Apple execs talk up the company’s offerings to business

As the company introduced the new M5 MacBook Pro, I got a chance to speak with Jeremy Butcher, who handles business product marketing at Apple, and his colleague Colleen Novielli, who focuses on MacBook product marketing, to talk about Apple’s place in the business world. It’s no surprise that these new Macs offer the advanced performance businesses need — both today and tomorrow — and the company’s growing place in enterprise IT reflects this. 

Apple’s approach to business

So, how does Apple approach enterprise and business customers? Butcher explained that, at its core, the company’s strategy is built around three primary pillars:

Providing features that people want, things that employees from the C-suite to the shop floor need and enjoy.

Ensuring IT and security teams have the tools they need to support employee demand for Apple products.

Investing in the platform so developers have what they need — not just for consumer-facing app development, but for custom software for use across specific enterprises. All these different solutions are powered by the same SDK and supported by the company’s developer relations teams.

“To be very explicit about it, we’re super-committed to the enterprise,” he told me.

That commitment extends to edge cases. “There are some things we’ve done specifically for business customers,” Butcher said, noting the MacBook Pro’s ability to power two displays as a case in point.

“This is not a common consumer task,” he said. “It was introduced as a direct result of business customer feedback.”

MacBook Pro – tomorrow’s computing today

With its M5 chip, Apple is at the top of the pack when it comes to mobile computers capable of delivering the processor punch users will need for future AI applications. It’s an advantage the company gained with its move to Apple silicon.

“We’re seeing tremendous momentum around Mac in the enterprise,” said Colleen. “We’re seeing this amazing spectrum of adoption across the Mac range.”

Omdia recently told us that the MacBook Air has become the world’s most popular laptop for business. This is because it has “all the performance that many employees need to get their work done and be their most productive all day and every day,” said Novielli.

But computing isn’t just about what you can do today, it’s what you’ll need your systems to be able to handle in three, four, five years’ time, and beyond. With this in mind, Apple is very aware of the ongoing inflection point that is artificial intelligence. “Whether you’re working with AI or building it, the MacBook Pro is an amazing system for many of the things employees need from a performance perspective,” said Novielli. 

Apple has optimized its silicon for AI since the M1. “When it comes to AI at this moment, the AI landscape, there is no one size fits all — particularly with enterprises, right?” she said. Every enterprise is different, has different needs and varied specialized apps and processes; that’s driving business users to look for systems capable of running specialized AI services. 

The sheer performance power, along with employee choice, ease of use, and integration across Apple’s entire ecosystem makes it a tempting choice for switchers. “We’re seeing more and more enterprises look at where our products, particularly some of the performance and AI capabilities, can boost efficiency,” she told me.

Apple is in business

The two Apple product managers shared some interesting deployment stories.

Capital One recently expanded its employee choice program for Macs, introducing MacBook Airs for thousands of its employees. The bank had been using MacBook Pros among key personnel, such as developers, designers, and engineers. The success of that scheme saw the bank choose to open it up, offering MacBook Air models across its workforce. For most workers, the performance the Air delivers is “more than they need on a regular basis,” Novielli said.

Hello Incorporated, a Chinese mobility company with over 8 million registered users, deployed MacBook Pros across the company for research, product development, AI and beyond. It’s a sprawling business, with biking, carpooling, and taxi businesses and makes heavy use of AI, driven on Macs.

Haodilao is an international hot pot restaurant chain, with 1,300 stores serving 45 million customers each year. “They’ve figured out a way to use Macs to implement intelligent guest servicing,” Novielli explained. Their AI-driven approach includes analyzing restaurants, studying guest requirements, supporting the ordering process, looking at safety measures and other factors across the business. “They’ve shared with us that this has led to 78% energy savings from improving the efficiency of the building, and 52% cost savings over that,” she said. 

It should be clear that Macs in business are just as capable for the edge case challenges as they are for more mundane tasks. A recent MacStadium survey showed that among organizations using Macs, 73% rely on them for AI processing, surpassing traditional workloads like iOS/macOS development (68%) and build/test/deploy workflows (61%).

How Apple supports enterprise users

You don’t get deployment without IT, and Apple continues to focus on those needs, as evidenced by the new management and security APIs it introduced this year.  “That’s how we look at each release. What are we doing across each of those pieces of the operating system to ensure we’re driving those forward?” said Butcher.

When it comes to improving what Apple offers enterprise users, Butcher explained that its business teams can also call his company’s engineering teams to focus on specific challenges as they are identified. The company has vast resources to help solve enterprise needs as they are identified. And while it can’t fix all of the problems all of the time, it can iteratively fix problems as you go — as Apple has done with this year’s crop of APIs.

Apple has also nurtured its relationships with a wider field of IT support companies, including Jamf, Iru, Moysle, Hexnode, or Fleet. “From a developer relations perspective, we’ve worked with MDM developers for over a decade now,” said Butcher. These days, the company also works with security companies, identity providers, networking software companies and more. “Some of that is because we have more and more technologies that we’ve built that those developers can take advantage of,” he said. 

Apple’s rapidly growing market share also helps, creating a momentum for Mac demand in the enterprise. Butcher cited the recent MacStadium survey that showed 96% of US CIOs expect their Mac investments to increase in the next couple of years. “It’s so great to see that momentum,” he said. “As you know, it’s very intentional.”

(The survey also showed Apple accounts for an average of 65% of enterprise endpoints.)

As one Windows closes, an Apple opens

What about Windows 11? Is it prompting even more acceleration in Mac deployment? While data we’re seeing shows that it has, Microsoft’s decision to change the deadlines for the cessation of Windows 10 support several times gave Apple a great opportunity to remind people that Macs are a real alternative.

With hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PCs needing to be replaced because they can’t run Windows 11, that conversation matters. “If you have to buy a new computer, it starts a conversation about looking at all the different options that are on the table,” he said.

With Apple Silicon and advanced AI support, Macs have become a highly credible alternative. “It’s definitely going well for us,” he said. New Macs give Apple the “opportunity to convince users, including business users, to make the switch [to Mac],” he said. “All these things coming together make this a super interesting time for us.”

One more thing: If US-based Mac users may already be using Apple’s Business Essentials, a package that combines services and support for SMBs on its platform. Although this isn’t yet available outside the US, Butcher said to “stay tuned.”

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