Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

I tried signing up to the Beta for this and it requires two named company contacts, both with verifiable contact details.

As a one man band, this basically means I cannot use Apple Business Essentials unless I lie/make up details during the application process (which includes phone verification with a real Apple human - so this is not a trivial thing to bypass).

Utterly baffling, as I could really use some of the features of this program, but I can’t.

This doesn’t just affect me. I work with larger companies on IT projects so am in a position to advocate (or not) for products and services, and so this is one I will obviously not be recommending if I can’t get into it myself!

Edit: one of the things I was trying to achieve was to setup some way to buy apps on the App Store under my company (different card and billing address etc), which presumably needs a separate Apple ID. At the moment I normally have to buy apps outside of the App Store (where possible) in order to be able to pay with my company rather than personal details (important for tax/accounting etc for business expenses).

Does anyone have a solution (as a sole trader) for running two Apple IDs, one for personal and one for business?

When I called them about this exact issue what they told me is to register the second contact with your name reversed (last name as the first name and first name as the last name). Also use a different business email with the same domain for the second contact.

That seemed to do the trick.

One thing to take note of though is be very careful if you set up managed IDs and a verified domain through Apple Business Essentials. It locks devices down pretty heavily. I'm not familiar with this area of IT and didn't know that, although it might be pretty obvious to those who work in the space.

I'm guessing this is for those "our key contact went on vacation / died / quit years ago" scenarios. Unfortunate that you can't bypass it by acknowledging that risk.

All you have to do is open a separate Apple ID and open a business account with your local Apple store. They will happily bill you in alternate ways. As a one man band, you have no use for MDM. Apple Business Essentials simply has no value for a one-person company. I don’t blame Apple for adding a level of fraud protection to something like this and for not solving the problem for a one person business. Good non-use of engineering money.

As the MDM manager for my family, I must whole-heartedly disagree.

One common but sophisticated attack involves getting your victims to install your own MDM certificate on their machines, because you've convinced them that they're getting some sort of free lunch. After they install your MDM certificate, you own their machines, and you can do anything with them that you want -- make them into your own private bot army to rope in more victims, or whatever.

But if the devices in question already have an MDM certificate installed, that prevents this kind of attack.

Running my own MDM profile also means that I can ensure that my wife's devices are always up to date, because I can enforce this at the MDM level. And that's an important issue for her employer, since her law firm uses BYOD. So, I can use my MDM profile to ensure that all their requirements are met and enforced by my own MDM.

Can you please explain what benefits you will get from this as a sole proprietor (assuming you are one)?

Sole proprietorship can be simpler to set up and manage, but Single Member LLCs are also very common. One person doesn't imply sole proprietorship.

They're from the UK, so I doubt "LLC" specifics are relevant to them.

There is probably a market for being a trusted second contact for systems like this. Wonder if that would pass muster for Apple.

If you can have one of those colo business addresses or colo mailbox/po box type of places, why not this? There's also several board members that are on several boards. Seems like it might be better served in having a trusted attorney with instructions on how to handle cases when sole proprieter is no longer able to propriet.

This could actually be a nice job category for lonely people with no social life; providing a “second contact” for other lonely people.

I guess a one/two person shop isn't large enough to be small business. Maybe we should be using microbusiness/microcorp to go along with megacorp/evilcorp

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