Apple Invites

Yet, there's nothing iPhone specific about this idea. They didn't have to limit it in the way they did. In the future they can change the approach too and both remove and restrict features, because they will always go iPhone-first. Being able to use this in a restricted way today is just that. I share the "apple (and any corp)-first solution should fail" hope.

    In the future they can change the approach too and 
    both remove and restrict features

Unlike a lot of product categories... I don't really see a strong lock-in factor here?

Example: If you are heavily invested in Apple Music or Spotify, there's a lot of momentum there to keep you from switching. All your stuff is there (songs, favorites, playlists) and it would take a lot of time to re-find it on the other service, if it even exists there.

And streaming services like Netflix lock you in with constant reams of new content.

But what would be keeping me on some particular invite service? If I used Apple Invites for my last party two months ago... but I have decided that Apple Invites sucks now... I really don't see a lot of friction keeping me from switching away? The inconvenience would not be zero but seems minor.

You can switch. But now you also need to convince a random person that they should switch, because you can't easily use what they're using. And you may be the only one out of 10 people in the group complaining about it. Instead of their technical problem, Apple can make it a "you" social problem.

Still valid for:

  s/Apple Invites/Meta Messenger groups/
  s/Apple Invites/Facebook events/
  s/Apple Invites/WhatsApp groups/
  s/Apple Invites/Telegram groups
  s/Apple Invites/doodle.com/

These are the things people use around here to organise events. Four of those require a persistent account and an app, three of those are Meta for which I'm the loner yelling that I won't touch them with a 10 yard pole and a hazmat suit.

What are you proposing instead? That these should all be decentralised/federated? SMS/RCS? Matrix? email? ICS?

The other side only sees a link. They don't even care which service that link originates from, they just press yes and that's it.

With all due respect, seeing anything more malicious is just extending your own emotions against apple to the topic.

Ideally, yes, distributed. But otherwise almost every calendar service allows events with invited people. Even if each of those services is closed itself, they're all expected to work with any email client and browser. And then you... email messages.

ICS, yes. Like most event services that aren't Meta work with.

ICS + e-mail is the established standard. It works, and has worked for decades, to the point people don't think about it in terms other than just "calendar invites".

None of those require buying hundreds of dollars worth of hardware

> They don't even care which service that link originates from, they just press yes and that's it.

There's a reason Apple integrates shared photo albums with Invites. It's actually something useful to be linked with an invite in almost all non-corporate use cases. And I bet you this feature will remain broken for non-Apple users.

The difference is that all of them work cross devices. That's why I only get video calls with WhatsApp and I never get one using one of the many video call apps of Google. I learned today, by reading this thread, that somebody could have sent me a link to a Facetime call. I never got one. Everybody in my country use WhatsApp for video calls (maybe somebody is videocalling with Facebook Messenger or Facetime, very few with Telegram) and nobody has to worry about which mobile OS the other person have. WhatsApp has commoditized both iPhones and Androids here. When people choose to buy a phone they don't think about how they'll make calls or send messages. They install WhatsApp, because they have to or they won't call and message a lot of people, and the problem is solved.

Edit: by the way, probably every single phone has builtin interoperable 1 to 1 video calls from the days of 3G. I remember testing them in late 2002 / early 2003. They worked and probably still work unless they retired the standard because everybody is using apps.

    But now you also need to convince a random person that they should switch,

This seems logically and factually untrue based on what Apple has stated.

From https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/introducing-apple-inv... --

    "Guests can view and respond to an invitation using the 
    new iPhone app or on the web without needing an iCloud+ 
    subscription or an Apple Account."

They don't need to buy an Apple device or create an account. (I would assume that they get a text message with some sort of unique individual URL, and from there they can respond to or view the invite)

So I do not follow when you claim that I would need to convince all my friends to "switch." Can you elaborate?

You (like quite a few others) didn't read the linked press release which would have been a good prerequisite for joining this conversation. I guess you really just wanted to unload on your least favorite tech company.

I did read the press release, and this seems pretty open.

From https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/introducing-apple-inv...

    "Guests can view and respond to an invitation using the 
    new iPhone app or on the web without needing an iCloud+ 
    subscription or an Apple Account."

So what's objectionable about this?

Your buddy can invite you to a party using this thing and you can RSVP without installing an app or creating an account. That sounds pretty good to me. You have a web browser, right?