Apple quietly begins offering Mac as a service
Apple’s M-series Mac range.
One of the first things I thought was missing from Apple Business Essentials when I learned of it was a leasing component to let companies lease Macs for their teams. Now it looks a little as if this might change.
MacBooks for $30/month
As reported by MacRumors, Apple and financing partner CIT are offering a new Mac Upgrade Program for small businesses to help deploy Macs in an affordable way.
Under the scheme, a company pays from $30/month for each Mac they deploy. They can choose to give employees a 13-inch MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, as well as a 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pro. Minimum spend is $10,000.
What this means is a company can deploy 100 Macs across its employees and pay for them over the lifecycle of the products. It isn’t particularly clear how this scheme works in the long-term. The page detailing the scheme is brief, and doesn’t at any point imply that it extends to regular product upgrades as new Mac models are released.
It is possible the deal itself is more restricted than it seems.
How it could be
It does however offer an illustration of how Apple could conceivably make Macs available on a lease/service model.
Customers would get the Mac they wanted for a monthly fee.
While this may be seen as denting Apple’s bottom line in some ways, such as scheme combined with an effective replacement and recycling plan and perhaps a commitment to a hardware upgrade every 24-36-months would very likely be popular with business and consumer users. It would certainly provide a huge boost to Apple’s Services income.
These deals also make a lot of sense to business users attempting to avoid expensive credit arrangements while navigating the increasingly complex business environment in which we exist. Such schemes already exist for other platforms, so it makes sense that Apple may want to explore them for business users, too.
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