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

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

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.

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.

Do you not view RCS as being a reliable channel?

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).

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

From the third sentence of TFA:

> anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple 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"?

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

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

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.

The EU needs to regulate this

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

That’s not Apple’s fault.

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

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.

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

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?

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, I have to hope this doesn't see widespread adoption. If this becomes the standard it will just add to already existing social pressure to get an iPhone in the US.

To me this argument makes no sense. Apple should never introduce any new features or services to their ecosystem because it might increase “social pressure” to get an iPhone?

I would say the more a given app/feature has network effects the more invested I am in it being cross-platform. For example, iMessage and Facetime are highly social. Apple was resistant to adopting the RCS protocol for iMessage, though they eventually caved and now the experience of texting between iPhones and Androids is better for both parties so it seems preferable to me.

Meanwhile, we take it for granted that there is a protocol for audio calls and text messages but not for video calls. I would like to more easily video call people with iPhones, and doing so would be technically possible but I can't because Apple benefits from the network effect. If I were to get an iPhone it would not be because Apple did a better job at creating a video call feature, it will be because people I know have iPhones and I want to call them. This seems like it gives incumbents in the space a large advantage because they can compete on having a user base and not on quality.

Ironically, Apple itself developed such a protocol for events and RSVPs (ICS), at a time when they didn't have market dominance. This caught on and it is great. I can make a calendar event in Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar and invite anyone from any of those platforms. They can RSVP and I can track their RSVPs and they can also create events in their systems and invite me. This is the kind of thing I like to encourage where possible.

Apple Invites does provide ICS files for the events. (In the web version when not logged in to an Apple Account, after RSVPing.)

Technically vCal/iCal/ICS (whichever name you prefer) doesn't actually support RSVPs. It isn't in the standards documents. In ancient Microsoft nomenclature that pseudo-standard (de facto standard) for RSVPs is the "Schedule+ protocol" named after an ancient dead predecessor to Outlook's Calendar which originated it. I don't know what Google or Apple call it, and it is such a weird dance of (usually) auto-deleted email messages, so certainly has room for improvement as a protocol.

It would be neat to encourage a new "modern" standard there. Seems like something more web-based (JSON REST API?) than email-based might be a more "natural" API today. (Maybe Apple Invite can help lead the way, I don't know if that's on their TODO list.)

iTIP (RFC 5546) / iMIP (RFC 6047) are a standard for sending and responding to calendar invites, implemented on top of email.

Certainly some implementations are pretty poor, but in theory this is all standardised.

Antitrust laws to prevent companies from abusing their market position.

The US Department of Justice is currently suing Apple for violating those antitrust laws [1]

[1] https://www.theverge.com/24107581/doj-v-apple-antitrust-mono...

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

But no-one without an Apple Account can create them - you can only respond to Apple-having friends. There is social pressure in that too.

If I'm inviting someone and they RSVP, that transaction is successful and done to me.

If they use some other system (and people do) I'll respond via that system.

A company creating a useful tool that encourages people to buy their product is incredibly boring, typical, and not at all controversial until it's Apple doing it.

It may have something to do with the duopolistic nature of mobile phones and the absolute size and dominance of Apple.

I suspect it has a lot more to do with the concentration of mobile devs and FOSS types here, along with people who really can't understand that not everyone wants their phone to be something other than "Working out of the box."

Ah yes the classic false dichotomy, that it either has to be closed/proprietary/locked down and "just works" or it can be open but unusable. In reality the two are completely orthogonal. There's nothing magical about publishing the source that suddenly changes the code or the product and breaks it. If Apple open sourced ever line of code they have tonight, would iPhones suddenly stop working?

So, what's stopping you from becoming Apple's competition? If a significant number of people crave your idea of FOSS and you have ideas to make a superior product, I'm sure the market will reward you.

Did you ever see any Linux laptop in a store? They do have some market share but never existed to the ordinary people.

Also, GNU/Linux phones exist (Librem 5 is my daily driver). However without Apple's budgets, you can't create the same smooth experience. You just can't compete with the duopoly.

So what you're saying is that alternatives do exist, but they aren't popular... that doesn't sound like a "duopoly" exists, it just sounds like Android and Apple cover the needs of the vast majority of people. I'm sure it's difficult to be part of a niche, but that doesn't mean that there's some conspiracy against you.

> I'm sure it's difficult to be part of a niche, but that doesn't mean that there's some conspiracy against you.

Yes, it does: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/. Purism tried to created their own smartphone not relying on Apple and Google and it was almost impossible to find the necessary chips. Nobody wanted to share the schematics or open the drivers. People are just locked-in into the duopoly. It's impossible to use popular apps without it, like Whatsapp or even Signal (!).

