By the end of this your people sign in to Apple devices with their Entra ID credential, their accounts arrive from your directory without anyone typing them, and the Global Administrator grant you needed to build it has been handed back. Every irreversible step has a check in front of it.
Federation makes Entra ID the authority for who your people are on Apple hardware, and Apple reads from it without ever writing back. It also renames existing accounts silently, excludes the administrators who configure it, and refuses to work at all while a single domain conflict remains.
By the end of this you have a locked domain, a defensible list of the people Apple is about to email, a communication that went out before Apple's did, a live roster for the thirty day window, and a capture you started deliberately. Apple will not give you the list. Your mail platform will.
Verifying your domain in Apple Business gives you the power to take over every personal Apple account your employees created on it. Apple will not tell you who they are, the clock is thirty days and cannot be extended, and the step cannot be undone. This is what that authority actually costs.
Apple Business has a permission model that looks like a formality and is not. Ten people can hold the top role and no more, the role that configures single sign-on cannot use it, and a connected management platform may arrive holding the ability to release your devices without anybody signing in.
By the end of this you have a verified Apple Business organization, two Organization Administrators, a verified domain, your purchase history visible, and your Organization ID recorded, with every irreversible step gated by a check that runs before it rather than after.
Almost everything written about signing up for Apple Business is describing the Apple Developer Program instead, which is why so many organisations believe they need a D-U-N-S number they do not need. Here is what Apple actually asks for in 2026, what the sixty day clock does if you miss it, and who can now enrol who could not before.
Apple Business is not your mobile device management platform, and treating it as one is why Apple deployments go wrong. It is the register that decides which devices your organisation owns, who your people are to Apple, and what software you are entitled to run. Intune manages what this register permits.
