February 4, 2025 PRESS RELEASE Introducing Apple Invites, a new app that brings people together for life’s special moments CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today introduced Apple Invites, a new app for…
February 4, 2025
PRESS RELEASE
Introducing Apple Invites, a new app that brings people together for life’s special moments
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today introduced Apple Invites, a new app for iPhone that helps users create custom invitations to gather friends and family for any occasion. With Apple Invites, users can create and easily share invitations, RSVP, contribute to Shared Albums, and engage with Apple Music playlists. Starting today, users can download Apple Invites from the App Store, or access it on the web through icloud.com/invites. iCloud+ subscribers can create invitations, and anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device.
“With Apple Invites, an event comes to life from the moment the invitation is created, and users can share lasting memories even after they get together,” said Brent Chiu-Watson, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Product Marketing for Apps and iCloud. “Apple Invites brings together capabilities our users already know and love across iPhone, iCloud, and Apple Music, making it easy to plan special events.”
Beautiful Invitations That Create and Capture Shared Moments
To get started with Apple Invites, users can choose an image from their photo library or from the app’s gallery of backgrounds — a curated collection of images representing different occasions and event themes. Integrations with Maps and Weather give guests directions to the event and the forecast for that day.
Additionally, participants can easily contribute photos and videos to a dedicated Shared Album within each invite to help preserve memories and relive the event. And collaborative playlists allow Apple Music subscribers to create a curated event soundtrack that guests can access right from Apple Invites.
Apple Intelligence Makes Invites Even More Fun
With Apple Intelligence, creating unique event invitations is easy. Users can tap in to the built-in Image Playground experience to produce original images using concepts, descriptions, and people from their photo library. And when composing invitations, users can use Writing Tools to help find just the right turn of phrase to meet the moment.1
Simple Ways to Manage and Join Events
Hosts get full control of their invite experience: They can easily view and manage their events, share invitations with a link, review RSVPs, and choose the details they want included in the preview, like the event background or a home address. 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. Attendees control how their details show up to others, and have the ability to leave or report an event at any time.
Additional iCloud+ Premium Features
In addition to event creation in Apple Invites, iCloud+ subscribers have access to many more premium features:
- Expanded storage allows users to keep large libraries of original, high-resolution photos, videos, and files safe in iCloud, and easily accessible across all of their devices and the web.
- Private Relay keeps browsing in Safari entirely private from network providers, websites, and even Apple.
- Hide My Email generates unique, random email addresses whenever needed.
- HomeKit Secure Video allows users to capture and review home security footage in an end-to-end encrypted format.
- Custom email domains enable users to personalize their iCloud email address.
- Family Sharing allows users to share their iCloud+ subscription with up to five people at no extra cost.
Users can learn more about subscribing to iCloud+ at apple.com/icloud, with plans starting at just $0.99.
Availability
Apple Invites is available today as a free download from the App Store for all iPhone models running iOS 18 or later, and can be accessed on the web at icloud.com/invites. Some features are not available in all regions or in all languages. For more information, visit apple.com/ios/feature-availability.
About Apple Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV+. Apple’s more than 150,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth and to leaving the world better than we found it.- Apple Intelligence is available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max running iOS 18.2 and later, and can be accessed in most regions around the world when the device and Siri language are set to localized English for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K., or the U.S.
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Comments
By roddylindsay 2025-02-0416:457 reply 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.
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.
By thisissomething 2025-02-0513:32 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.
>> 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.
By thoroughburro 2025-02-0513:47 >> 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.
By yurishimo 2025-02-0511:40 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.
By thegeomaster 2025-02-0513:391 reply 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".
By basisword 2025-02-0611:35 >> 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.
By brap 2025-02-0422:14 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.
By arkh 2025-02-0515:06 > 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).
By stevage 2025-02-0421:51 Can also report WhatsApp has 100% of the backpackers meeting each other market.
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.
By fkyoureadthedoc 2025-02-0516:22 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.
By StressedDev 2025-02-054:562 reply 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.
By jkman 2025-02-0515:51 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.
By patja 2025-02-0515:41 Happens a lot with adolescents. They can be quite exclusionary.
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.
By satvikpendem 2025-02-057:56 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.
By ryandrake 2025-02-0423:43 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.
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.
By pkamb 2025-02-0517:23 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.
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.
By PaulHoule 2025-02-0620:47 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?"
By olyjohn 2025-02-0517:52 Sounds like those people weren't good friends anyways. What kind of friends exclude you for petty shit like this?
By canucker2016 2025-02-0422:39 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.
By thesuitonym 2025-02-0421:582 reply iMessage has been compatible with RCS for months now.
Except if you’re on Google Fi, right?
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?
By PaulHoule 2025-02-0620:52 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.
By whimsicalism 2025-02-0423:301 reply 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
By john2x 2025-02-050:22 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.
By thesuitonym 2025-02-0515:17 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
By phatskat 2025-02-108:38 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
By skissane 2025-02-0421:47 > 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.
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 spunker540 2025-02-0516:28 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.
By ghaff 2025-02-0513:25 It may be on by default but there is a switch in Settings/Apps/Messages.
By create-username 2025-02-0719:16 Nobody uses iMessage in Spain. People swear by Zuck's spyware
By addicted 2025-02-0618:30 iMessage is dead/dying. WhatsApp is killing it.
At this point even my American groups have become largely WhatsApp because Android exists.
By distantsounds 2025-02-0421:215 reply 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.