Im just excited about a possible alternative to FB for this kinda stuff.

And everything using google needs a google account. What’s your point?

You need a Google Account to use Google Calendar.

Anyone can have an Apple Account whether or not they own an Apple Device.

In this case, too, you can create Invites on icloud.com on non-Apple devices. Including the webpage seems nicely responsive and can probably make them in an Android Chrome tab if you wanted.

The only remaining obstacle is that it isn't a free feature of an Apple Account, but requires an iCloud+ subscription. But that's useful for Apple Music and Apple TV+ and other products, too, many of which work just fine on non-Apple devices as well.

Fair points.

Google account is still free while iCloud+ subscription is not.

That's a big difference.

I think that's preferable to them being totally unable to RSVP but you're still going to be the friend that can't make the invite. It's comparable to iMessage. You can still talk to Android users but it's a notably worse experience.

Non-Apple users cant contribute to the playlist. No mention on the impact to the shared photo album. If its just a normal shared Photos.app album, non-apple users are locked out there, too.

Non Apple Music users cant contribute. There are currently around 93 million Apple Music subscribers.

That’s the point: get an iPhone or be left out. But don’t worry, there will be a web version…

Im literally sick over the thought of the increased social pressure

Your friends joking with you to get an iPhone is making you sick?

I mean this completely seriously and as a concerned internet stranger...if that is literally true for you, please go seek mental health services right now. That's not normal or healthy.

All my social circles where we communicate over SMS/RCS group text chats consist of a little gentle ribbing about "those darn green bubble people" and that's about the extent of it. The Android users occasionally respond in kind by showing off some cool new feature that Samsung or Google came up with that Apple hasn't copied yet and everybody laughs it all off.

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

Social pressures aren't real. I have never ever had a facebook account, instagram account, a linkedin account, an iphone or any other things people fall for.

> Creation of invitations requires an iCloud+ subscription.

Maybe it's just me, but seems a bit extreme for what amounts to a fancy calendar invite.

What's really extreme is that you need an iCloud+ subscription if you want more than 5GB of iCloud storage… so requiring the subscription for this app is not much of a hurdle

iCloud+ is just extra space; the other "features" are free addons.

That's how everyone I know uses it.

Honestly I think it's still a large enough market to get traction. They can always open it up further if it really catches on.

Extreme? A subscription costs $1/mo and includes other features.

>other features

Yeah, for people who own Apple hardware...

Of the 12 services/apps that show up in the iCloud web UI, only "Find My" isn't usable without Apple hardware.

I thought everyone here has subscription fatigue already.

Yeah, that’s a dealbreaker right there. On a positive note, hopefully, this will be enough impedance to prevent widespread adoption in my social circle.

the iBrand hasn't done a good job of explaining that no apple hardware product has to be bought, to sign up to this cloud.

In some ways, "Cloud, by Apple" would have been better because it could have had a subsidiary tagline 'open to anyone' -where iPhone, iPad are pretty solidly walled garden devices.

I'm not in marketing. I am sure smart marketing people would point out downsides. I just think iCloud "says" -not for me, unless I have an iPhone.

Even if some iCloud+ things could work without any Apple devices, I'm not sure why anyone would want it. Most of them only get value from the integration (like hide my email, storage space, etc).

Yes. I think thats true but possibly a result of the strategy to make it compelling to move into the ecology. "Brought to you by apple" would be more openly "meh, you can make other choices" -Apple TV for instance, drives fine through devices able to do the API calls with apple approved client software, its not "sorry go buy an Apple TV" only.

Apple don't sell the Roku or Chromecast devices, basically. So, for Apple TV it's clear you don't have to be iFriendly only.

Probably I'm seduced by how amazingly cheap 1TB of Apple cloud is, compared to the others. Its a LOT cheaper than Google 1 or Microsoft's offering, discounting all the other side benefits.

Bizarre to launch this feature outside of a regular event given this limitation. It is a nothingburger of a feature (just a clone of existing services) AND it requires you to have a paid subscription.

If I had to assign a dollar value to being able to use this feature on my phone, it would be pennies per month.

Brilliant move.

The transition of the major social networks over the last 10-15 years -- from being a space for friends to interact to being a space to consume content produced by "unconnected" entities like influencers -- has created a huge opening for someone to claim the friends and family network. There is no one better positioned (at least in the U.S. where iPhones are the majority handset) than Apple.

Group texts and shared albums (iPhoto or Google photo if you have androids in the mix) are most of my social interaction already..

This is what it's been for me as well, for several years— all meaningful friend-group interactions are now taking place in group chats, sadly this is entirely in Whatsapp and FB Messenger for me; would love if there was a reasonable migration path to getting these interactions entirely off of Meta properties.

