What is Apple Business Connect? Why is it so cool?

Create your place card to establish and elevate your business across Apple, today.

Apple expands tools to help businesses connect with customers but what exactly does that mean?

Apple Business Connect is a free platform that lets you control how you show up across Apple Maps, Wallet, Siri, and more. Establish your business with a fully personalized place card, build trust with branded communications, engage customers with promos and customizable actions, and grow your business using data‑driven insights. Businesses of all sizes, regardless of whether they have a physical location, can create a brand that appears to over 1 billion Apple users.

For the first time, businesses of any size, around the world (even those without a brick-and-mortar presence) can manage the way they appear to over 1 billion Apple users using Apple Business Connect. Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence across apps that customers use every day, including Apple Maps, Wallet, and Mail.

Tools to Help Every Business Grow

How do you do this? If you have a business, you can claim and manage your location place card through Business Connect, including adding and updating photos and logos; inviting customers to take actions like ordering food or making a reservation directly from the place card; and presenting customers with special promotions.

Now, every business — including those that provide a service or operate fully online or without a physical location — can register for Business Connect to create a visual brand identity, making it easier to connect with customers and build trust.

New Features in Business Connect

Through new capabilities within Business Connect, businesses can;

• Sign up to display their brand in the Mail and Phone apps, and customize their logo in Tap to Pay on iPhone.

• Branded Mail, businesses can display their brand name and logo in emails to customers, so their emails stand out in the Mail app and are more easily recognizable. Businesses can sign up for Branded Mail today, and their logo will begin appearing to customers later this year.

• Choose to display their logo, rather than a category icon, when accepting payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, so customers know they’re making a payment to a trusted and verified business.

Next year, businesses will also be able to register for Business Caller ID. Their name, logo, and department appear on the inbound call screen when they contact customers, helping to distinguish verified businesses from spam callers and other unwanted outreach.

How to Register: Owners of virtual, online, and service businesses can now use their existing Apple Account — or create a new Apple Account — to register for Business Connect at the self-service website from any cell phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop computer. Once a business has signed up, they can begin to customize their brand for free. Businesses can also manage their location presence at scale through listing management agencies like DAC Group, Rio SEO, SOCi, Uberall, and Yext. Click below to get started.

If you have any questions about how to use Apple in your business, we are your experts. Reach out anytime!

iPhone Mirroring, Apple Intelligence, and more all to your Mac with macOS Sequoia, available now!

OS Sequoia; The latest version of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system, arrived last week as a free software update for Mac.

macOS Sequoia brings exciting new features, including; iPhone Mirroring, expanding Continuity by enabling access to and control of iPhone directly from macOS; Big updates to Safari; a new Passwords app; and more. Starting next month, macOS Sequoia will introduce Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system combining the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence that is incredibly useful and relevant while protecting users’ privacy and security.

Here’s a look at the top features Mac users can experience when they update to macOS Sequoia, as explained by Apple.

iPhone Mirroring

Working across iPhone and Mac gets even easier with the newest Continuity feature in macOS Sequoia — iPhone Mirroring. Users can now access and engage with their iPhone right from their Mac. Custom wallpaper and app icons appear just like on iPhone. With iPhone Mirroring, users can also swipe between pages on the Home Screen; launch and browse favorite apps; and review and respond to iPhone notifications directly from their Mac. And iPhone remains locked the whole time, so nobody else can access or see what the user is doing. It also works great with StandBy, so users can continue to get information at a glance on their iPhone as they use iPhone Mirroring.

More Surfing Power in Safari

Safari is the world’s fastest browser and it’s even easier to discover new information on the web with the new Highlights feature. Powered by machine learning, Highlights automatically surfaces directions for a location, summaries of articles, or quick links to learn more about people, music, movies, and TV shows. A redesigned Reader allows users to read articles more quickly with a streamlined view, a summary, and a table of contents, and a new Viewer helps users put videos front and center while still giving them full access to system playback controls. With Distraction Control, users can hide items on a webpage that they may find disruptive to their browsing.

Easier Window Tiling

New ways to arrange windows let users stay organized with the layout that works best for them. By simply dragging a window to the edge of the screen, macOS Sequoia automatically suggests a tiled position on the user’s desktop. Users can release a window right into place, quickly arrange tiles side by side, or place them in corners to keep even more apps in view. And new keyboard and menu shortcuts help organize tiles even faster.

A New Passwords App

An all-new Passwords app makes it even easier to access passwords, passkeys, Wi-Fi passwords, and other credentials all in one convenient place on Mac. The Passwords app is backed by incredibly secure end-to-end encryption. It works great with Safari, and seamlessly syncs between all of a user’s Apple devices and Windows with the iCloud for Windows app.

Video Conferencing Updates

During video calls in FaceTime or third-party apps like Webex, users can apply beautiful built-in backgrounds, including a variety of color gradients or shots of the scenery in and around locations like Apple Park in Cupertino, California. They can even upload their own photos to use as a background, And with Apple’s industry-leading segmentation, users will look their best on every call. With presenter preview, users can now see what they’re about to share before sharing it with apps like FaceTime and Zoom.

Coming Soon: Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence will transform what users can do with Mac, delivering intelligence that is incredibly useful and relevant to them, while protecting their privacy and keeping them in control of their data. Apple Intelligence will be available on Macs with an M-series chip, harnessing the power of Apple silicon and the Neural Engine to understand and create language and images; take action across apps; and draw from personal context to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks. Writing Tools help rewrite, proofread, and summarize text. Siri becomes more natural, flexible, and deeply integrated into the system experience, and with richer language-understanding capabilities, Siri can follow along when users stumble over their words. Siri can also maintain context from one request to the next. Mac users can type to Siri and fluidly switch between text and voice to accelerate everyday tasks. In addition, with Siri’s extensive product knowledge, users can now get answers to thousands of questions about the features and settings on Mac. With many of the Apple Intelligence models running entirely on device, as well as the introduction of Private Cloud Compute — which extends the privacy and security of Apple devices into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence — Apple Intelligence introduces an extraordinary step forward for privacy in artificial intelligence.

Additional Features

In macOS Sequoia, there are many more unique and useful features added to users’ favorite Mac apps.

Messages

In Messages, users can now schedule messages to send later. Text messages can also come to life with unique text effects that visually amplify words or emoji with animations like “explode,” “ripple,” and “nod,” and users can even tap back with any emoji or sticker they want.

Notes

In the Notes app, users can now record audio and receive a live transcription, making it incredibly easy to capture every detail of a lecture, meeting, or conversation, and Apple Intelligence will automatically generate a summary. Math Notes also comes to macOS Sequoia, enabling users to instantly solve an expression or math problem simply by typing it into the Notes app on Mac.

Maps

In the Maps app, outdoor enthusiasts gain access to stunning topographic maps and a selection of thousands of hikes available across U.S. national parks. Additionally, users can now easily create custom walking and hiking routes with just a few clicks.

For a comprehensive list of everything that’s new in macOS Sequoia, visit apple.com/macos/macos-sequoia.

Availability

macOS Sequoia is a free software update that is available starting today. For more information, visit apple.com/macos/macos-sequoia. Some features may not be available in all regions or in all languages.