Apple Invites

Even though "... anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device" I think this being an Apple branded service is going to make this appear exclusionary and will mean some people won't participate even if they could.

I see the same risk involved with Apple TV's branding; Apple TV works great on Xbox, on NVIDIA Shield and on PC. I'm sure though there are a lot of people who just decide that shows like Foundation and subscriptions like MLS Season's Pass just aren't for them. I don't know if it is a 5% or a 20% drop but it has to be real.

The Apple TV one is particularly bad due to them naming the service, the box, and the app the same thing. One of them has a + tacked on, who knows which.

As long as they don’t start naming other things Invite, they might avoid that issue. Although maybe they’ll name their HomePod with a screen that and we’re back to square one.

I very rarely interact with any Apple tech. Recently I wanted to watch Severance, so I signed up for a trial period of Apple TV. It even worked on Firefox on my Linux desktop. But I only get 1080p video, while my screen is 1440p. The show didn't look good, and I found that yes, you can only get 1080p if you're not watching through an Apple device. I would have been happy to become a subscriber of the streaming service, but not if it looks ugly on my PC, so I didn't continue the trial.

I'm sure Apple has data showing that offering higher-res video on non-Apple hardware isn't worth it, but this experience felt like a perfect match for the rest of my experience with Apple - if you want to use their software but not hardware, fuck you. If you want to use their hardware and software with a different workflow than they intended, fuck you too.