Group text works cross platform now.. some friend groups are on discord

The problem is that by vendor-locking these services to Apple users, they create an environment that alienates non-Apple users. If they want to truly claim the friends & family network, they need to remember that everyone has friends & family that aren't in the Apple ecosystem.

So long as Facebook remains available to everyone, even if the content feed is a mess, the event planning space is going to be more accessible to everyone and will end up being the defacto friends & family ecosystem.

I'm not an iCloud+ member, so I can't go in an look for myself, but ideally this would be just a fancy way of extending your iCloud Calendar invites where Gmail, Outlook, etc. users can still create events and invite people in roughly the same way. If as a Linux & Android user I am only able to RSVP to Apple users' invites, but I am never able to invite them to anything myself, then I literally cannot embrace this product without investing considerable money into their hardware, which I am not going to do.

Hell, if they featureset was compelling enough, and they had an iCloud app for non-Apple hardware platforms, I might actually consider being an iCloud+ member, but I guess it's not worth it to Apple to collect a monthly payment from me if I won't make the downpayment on an iPhone and a Macbook...

> Hell, if they featureset was compelling enough, and they had an iCloud app for non-Apple hardware platforms, I might actually consider being an iCloud+ member, but I guess it's not worth it to Apple to collect a monthly payment from me if I won't make the downpayment on an iPhone and a Macbook...

You can create events from the web iCloud interface without an Apple device.

> So long as Facebook remains available to everyone, even if the content feed is a mess, the event planning space is going to be more accessible to everyone and will end up being the defacto friends & family ecosystem.

For now. We're in the process of seeing Twitter die like every other social network has died before it, Facebook will have it's time as well.

Undoubtedly. I agree 100%. I still think that Apple needs to consider how accessible Facebook is/was if they want to produce a product capable of replacing any part of it.

I'm not convinced they're leaving a lot of money on the table by pitching a free app at a billion iPhone users vs. the famously lucrative Linux desktop market.

>If they want to truly claim the friends & family network, they need to remember that everyone has friends & family that aren't in the Apple ecosystem.

They are completely aware of it an actively leverage it to use your friends and family against you to force you into Apple's ecosystem. It's the main reason why Android will have to get pretty bad before I bend to such incredibly dirty tactics.

> So long as Facebook remains available to everyone

This is not a given even today. Creating a new Facebook account involves a ton of scrutiny, you need to upload an ID, and until your account is older and established it’s likely that anything you do can get auto-scanned by some spam bot and get you banned for using some keyword, even in private chats.

I don’t have a Facebook account but I needed to create one a few years back to use my oculus quest (this is before they finally came to their senses and separated the accounts) and I had a lot of trouble convincing FB that I was a real human.

I had a Facebook account long ago, deleted it (and my Twitter and my LinkedIn) both because I thought social media was going crazy and because LinkedIn had personally brought ruin into my life.

Recently I made a new Facebook account to go with my Quest 3 VR headset. I don't find too much appealing about Facebook, posted a little, haven't used it much. I wanted to make an Instagram account because I want to post flower and sports photographs, really inoffensive stuff that would do well on the platform. Whenever I try to create an Instagram account, linked to my Facebook account or not, I get a message saying there was an error and I should try again later but later never comes.

Talking to support about it gets no response. I don't know if my history of deleting my account long ago is the cause or if it is something else.

A person I know who committed a misdemeanor is now on probation and one term of his probation is that he stay off social media, though he can use ordinary web sites. I saw a poster for a board game club which is exactly the kind of community activity that his probation officer would approve of, but the only information on the sign is the title and a QR code that points to... A Facebook group. There are plenty of other people who choose not to use Facebook for various reasons who are also excluded by this.

---

The world badly needs something to support community organizations because of the problems pointed out in this movie based on Robert Putnam's work:

https://www.joinordiefilm.com/

It's not difficult to approach this as a startup, but it is a devilishly hard problem to sustain it without being attached to something toxic like personalization-based advertising. There are plenty of foundations which could afford to fund this kind of effort (e.g. you could kill it at $1M a year if you weren't paying Bay Area wages and didn't have nonprofit bloat) but if anything the ability to fill out the paperwork from grants is inversely proportional to being able to execute on this sort of thing.

Brilliant? Launching an app for creating events that requires you to 1) own an iDevice and 2) pay into, just to create events?

I'll send an email for free, thankyouverymuch.

> 1) own an iDevice

You do not need to own an Apple device to either create events or join events.

> I'll send an email for free, thankyouverymuch.

This seems fine! There are open protocols (email, ics) if they work for you, but Apple specifically developed this in a way to neither require an Apple device or Apple Account to interact. Which is better than some of the competitors! (Facebook and Google tend to create social tools which explicitly require everyone to have accounts.)

