I am looking to move into IT as a career and have been considering getting the ACSP and ACTC. However with the professional Mac market getting more and more uneasy with the state of the Mac, I'm starting to question what the damand will be for Apple support pros outside of an Apple Store. Do people in the industry see these certs as valuable?
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How valuable are Apple Certs?
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In short. Nope. The ruler of enterprise is x86 / Unix / SAN and WAN. Don't forget how important experience is. Do whatever you can to get it. Intern or work wherever they will let you learn.
I don't see any one working on Apple computers outside of the apple store. I'd say that you'll be better off with MS certifications, they will be much more valuable
Or Cisco or VMware or "cloud".
SDN is growing rapidly - experience and certs for that would be gold in your pocket.
When I interview - I consider experience much more important than certs. "Certs" mean that you've followed some course material and regurgitated the right answers on the exam. "Certs" don't mean that you understand the real world....
certifications gets your foot into the door for an interview. With the automated processing of resumes and candidating, someone with 20 years of experience but no certifications will not even get a call from human resources.
Many firms use heuristics and services to streamline their onboarding process and so without certification, job hunting is that much harder.
Apple certs aren't even good inside of Apple. Even if you have an Apple certification you must get an identical internal one at Apple. On the flip side if you get an internal ones at Apple (like I did), they are useless on the outside world as they can't be used outside of Apple. It is a pretty bazar thing. That may be dated, but it was still a thing last time I checked. The ONLY benefit to Apple hardware certs is to do in warranty work. But you must work for a company authorized to do warranty work....which is like 5 at this point. A school would probably see that as valuable, but I have seen less and less of in house Apple repairs in schools. I think it would be a waste of time and money. Apple isn't even really pushing or making products for business with the Mac. So its kind of pointless. If it were 1995 I'd say do it. Today, the money and jobs are elsewhere.
My advice is what everyone else has said. Learn and get certified in enterprise level non-Apple stuff. An Apple Cert will only be appealing to a very small number of niches. Even large companies have stopped maintaining internal AppleCare Techs to do warranty repairs. Once you have a good foundation of other knowledge, you could always get the Apple certs in your spare time, or find a company willing to pay for it. But I have never needed to provide an Apple Cert for a Mac based IT job. In fact, most of the Mac only environments I've worked in I have always hired the guys with other things on the resume than just Apple experience.
My advice is what everyone else has said. Learn and get certified in enterprise level non-Apple stuff. An Apple Cert will only be appealing to a very small number of niches. Even large companies have stopped maintaining internal AppleCare Techs to do warranty repairs. Once you have a good foundation of other knowledge, you could always get the Apple certs in your spare time, or find a company willing to pay for it. But I have never needed to provide an Apple Cert for a Mac based IT job. In fact, most of the Mac only environments I've worked in I have always hired the guys with other things on the resume than just Apple experience.