Apple Makes Another Acquisition: IT Startup Fleetsmith

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple has acquired device-management startup Fleetsmith. The technology and personnel that will join Apple as part of the acquisition could help Apple expand upon device enrollment and introduce better ways to set up new devices like iPads and Macs within organizations. Fleetsmith's proposition to customers (and Apple) seems perfectly tailored to our times: the company offers a way for organizations to equip remote workers' (or workers otherwise not located in the central office) devices and have those devices automatically registered and set up for enterprise use as soon as they're first turned on. After that, Fleetsmith automatically ensures devices get needed software updates. It also provides IT managers with a dashboard for managing the fleet.

If you've used Jamf, a more widespread competitor, you get the general idea. But Fleetsmith already had a special focus on Apple devices, it has an Apple-like design sensibility, and it was likely a much cheaper option for Apple than Jamf, to boot. Jamf appears to be on a different path, with a $3 billion IPO planned. Speaking of money, though, neither Apple nor Fleetsmith has revealed the purchase price. Fleetsmith did publish a blog post about the acquisition, though. While the blog post notes that Fleetsmith will continue business as usual and serve both new and existing customers, Seth Goldin from Freethink Media claims that's not the full story. "Apple has completely eliminated core functionality from the app with absolutely no notice," says Goldin in a series of tweets, noting there are "hundreds of users" on the MacAdmins Slack workspace that are "totally outraged because Apple has pulled the rug out from under them."

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