> You do not need to own an Apple device to either create events

You need an "iCloud+" account to create, though. Which I as a non-apple user have no idea what is, and probably is useless for me to pay for not using anything apple beforehand.

I use a MacBook and I swear this is the first time I have heard of iCloud+.

If you're paying for more iCloud storage, you have iCloud+.

The first line of their press release:

> Apple today introduced Apple Invites, a new app for iPhone

If Android users have to login to a website to use this, what's the appeal? There are hundreds of simple meeting/event webapps out there, many not even requiring authentication.

> If Android users have to login to a website to use this, what's the appeal?

I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to use this. It just was pointing out you don't need Apple accounts or devices to participate opposed to something like Facebook events.

> There are hundreds of simple meeting/event webapps out there

Okay? Go crazy using those! But don't claim that this requires an Apple device to create or join events (like the OP I was responding to). And don't claim that this requires an Apple Account to join events (like many other commentators are).

This obviously offers more than just sending an email. And since the majority of Apple users aren't very tech savvy, I can see this catching on quickly.

While I agree with your points in principle, the paywall may act as a way for them to handle spam/misuse more effectively

Likely doesn't need to be said, but if you are organizing parties with emails, you're probably not the target user base of this feature.

For the younger folks who organize their parties by texting (iMessages, Whatsapp, Telefram, etc), this can be enticing.

I think Apple already has claimed the "friends and family network" via iMessage. Did Facebook go to a groups/influencer algorithm by choice or is it the result of IRL friend posters all moving to private chats once everyone got iPhones?

Everytime iMessage is mentioned, I do a double take because it is almost non existent here in Turkey. And from what I hear, seems like most Europeans do not use it too.

WhatsApp has like 99.9% market share here and I assume it is a lot bigger than anything else in the EU too.

I wonder why is that though. Everyone around me has an iPhone basically and I haven’t received a blue bubble in years. The messages app is not even on my home screen.

As I understand it, many Americans (and all iPhones?) had unlimited-SMS phone plans circa 2009. So the pay-per-message economic conditions that caused many Europeans, etc., to switch to WhatsApp back in the day didn't do anything in the USA.

Then when the same iPhone app seamlessly started sending iMessages (blue bubbles) to other iPhones rather than SMS (green bubbles), people just kept using that.

>> So the pay-per-message economic conditions that caused many Europeans, etc., to switch to WhatsApp back in the day didn't do anything in the USA.

I see this listed as the reason often but I had unlimited SMS then too. In fact I remember visiting the US in 2009 and I was charged to send AND receive an SMS which was a shock.

I think the actual reason is that communication across borders in Europe is very common and those SMS's were not included in the unlimited plans as they were messages abroad. So they were subject to fees (usually high ones). I think this is the reason it was common - especially given how common it is for students to study 'abroad' in other European countries. There were a few competing apps for this at the time (Vibr I think was another but was more call focussed) but WhatsApp won in the end.

Yepp, this is my theory too. When you live in a country with friends 2 hours away by car in a totally different country, paying extra for "long distance" is absurd when tools exist to communicate with no extra fees.

Viber is alive and well nowadays and is the dominant messaging app in quite a few geographies. Given that Facebook Messenger seems to also have about the same MAU as WhatsApp (and seems to be dominant in the US), I don't think you can say any one of those "won".

>> Viber is alive and well nowadays and is the dominant messaging app in quite a few geographies

Interesting! I haven't heard mention of Viber since around 2011. When I said WhatsApp 'won' I meant that wherever I have been in Europe WhatsApp seems to be in use by people and by businesses. It's almost accepted you'll have an account and used as an alternative to email/phone numbers. I understand global MAU may show a different reality and certain locales may still be dominated by other platforms.

>> So the pay-per-message economic conditions that caused many Europeans, etc., to switch to WhatsApp back in the day

> I think the actual reason is that communication across borders in Europe is very common and those SMS's were not included in the unlimited plans as they were messages abroad. So they were subject to fees (usually high ones).

So, you completely agree with what you seem to be taking issue with.

This is definitely what happened in Brazil.

When Whatsapp launched, SMS still wasn't free, the exception being some carriers that offered "free" SMS to numbers of the same carrier if the sender was on a premium coverage plan. In sum, majority of the population was still paying $0,10-$0,20 despite already having data plans. So it was an easy win for WhatsApp.

Same, I’m not even European, but literally everyone uses WhatsApp for everything where I live, iPhones or not.

The only thing I get in my Messages app is verification codes and spam.

I don’t think I got a single SMS/iMessage from a human in the last 5 years.

Can also report WhatsApp has 100% of the backpackers meeting each other market.

