Also, how many of us have purchased keyboards, mice, displays, headphones, etc with our own money that we happily use with employer owned computers because it’s safe to do so?
Sometimes it's misguided thoughts about security and third party keyboards from "unapproved vendors" (which is not entirely invalid to be concerned about, but unlikely to be an attack vector)......
But other times, they really do want you to use exactly what they provide you and nothing else. Things like "looking uniform and professional" or not wanting employees bringing their personal belongings to the workplace or whatever nonsense they come up with.
iPad is not in the list of "standard" hardware for my company (with thousands of developers and a good balance sheet). Good luck getting that approved as an exception.
you also are ignoring the non-technical leadership class. there are plenty of exceptions in full corpo. clearly you weren’t special enough to get one on a whim. no judgement there, never was myself.
The Vision Pro is a weird middle ground of device and peripheral. When it's operating as a virtual display it's more of a peripheral, and it'd be nice if it acted more like one.
True. Nobody would log into their work through their own, non-corporate-issued WiFi router, after all.
Right?
Yeah, what kind of fool would plug in their own monitor into a corporate-own laptop?
Who knows what kinds of things they'll talk about! /s
Seriously though, you do you. What you specifically want is fine for what you have.
However, describing The Apple Way™ decision to only allow connections between devices that you own as sensible requires further justification (given a pretty expoistion in the article as to why it is not, in fact, sensible).
MDM is so common in every tech company - I bet Apple’s own employee issued macs are managed, it is inexplicable how this is still a problem.
I thought so too. The Apple retail employee that gave me the demo of the Vision Pro confirmed this. He said the manager at his store had a Vision Pro and wanted to use it with his Apple-issued Mac, which was managed via MDM.
It essentially adds a special entitlement to someone’s Apple ID, similar to how a dev gets App Store Connect access added to their Apple ID when they enroll into the developer program.
This makes it so that every MDM device is logged into the personal Apple ID.
It’s just basic physics: you cannot have 1-inch sensor with a lens right on top of it in 3-5mm of total thickness. Just the same way your eye is not flat but 2cm long.
Joined her on a travel trip. She went to the office, decided to try using her iPad as a second monitor via usb c… nope. Can’t do that.
No idea why. It’s unlocked. It’s trusted. Why can’t it be used?
That sucks.
They can be the same or different. And this hasn't changed for years.
Obviously I have to be personally ok with allowing work possible access to my Apple Id, but for me it’s an acceptable trade off given that they have access to everything I say on Slack, and if we’re being honest, that’s the where the “HR needs a word” is gonna come from.
Strange sentiment to me...I can modulate what I communicate in company channels, but in absolutely no way would I ever consider it acceptable that a random person from my employer could access a huge amount of my personal information... iCloud contents might include phone backups, messages, emails, passwords, personal photo library, web history, bookmarks, notes, etc, synced in from all of your other personal devices.
I've learned firsthand the hard way that a small percentage of people are deeply unethical and completely untrustworthy. I can't optimize my entire life around avoiding them, but I certainly can make sure that if they happen to be an {IT employee, HR employee, higher-up} in my company, they won't have access to my personal things.
I log in with my personal Apple ID and get the stuff from App Store I bought on my company machine too.
All companies have used MDM to disable iCloud Drive though, which was a pain with a few apps that used it to sync stuff between computers, but perfectly reasonable. It's so transparent that it'd be too easy to accidentally get corporate stuff on my own Cloud Drive.
I moved that stuff to sync via a Dropbox account I don't use for anything else and everything has been fine for years.
They exist, but they're mostly the companies that are the kind you'd never see on HN: relatively high-employee-turnover medium-sized businesses entirely uninvolved in technology - that aren't large enough to have an adequately funded IT dept - or where their IT is outsourced to a nepotistic MSP.
...the kind where IT policies are set by the same-kinds-of-people that banks hire that tell them to actively try to stop users pasting passwords into their online-banking logon screens.
So not sure that allowing pairing between different accounts and relying on a passcode for security is going to be that secure.
Also the security implications of encouraging people to add their personal Apple ID to devices they don’t own are, IMO, worse.
It is relatively easy for someone to see the passcode that unlocks my phone, in one way or another.
All of my banking apps are locked behind Face ID. But if you lock an app with Face ID, you can just override with the phones passcode. This is dumb.
The app Face ID backup passcode should be separate from the device unlock passcode, or that should at least be an option. Maybe I'm at a party and I want someone to be able to unlock my phone to use Spotify, but I don't want to also give them access to all my banking apps.
In if you worry about that, then probably disable faceid for banking apps :-)
Apple also recently implemented optional stolen device protection in faceid settings just for this case: delay is introduced to be allowed to change the password and other related things.
It's really easy to shouldersurf a numerical passcode, the buttons are so big and clearly placed.
It's a lot harder to do with a CorrectHorseBatteryStaple style password.
Now they are hostages of Netflix, YouTube or any content owner. Had they have HDMI in, we would be able to just use a Roku stick to project 4k hdr Netflix content, or straight up project an 8k resolution Mac desktop.
If people wanted a headset for HDMI content, they wouldn’t be spending thousands on a Vision Pro.
This feels like a case of “it doesn’t match my requirements and therefore nobody else should want it either”.
Vision Pro just isn’t for you.
Apple owns Apple TV, Apple Music, and probably some secret service they're cooking specific to 3D cinema. I think they're fine.
> Curiously this limitation wasn’t enough to make me return the device, despite it being part of my justification for it.
Why write such long winded post after considering the above quotes? In the end non of the considerations around work/personal apple id, MDM, etc matters when decisions are made purely on some brand persuasion. That's why Apple doesn't care
Also, they've probably done the maths and knowing their "loyal" customer base people would be more than happy to pay for multiple redundant devices just to have them seamlessly work together. They are in business of selling premium devices to people who have low sensitivity to price and cost
I feel it’s very validation seeking to rail on a company for not supporting the most “privacy focused” use cases. If you want an uncommon use case to be supported, don’t expect a profit-motivated company to do this. It’s just not in their interest. Furthermore, I use these capabilities to improve my life. So, I personally don’t want Apple to be compelled to invest in an experience that breaks from the Apple-y way.
(Not a fan boy. Maybe I need to accept that I may be becoming one.)
Exhibit A:
> So, I personally don’t want Apple to be compelled to invest in an experience that breaks from the Apple-y way.
I'd say so.
