in over 10 years. Network extensions specifically were continually problematic. The confusion around Apple Intelligence controls didn’t help matters.” — Brian LaShomb
• “Here in late April, we have yet to begin managed upgrades to Sequoia. Most users are content to wait for a managed upgrade cycle. We move users forward when known business blockers are resolved; such blockers are often not resolved until halfway through a release cycle.” — Andrew Laurence

Pace of OS releases:

• “Apple’s rapid release cycle of macOS makes adoption and staying current a challenge for most enterprises.” — NC
• “The yearly OS upgrade cycle is too fast for proper enterprise testing and validation.” — Richard Glaser
• “We are perpetually playing catch up with Apple’s OS releases.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “While staying current is important, the speed of new releases sometimes feels incompatible with the need for stability in a business environment.” — Chris Pommer

User desire vs. IT stability:

• “The user base is always eager for the latest and greatest, but IT needs to ensure compatibility and stability before allowing widespread adoption.” — Jeff Richardson
• “There’s a constant tension between user expectations driven by Apple’s marketing and the reality of enterprise testing and deployment cycles.” — Tom Bridge
• “We make OS upgrades available as an optional install, and require them at the end of the school year. Over the past past few years, we’ve noticed an increase in the number of people who optionally install the upgrade early. That said, Apple’s advertising of the upgrade in System Settings helps a lot with that.” — Christopher Cook
• “Users want new features immediately, but we have to hold back for security and compatibility reasons. This can lead to frustration on both sides.” — Brian LaShomb

Apple Intelligence and Policies

At the top of the story we detailed the questions we asked about Apple Intelligence in particular and AI in general. Here are some responses from the panel regarding AI mattes.

Lack of MDM Controls for Apple Intelligence:

• “Please… provide an all-encompassing ‘disable Apple Intelligence’ MDM key.” — Tony Young
• “Trying to block Apple Intelligence is messy, with keys to control these features sprinkled throughout every minor release in the Sequoia release cycle. And trying to control Apple’s notifications and messages around these features is impossible.” — Brian LaShomb
• “Apple Intelligence is a huge miss for me due to the way the restrictions were built. I cannot easily disable it for my fleet, and that’s a non-starter for many organizations.” — Tom Bridge
• “Apple has failed to provide necessary control over Apple Intelligence.” — Mark Lynch

Concerns about third-party LLM integration:

• “The only source of contention for Apple Intelligence is its integration with ChatGPT. On-device and private cloud compute are fine, but having Apple Intelligence hand-off to a third party vendor for a built-in service seems like we are tacitly endorsing the use of ChatGPT when we have no institutional data use agreement with them.” — Christopher Cook
• “I like the idea of using AI features, but not if it means sending our data to third-party services like ChatGPT without clear control or understanding.” — Bart R
• “Integration with external LLMs like ChatGPT raises significant data privacy and security questions for enterprise data.” — Adam Tomczynski
• “We need to understand exactly what data is being sent to third-party providers and have the ability to prevent it if necessary.” — Brian LaShomb

Interest in custom AI:

• “There’s interest in leveraging AI, but we need solutions that integrate with our existing enterprise data and security frameworks, not just consumer-grade features.” — Richard Glaser
• “We would prefer to use managed or on-premise AI solutions for enterprise data rather than relying on Apple’s built-in features that might use external services.” — Mark Lynch
• “The focus should be on enabling enterprises to integrate AI with their own data and policies, not pushing consumer AI into the workplace without adequate controls.” — Cameron Kay

We also asked the panel if they were using AI to do their jobs. The results are at the top of the story, but here are some choice comments.

• “Github copilot is the only one I actually find useful.” — Martin Piron
• “I use Apple Intelligence on my personal device to proofread and even summarize my own text. I also make use of notification summarizes and hope to see continued improvements in this area.” — Tony Young
• “Mostly experimentation, but [I] have found some use using Perplexity as a search tool. I remain skeptical of its use.” — Chris Pommer
• “Useful for assisting with script writing and processing/formatting data.” — Cameron Kay
• “I enjoy the new proofreading tools, but I have no intention of ever using AI to re-write something I’ve written. My voice is my own and, flawed as it may be, I want it to carry through in everything I write.” — Christopher Cook

Complete commentary and wrap-up

This year I’ve chosen to summarize comments and present choice quotes. The complete 25,000-word commentary from participants who allowed themselves to be quoted is also available, if you’d like to read even more.

Thanks to everyone who participated: Aaron, Adam Codega, Adam Selby, Adam Tomczynski, Alex M, Andrew Laurence, Andy Jelagin, Anthony Reimer, Armin Briegel, Barry Caplan, Bart R, Ben Rillie, Blake Weldon, Brad Chapman, Brian LaShomb, Bryan Heinz, Cameron Kay, Casey Jensen, Chris Carr, Chris Chipman, Chris Pommer, Christopher Cook, Clay Caviness, Craig Cohen, Craig Doran, David McMonnies, David Ramirez, Dennis Logue, Dennis Wurster, Edward Munn, Erik Kramer, Everette Gray Allen, Fluffy Bunny, Gabriel Sterritt, Grant B, Guillaume Gete, Henry Stamerjohann, James Stracey, Jason Hedrick, Jason Smallwood, JD Strong, Jeff, Jeff Richardson, Jeremy Bodokh, Jeremy Leland, Jesper van Reis, Joel Anderson, Joel Housman, John Mahlman, John Welch, John Wetter, Johnathan Brown, Jonathan, Justin, Justin McMahan, Karsten Macweazle Fischer, Kevin Boyd, Luke, Luke Charters, Marcus Rowell, Marian Albers, Mark Frischman, Mark Lynch, Martin Piron, Matt, Michal Moravec, Mike McLean, Mike Solin, Mike Stirrup, Mike Wells, Morgan Schönberger, NC, Nicolas Wendlowsky, Patrick Quinn-Graham, Payton, Pete C., Peter Thorn, Richard Glaser, Robbie Trencheny, Robert Hammen, Rod Christiansen, Scott Poborsa, Shamir Mohammed, Steven Barkey, Sujal Patel, TJ Draper, Toby Riding, Tom Bridge, Tony Young, Trevor Sysock, Troy Greig, Vaughn Miller, W. Andrew Robinson, Zak Winnick, and the 30 people who prefer to remain anonymous.

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