> Everyone around me has an iPhone

You may be in a bubble.

Huawei and other Chinese phones are not banned in the EU. So you can get your hands on 100€ to 200€ smartphones which are more than enough for most people. Hence a lot less iPhones (but a ton more spywares).

That's only true if everyone in the group has an Apple phone, which has decreasing probability with every additional member. Excluding people from a conversation because they don't have the right brand of phone would be pretty antisocial.

Unfortunately it happens all the time in my friends circle, and it's for technical not anti-social reasons. Group texts that include Android users are so buggy that they tend to die out, whereas iMessage-only groups tend to be long lasting. For this reason we use WhatsApp for the core group chat, but there's still a ton of side-conversations and meme-ing in iMessage groups.

>> For this reason we use WhatsApp for the core group chat, but there's still a ton of side-conversations and meme-ing in iMessage groups.

I don't understand why you would use two chat systems when you know one is excluding some friends? Why not just centralise on WhatsApp which you're already using? Serious question. I can understand why switching is a big ask but when you're already using the multi-platform option part of the time switching back and forth seems unnecessary and inconvenient.

Because the majority of my communication is already in iMessage and I don't want to bother with another app. I also by default opt out of any Zuckerberg operations that I can, they get enough of my data without me having an account on any of their platforms as is.

In the USA, someone insisting on using an Android when everyone else in their social circle has an iPhone (and they do!) is what's seen as anti-social. No one wants to use the degraded green bubble SMS experience so they simply exclude the Android user and continue using blue bubble iMessage.

I'll do you one better: in this specific situation, the antisocial buck stops at the friend group who doesn't all chip in and buy their Android friend a "keep in touch" iPhone.

But the point remains that a cynical UX/technical/business decision that does not need to be so is rending real relationships between actual people. If Tim Cook had the power to render anyone who didn't pay him $400+ mute to their friends and family through some sort of black magic, we'd call him a comic book supervillain.

Honestly, if your "friend" group is willing to exclude you because you're not using a particular brand of cell phone, then I have some bad news for you: They might not really be great friends.

I bought an Android specifically so I don't have to use an iPhone, speaking as a former iPhone user. "Friends" chipping in to buy me an iPhone isn't something I'd actually want.

It surprises me people who actually have this problem don't just switch to a different messaging app. There are many, and the effort required is minimal.

It's called a network effect for a reason. People don't want to use multiple apps so they generally will want all of their friends to be using the same app. Switching to a different app for one friend group adds significant friction.

This is why we need legally mandated interopability for call communications platforms above a certain size. It's absurd that the situation today is worse than the early 2000's where you could use one program to talk to your ICQ, MSN and Aim friends.

Hell yeah.

Before there was the pandemic and 'Zoom Fatigue' there were other applications such as Skype, Google Meet, WebEx, Go2Meeting and many more that went through a variation of Doctorow's 'enshittification cycle' although it isn't so much that these became commercially exploitative but rather the honeymoon period ended.

If, for instance I want you to try a new "meeting" program your response is likely to be "this could be such a hassle" and the vendor has a strong incentive to make it work well so I can say, "Remember how well Skype used to work ten years ago? Zoom is like that now". In that early phase the vendor invests in quality, once it has an established user base it is 'competing' on the basis of dominance of a two sided market and there isn't any need to invest in quality. (In fact, investors insist on disinvestment because they want to take profits after years of losses.) Eventually it gets so bad that even the two sided market dominance can't save them anymore and a new competitor comes in.

If chat and messaging programs were interoperable, vendors would be competing on quality instead of relying on two-sided market dominance, and we'd have seen the user experience improve rapidly and dramatically over the past 20 years instead of going sideways. I mean, "remember how good ICQ was?"

I have never ever seen this. If your "friends" treat you badly because of your phone choice, they are not really your friends. Also, iMessage is not that great. It's nice but it is not amazing like some people make it out to be.

Happens a lot with adolescents. They can be quite exclusionary.

I totally agree with you, but it's pretty obvious why this behaviour exists. At the end of the day, a cell phone is as much a status symbol, something akin to the clothes you wear, as much as it is an actual phone. Would you potentially lower your opinion of someone wearing a strange piece of clothing? The principle is exactly the same.

This is not really true since RCS launched. It does most of what people care about. Everyone sees Emojis and a few other special Fx and videos and pictures now look good for everyone and don't get nerfed as soon as one user is on Android.

Maybe RCS doesn't do all the esoteric iMessage stuff but it doesn't necessarily have to, half those extra features are gatekeeped on having the latest iPhone or whatever and so they don't get used as often.

This is potentially true; I've noticed green-bubble chats are much less annoying in the last year. Do they send over Wifi now? That was also a killer iMessage feature on trips with bad cell coverage.

