2026 Six Colors Apple in the Enterprise Report Card
Jason Snell (complete commentary):
There weren’t too many radical changes in this year’s survey. Respondents are most positive about Apple’s hardware, with another strong score honoring its commitment to security and privacy. And optimism about the future of Apple in the enterprise skyrocketed, up half a point to tie for second-highest score in the survey.
[…]
Speaking of software surprises, half of the respondents felt that this year’s OS adoption pace was more or less the same as usual. Only 17% felt this was a slower year, up slightly from last year. What’s interesting is that there’s been a two-year trend in this category, with “quicker than usual” and “about the same” switching places. Perhaps the pace of change has just become the new normal.
[…]
Panelists were enthusiastic about some specific new [enterprise program] features, but there are still long-standing gaps that generate frustration. And what’s Apple Business, anyway?
[…]
Apple’s hardware may be riding high, but software is not going great. And yet the score went back up from last year’s low of 3.0. macOS Tahoe and Liquid Glass were the dominant sources of negativity. Complaints ranged from cosmetic inconsistency to serious breakage.
Previously:
- 2025 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card
- 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card
- Slow iOS 26 Adoption
- 2025 Six Colors Apple in the Enterprise Report Card
- Why In-App Purchases Don’t Work for the Enterprise
- Apple Business
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"[…] half of the respondents felt that this year’s OS adoption pace was more or less the same as usual. […]"
At the same time, in Enterprises:
- the end user usually does not have a choice when it comes to upgrading or not.
- the admins are basically following the same playbook each year unless there's really a huge issue with the new major OS version. macOS Tahoe is basically the same as macOS Sequoia. Just uglier. And ugliness is not something that matters when managing with a MDM.
- in a lot of companies where there are different platforms being used (Windows, Linux, macOS), you can't guarantee that they really care about macOS and the user experience of the people they support.
- Apple is strongly pushing to upgrade to major OS versions via its communications so that an endpoint gets the latest security fixes. They just do not highlight that much that these fixes are also available on the previous major OS version.
Ironically a lot of the things that we (I) complain about with Apple work very well in the enterprise.
It's very easy to support because you know what you're getting. It's not a fractured mess like Windows and Android, where people almost always have a very hobbled version of it because they bought the one off the shelf.
With Macs and iPhones etc, all I need to know is what model you have, and that's not a hard question to answer.
A fully locked down and highly predictable device is great in business, not so great when it's your personal device and the one locking it down is Apple for their own business reasons.
