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?

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".

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.

None of those require buying hundreds of dollars worth of hardware

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.

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?

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.

> 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.

    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?