Sounds like those people weren't good friends anyways. What kind of friends exclude you for petty shit like this?

Unless you're a teen in the USA.

Non-iPhone users are the minority in this demographic (<= 13%), see my demographic comment elsewhere for this subject.

I'm still waiting for iMessage to work with Android phones.

iMessage has been compatible with RCS for months now.

Except if you’re on Google Fi, right?

https://isgooglefircsyet.com/

That is ironic, given how the whole push to get Apple to support RCS came from google in the first place. They had that website with the open letter to try and tell Apple that supporting RCS was in everyone’s best interest and would enable Apple and Android users to be on even footing, etc etc.

But then oops, turns out Google’s on wireless service doesn’t even support it. Maybe google didn’t think Apple would call their bluff?

Google stole Microsoft's position of "arrogant company that just doesn't get it". What I found about Google comms product was that they worked the worst on slow internet connections of any product. Back when I had 2 Mbps or worse DSL, I could get on meetings with anything that wasn't Google Hangouts, Google Talk, Google Meet, etc. It's like it was with Docker Hub, which had low timeouts that made it impossible for me to actually download images to install anything substantial.

That, plus other little slights like only buying high-quality aerial photos of upstate NY years after Microsoft did left me feeling that Google saw me as a non-person because I didn't live in the bay area, NYC, LA or DC.

yeah and that is apple's fault, they need to carrier enable

A quick search suggests the Android user end needs to install 3rd party apps for it to work? Has that changed recently?

Usually you actually need to not use third party apps. RCS on Android is usually restricted to Google Messages (or maybe Samsungs built in messages app). Everyone else got the boot

You also sometimes have to enable in the settings for Android Messages (and have a supported carrier). iMessage also has an option to enable RCS but I believe its on by default in the newer versions of iOS

Hmm ok so it doesn't actually work :(

Even if it worked with 3rd party apps, at that point why not install something like Signal.

I don't know, I haven't used Android in quite a few years, but it was my understanding that it was in Google's default SMS app. When I got iOS 18, all of my texts to Android users switched automatically to RCS, so they didn't have to do anything.

I wrote an "SMS" to the previous tenant of my new flat recently and it got seamlessly upgraded to rcs. With me on an android and them on an iPhone. This was using Google messages, which was the default on my zenfone for sms

My friend group chat was suddenly RCS after updating iOS today and it’s great - no more “So and so liked ‘the entire message body’” messages, we all just see the thumbs up reaction

> I think Apple already has claimed the "friends and family network" via iMessage.

All the family/friends group chats I am in are WhatsApp.

I use iMessage every day for 1-to-1 messaging but I don’t really view it as distinct from SMS.

For international communication, even 1-on-1 tends to be WhatsApp.

Nobody I know uses iMessage.

In the US, using iMessage involves flipping a switch in some Messages setting--and everyone I know in the US just texts, except for texting with international folks.

Quick note that I'm in the US and my experience is: most random people use SMS; closer friends and family some use Signal, some Discord, some email; colleagues use Slack; overseas taxi drivers etc. use WhatsApp.

By "use SMS" you surely mean "use iMessage" much of the time.

If op is on android they wont know who uses imessage

No switch flipping needed, if you send a text to another iPhone it’ll just do an iMessage instead.

It may be on by default but there is a switch in Settings/Apps/Messages.

iMessage is dead/dying. WhatsApp is killing it.

At this point even my American groups have become largely WhatsApp because Android exists.

Nobody uses iMessage in Spain. People swear by Zuck's spyware

Apple and Meta's wet dream is exclusionary friends and family networks tied to their future AR hardware. Half the people at the Christmas party pointing and zooming around an AR globe to talk about their travels and the other half with the wrong brand not able to see anything. Maybe they just place the virtual globe on top of one of them and completely block them out to get more space since they aren't seeming relevant.

What happens in 10-15 years more, I wonder? Will Apple stay the respectable, trustworthy company they are today?

I'd argue WhatsApp is better positioned (globally).

WhatsApp being owned by Meta likely detracts from this though.

This era of new experimental apps from Apple (Invites, Journal, Sports) has me excited about the future of app design. Vibrant colors, bold personality-driven typography, etc. The SwiftUI style onboarding screen that features the carousel is really fun. This approach feels very Apple'y, but gives me more freedom to explore designs for my own app to have its own unique voice on iOS, while still feeling in-family with Apple's other more experimental UI.

There are a few misses.

- I already declined a friend's invite, but that doesn't get auto filtered away, so my "decline" is still the primary thing the app has to show me. It's still my only invite, so maybe it gets filtered to the back of the card stack if there are multiple?

