Apple Invites

Unless they add some basic functionality to include Android users, this is the evilest use of their walled garden yet.

From the third sentence of TFA:

> anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device.

> anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device.

The EU needs to regulate this

They also seem to have a web-only version too, but it requires an Apple account. Refreshing coming from Apple.

They don't need to because you can RSVP from an Android device.

The article also says "collaborative playlists allow Apple Music subscribers to create a curated event soundtrack" so there's clearly a subset of functionality that's only available for certain users. There's "integration with Maps and Weather", but how does that look like in Android? Can I still "contribute to Shared Albums"?

They don't need to. Android users can do the most important thing advertised here (RSVP) without the app or an iPhone. Also, hopefully the EU has better things to do than constantly force Apple to support Android users (for free!) at the same level of quality as their own customers.

What's preventing Google from competing and making their own better version of this? I don't see where there's anything that Apple is doing here that couldn't be easily replicated by them using their own ecosystem.

In Apple's defense, they tend to have web versions of most of their iCloud services. They even recently released a web version of Apple Maps.

Google would stuff it full of adverts and tracking. For that reason it wouldn’t be better.

Shared Albums, Apple Web, are all available on the web.

That’s not Apple’s fault.

You can generate a link to e-mail to anyone, which opens up a web page which you can RSVP from.

I'm skeptical of the implementation, given iMessage. I'm sure Android users RSVPs will show up in a green toxic fume cloud or some such.

That's a very pessimistic way to bring that up.

I was thinking similar, except, "I wonder how this works with non-Apple users?". Instead of jumping straight to how evil this is.

Imagine being a teen with an Android in the Apple Invite age, the bullying will go crazy

Do you really think so? I’m wary of walled gardens but as an EU citizen I think that we in the EU should try to innovate more and be more mindful of what regulations we put in place.

I'm not a fan of either doing this. I'm watching all open protocols slowly disappear and it's killing innovation in the industry.

I tested it with a sample event and I don't see any way to RSVP without logging into an Apple account. Maybe I'm missing something?

The whole green bubble thing has got to be one of the stupidest status symbol things I've seen in a long time. Though I have no doubt there are many of them. If anything, it's maybe a good life lesson that many supposed status symbols are breathtakingly stupid to care about.

then we will have 2 incompativle invite systems: form Apple and from Google.

The correct way to do this is to publish an open standard/API so 3rd parties can participate.

They did, a decade ago. Google Plus invites had all these features and more, and Google decided to kill them off, in the usual fashion

Google Invites: Invite your friends!

Google Invites is being discontinued.

Google Party: Invite your friends!

Google Party is being discontinued.

Google Gathering: Invite your friends!

Google Gathering is being discontinued.

Did you know that in iMessage, Android user texts are the same color as iOS user messages? It's true.

As the iOS user, it is your own messages that are green or blue depending on whether it was sent using iMessage or SMS. It's useful feedback about whether your message was sent on a reliable channel.

I know it became a whole thing and that Apple has allowed it to remain as such. But it's not really an apt analogy.

> I tested it with a sample event and I don't see any way to RSVP without logging into an Apple account. Maybe I'm missing something?

You are. I explicitly created a burner email and invited it to an event.

When I navigated from the invite email I was prompted to sign in which I declined. It then allowed me to join the event after I confirmed with an emailed code.

On joining the event I was able to set my name and send a note.

Don't forget rename it a few times, add a messenger into it, then kill it.

>some supposed status symbols are breathtakingly stupid to care about.

All status symbols are stupid, that's part of the point. That has never mattered. It doesn't matter how stupid a symbol is, it can still have tangible effects on you and your life.

Humans are social animals first and foremost, and are not rational in any way. Tribalism is literally the point.

You're not entirely wrong but also not my nor Apple's problem. Things like universities can be status symbols but they're mostly not entirely status symbols. Plenty of other things like that too.

But if it's not bubble color, it will be the type of sneakers kids wear or whatever else is the fashion of the moment.

The way I tested it was to create Share link, then navigate to it in an incognito window on Desktop and try to RSVP. I am still unable RSVP without login. Perhaps it works without login if you explicitly invite a certain email.

Do you not view RCS as being a reliable channel?

The "open protocol" is Facebook Events right now. It's a pretty low bar.

I don't view SMS as reliable. It was only a couple years ago that I switched to Signal for a friend after our texts back and forth had been silently dropped one too many times.

I don't know how long RCS has been around, but my impression is most or all of my messages until recently were SMS.

iMessage now says "Text Message - RCS" or "Text Message - SMS" in the text entry box which is better than the green/blue bubble thing (though it does still have that).

I don’t believe it’s just status symbol - until the recent RCS implementation having an Android phone in your group text meant that photos/videos would be awful MMS quality.

It's not the bubble color; it's that (early) iMessage groups were much better than SMS groups, and so if you added a greenie it resulted in a worse experience.

That's not so much the case anymore, from what I understand (even the "reactions") work decently well, now.

Possibly. My use of texting groups is relatively recent.

Just because Facebook created a walled garden that doesn't mean everyone else should too.

As if there was no bullying in any other age? Is Apple's walled garden really the source of this bullying? Teenagers can bully each other about anything.

At a minimum, it isn't encrypted between iOS and Android users.