Apple Invites

I really hope this fails.

Apple will use it's dominant position to create lock in like how they did with iMessage instead of cooperating with other platforms on a common standard.

Oder friends and family are surprised when they want to video call over Facetime and find it hard to believe other people's phones don't have Apple apps.

From the article… 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

Sounds like there’s no Apple walled garden lock-in for recipients of the Invites? Only for creating/managing them?

I was actually pretty excited about this until so read it was iCloud+ only. I think it is maybe a long-term strategic mistake to lock this behind iCloud+ and also a bad omen for the direction Apple is going in. In the past this would have been a free app.

If Apple did not lock this behind iCloud+ I think it would have quickly become a standard for a lot of users and been another feather in Apple’s cap of why a user might want an iPhone. Maybe they could have added upsells like gift an Apple Card or something or made money through affiliate gift giving links or something.

Before I saw it was iCloud+ only, I thought it was a sort-of clever way to get people even more locked into the ecosystem. I assumed that the shared photos would add to people's reliance on iCloud, and get some to upgrade to higher tiers to fit all their photos.

I was quite surprised to learn it wasn't free. I had heard about this "sherlocking" on Twitter but hadn't read the details. I can't think of a time when Apple Sherlocked something but didn't make it free. In fact, making it free is kind of part in parcel of Sherlocking, since that's what really kills the other business. Here, plenty of people will keep using the existing competitors because they don't want to have to pay for iCloud+.

I think they may have locked it behind iCloud+ because one of the big features it offers is a shared photo album, which of course utilizes iCloud. Anyone without iCloud+ is essentially going to be unable to use that feature. And yeah...it also pushes people into paying for iCloud+, though you can get on the $1/mo plan in order to access this, so it's not like it's very expensive.

You get 5GB of iCloud storage for free. I figured this was a way to get people closer to/over the limit.

I get that the iCloud tiers start cheap, but having 50GB doesn't really do anything for me since it's still not big enough to back up an iPhone. And there's zero chance I'm going to start paying for a monthly service in order to get access to an evite clone that I would use a couple times a year. Maybe there are big partiers out there that would upgrade just for this, but this seems like an impending flop to me.