- I also don't seem to be able to see friends I know who were invited to the party (but have not yet responded). Perhaps it was because it was shared as an invite URL in a group chat rather than manually inviting everyone?

It might be thought of as a bug but I love that the Apple Sports app announces scores for a live game before it hits TV.

In this day and age of everyone multitasking ... that's a hell of a great feature to be able to say "guys look!".

For a while I was amazing my kids predicting touchdowns, but they caught on ;)

Less latency is a feature, not a bug. We've just grown too used to latency in everything we use.

The lag between OTA broadcast and cable/streaming is insanely bad. We had several screens tuned in to World Cup, and the group watching the OTA broadcast would cheer 15-20 seconds before the cable/streaming screens would. Knowing it exists is one thing, but seeing it in that manner puts it on a whole other level

Why does it matter that information from a sports event that you are 1000 miles away from gets to you 3 seconds later?

Why do you care? Why is it a negative?

Where do you come up with 3 seconds when I said 15-20 seconds later?

The World Cup I was referring to was the infamous match where a player received 3 yellow cards, and the delay from cable was so long that the OTA viewers (a Spanish language broadcast) had time to come running in to ask if that made any more sense in English. But the English broadcast had not yet seen it.

It was just bizarre. It's negative because it's annoying AF. But since you want to minimize things by making up numbers to attempt to make a point instead of accepting the provided information, there's no way we'll ever see eye to eye.

3 seconds would not matter to me. As it is, latencies are much higher and afford time for my family group chat (WhatsApp) to "spoil" events that I have not yet seen. I don't want to ignore the chat. :(

We used to use that to our advantage; put the radio on the ballgame, put the TV on MLB.TV, and if something exciting happened we could get over to the TV in time to watch it.

What's annoying is when you get an out-of-bound popup while you're trying to watch the game! I don't want to know that "opposing team hit a grand slam" whilst I'm watching the pitcher at 3-2 and bases loaded.

Sounds like a good way to ruin the excitement of watching a sports game with friends.

The journal app is freaking garbage. It took 2 major iOS versions before they added the ability to export your notes!

What year is it? After all of Apple's failed incursions into the social/media sphere, surprised they're trying this one. But I guess at least it has a web version which is where the competition lives like Facebook Events and Google calendar, not to mention eventbrite or whatever other things. Not really groundbreaking news from them, but interesting to see if this will hold on after awhile with users or just another tossed aside feature.

Looks like an Apple version of Partiful?

Was about to say this. Though less useful, because Partiful doesn't require an app so can be used by anyone.

I wonder how much the network effect may be leveraged for apps like these, to the benefit or detriment of apps like Partiful in comparison with Invites.

I know Facebook's last useful feature appears to be events in many circles.

Apple Invites can be used on the web. https://www.icloud.com/invites/

WTF is this? How do they make money? They have picture of 10+ people as a "team", on their help page

https://help.partiful.com/hc/en-us/articles/26526557943067-H...

it just says "We offer party add-ons and merch on our online store!"

Their online store has like 2 tshirts, stickers, sun glasses and a bag?!

They probably don't make much money. Their wikipedia page says they got $20m series A funding.

It’s… unclear. Right now their stated business model is explicitly to burn VC cash: https://x.com/partiful/status/1620481353396658176

VC for now, offer ticketing with a fee later.

That's actually an interesting plan! That totally might work

Exactly what it is.

After spending $49 on a crappy baby shower invite sending tool I’m glad to hear this. Could save a lot of people a lot of money! Hopefully it works for non Apple users too.

What’s missing when sending invites via mail, or a message on a social media they’re in?

You need to know your friends' addresses for mail. For both, you have to send out invites individually. People want to make a list of names and phone numbers and send out a blast. They then want a low-effort, centralized place to receive and manage RSVPs.

The organizing people ecosystem is a mess. It's nice to see something new.

“Additionally, participants can easily contribute photos and videos to a dedicated Shared Album within each invite to help preserve memories and relive the event.”

This sounds like a great feature. Post event photo sharing is always a bit of a mess.

Yes, I've had tons of invites to share on google photos and it has always been a cluster in some way.

Seriously, this is a killer feature.

This will be quite nice for Apple Funerals.

Massive if it truly works cross-platform.

Has anyone tried from android yet?

This is small but a cool way to integrate those various features across different apps and services. Like adding the Music playlist is not something I would ever use by my daughter, a teenager, probably would. Cute.

I am curious about the potential of this app for community organizing, or if any neutering has taken place in the same way AirDrop was limited during Hong Kong protests in 2020.

There's little to no magic as far as "this app can't be censored by the local government" goes if we're talking about something offered from a private company.

What's wrong with "create a Whatsapp group and invite all your friends there, and if they don't care they just mute/leave"?

In the US WhatsApp is not widely used. I technically have an account but never installed the app when I moved to my iPhone. I had it installed for years but never used it on my prior Android phones.

Americans don't really do whatsapp

For me it would be ... I don't use Whatsapp and I don't know many who do.

Can I send invites from Whatsapp and get responses from people who don't use it?

Honestly I've never received one.

I’m in the EU, don’t use whatsapp but know a sh*tton of people around me do. It annoys me greatly and I truly hope I’ll be able to move them away little by little now that RCS is here.

Annoys you why? Signing up just requires a phone number... It's the least invasive of all the social network type things. Also RCS hasn't been widespread until recently, WhatsApp has been around for over a decade.

I do not want to use multiple apps for chat, first, and I especially do not want to use anything from Meta. I know it’s E2E encrypted, but they still get to know who I’m talking to and how often, and other metadata. I don’t want that.

I don't have Whatsapp, but I do have an iPhone.

they don't use Whatsapp in the US

It’s worse than first class RSVP. Also where I live, it’s a social faux pas to mass invite people to a Whatsapp group as an event invitation for various reasons: it’s annoying, it publishes your invite list, and everyone’s first impression of your event would be a bunch of people leaving, lol. And you probably don’t want a group chat for most events unless it’s a group of friends who already knows each other. Nobody does it.

Id prefer to cut Meta's social product use in my life to a minimum.

Some of the timing of this app seems coincided with something of a large exodus from Meta/Facebook's apps. WhatsApp never quite caught on in the US, but Facebook Events did. (They are both Meta/Facebook apps today. The feature sets are, somewhat similar here.) A lot of my friends have been looking for replacements for Facebook Events, so this is somewhat timely for those that like Apple apps as a replacement.

I don't use WhatsApp, though I probably have it installed on my phone.

I'm in a birthday party planning group on Signal, which is another app I hadn't used in years. It's easy to forget I have messages there because it's not on my home screen, or the notification settings are different from my normal Messages app, or I just forget to look.

Each time you use a "different" app for something that's not in your habit loop, your response time gets delayed and you're less likely to notice communications. An app needs to get fairly regular use to become as useful as a primary app, even if, from a technical standpoint, there's nothing wrong with them.

I would expect most people to turn on notifications for anything that's reasonably described as a messaging app with similar settings to the ones they're already in the habit of using. Certainly disabling or silencing notifications would make it less useful.

Sure. I'm describing the real-world difference between using an app you're familiar with vs adding a new one to your repertoire. You're describing the ideal state, which is not one we all live in.

IOW: When I started using signal again, I didn't set aside 5 minutes to analyze the differences in notification settings between my messaging apps and consider the implications of them. I just opened the app and typed a message.

WhatsApp is not that popular in the US - especially for adults

I suspect this new Apple Invite is going to be like iMessage, popular in the US and basically unused anywhere else.

It seems like Apple has some difficulty to adapt to some international audience.

WhatsApp actually (quietly) launched their own simple event RSVP feature last year: https://faq.whatsapp.com/3313983622238973/

So since RCS is now here, Apple needed a new way to force people into buying iPhones by direct social pressure from peers.

(In the US)

From the FAQ¹:

> Do invitees need to have an Apple device with the app to attend an event?

> Apple Invites is for everyone. Guests don’t need the app, an Apple device, or an account to RSVP to an event.

¹ www.icloud.com/invites

> iCloud+ subscribers can create invitations, and anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device.

Only paying customers are allowed to construct their digital social life, but at least they're allowed to invite those filthy Android users!

I had a section in class back in highschool and we were told you should never base you opinions on titles instead you should read the content then come to a conclusion. seeing so many > "anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device." in the comments proves the problems still exists today.

Somebody reinvented the calendar ?

If it's like Partiful, which it looks like it is, it simplifies the management of events a lot more than just being a calendar. Partiful helps to find a time for an event that works for everyone, automates reminders, RSVPs for >1 person, and also allows the organizer to send messages to attendees without creating some big group thread that turns into a mess.

No one will use this

I will literally use this.

alright

yes, please one more reason to delete facebook

Separate app download which requires iOS 18. Neat but will be a pass from me

You can use the website if you don't want to use the app.

Hallmark cards as an app.

Silicon valley is entirely out of ideas.

I hope this doesn't take off at all as it would be a net-negative for everyone involved.

The whole "app for events" experience is a complete piece of crap with the exception of lu.ma perhaps.

"Oh you're not an Apple user, whoops you can't RSVP" is a giant step towards enshittifying them even more.

Anyone can rsvp.

ctrl-f "android", expected result

"anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device." It's in the 1st paragraph.

More discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42934422

Comments moved thither. Thanks!