By stronglikedan 2025-02-0421:23 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.
By blueelephanttea 2025-02-0421:392 reply > 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.
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.
By blueelephanttea 2025-02-0421:57 > 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).
By tail_exchange 2025-02-051:46 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.
By sylens 2025-02-0421:22 While I agree with your points in principle, the paywall may act as a way for them to handle spam/misuse more effectively
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...
> 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.
By RIMR 2025-02-0422:56 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.
> 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.
By PaulHoule 2025-02-0621:03 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.
By blueelephanttea 2025-02-0421:23 > 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.
By Workaccount2 2025-02-0422:18 >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.
By dialup_sounds 2025-02-0422:09 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.
By aaronblohowiak 2025-02-0417:121 reply Group texts and shared albums (iPhoto or Google photo if you have androids in the mix) are most of my social interaction already..
By mikepurvis 2025-02-0421:111 reply 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.
By aaronblohowiak 2025-02-0516:12 Group text works cross platform now.. some friend groups are on discord
By nathancahill 2025-02-057:341 reply I'd argue WhatsApp is better positioned (globally).
By 0x6c6f6c 2025-02-086:07 WhatsApp being owned by Meta likely detracts from this though.
By cma 2025-02-0421:34 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.
By squigz 2025-02-053:44 What happens in 10-15 years more, I wonder? Will Apple stay the respectable, trustworthy company they are today?
By happyopossum 2025-02-0421:128 reply My wife is in a position (board chair for a co-op) that results in her sending out a lot of invites to events. Evite has kinda been the go-to in her social/co-op group for ages, but man it suuuuuuucks these days. Ads everywhere, annoying patterns, and lacks a bunch of nice features that this seems to have.
Very happy to see this
I organize a lot of events for a rugby team, and our events are now all on Partiful.
Maybe it'll go downhill like Evite and Facebook Events - but for now it's quite good.
By mjamesaustin 2025-02-0422:102 reply Currently Partiful doesn't generate revenue, which is evidence for its quality. As soon as the purse strings get attached, it'll be time to get out. But for now, it's an excellent service.
This tracks so well as an indicator, with many other products. As soon as the company starts making money, their product is going to become awful and it's time to find an alternative. Why can't tech escape this cycle?
By foundart 2025-02-050:00 Because there’s always someone willing to lose money by offering a free product without the undesirable stuff in the hope that they can acquire customers to mine for cash later
The key here is VC-backed. The enshittification rate of bootstrapped products (especially solo or small team) is magnitudes lower. Ironic thing to say while on YC's message board, but there you have it.
Nowadays when I'm looking for a new software product or service with a good number of options, first thing I do is check how they're funded.
Funny thing is that teams are catching on to this! Very recently I've seen two products have a separate "Are you VC backed?" heading in their landing FAQ (both answered with "no"). I can see this becoming a trend - if I were to create a product, I'd do the same.
By gioazzi 2025-02-0619:27 Nice one, I'll add it to our Apple Invites, open source competitor readme: http://github.com/gruprsvp/grup
By tyre 2025-02-050:31 imo the most likely scenario is that they never charge and are acquired by Facebook.
In exchange, FB gets access into your offline graph: people you interact IRL but not on social media. They can approximate relationships through Plus 1 invites.
Work in an instagram component for sharing photos / albums / reels from an event. You’re pumping right back into the FOMOmachine.
By pseudocomposer 2025-02-0522:35 Because every way, say, the Partiful devs could ask for $3/mo for months you post parties (like Kagi’s new pricing) is gated by payment providers that will either take 30¢ of every dollar, be expensive to implement, or provide a bad experience for users.
By Schiendelman 2025-02-051:173 reply It has. Apple escaped this cycle. Their software is great. Instead of you being the product, you buy the product. People then just complain the product is expensive. On this website, I roll my eyes.
Apple stuff has always been expensive, and never once has Apple justified raising the price because they're 'privacy friendly'.
Apple has a multi-billion dollar ads business. You are still the product, even if the execution isn't as brazenly anti-consumer as Google and Facebook.
By Our_Benefactors 2025-02-0515:59 > never once has Apple justified raising the price because they're 'privacy friendly'.
No, but they have made privacy a key selling point of their platform and communicated that clearly to customers.
Just because they never have formally stated “oh and by the way this increases the price of our products by X/unit”, doesn’t mean that feature isn’t included in the cost.
By StressedDev 2025-02-054:491 reply Agreed - If you want good products, you should support the people who create them. That means paying. If you want a privacy destroying enshitified product, keep using "free" products.
This isn't so simple. I love a lot of apps but I'm not willing to pay a monthly or yearly sub. I'll give you $5-$250 but I won't give you $5 a month.
By Schiendelman 2025-02-061:59 Well then you won't get maintenance or support. People need to eat long-term, not just once.
I want nice things, zero cost and complete privacy without adverts. Why is this so hard?
/s
It's pretty easy actually - most open source software fits the bill. Quality software can be pretty cheap to make per user.
The only problem is services where hosting costs need to be paid somehow and network effects mean that for-profit competition will win the market even if the product is inevitably enshittified. Doesn't matter how good your open and community funded event platform is if Apple and Facebook can afford to shove their solution in front of everyone you want to interact with.
By Schiendelman 2025-02-0616:131 reply What open source software is a "nice thing"? We're talking about high quality user experience here. I don't think it's controversial to say that's vanishingly rare in OSS.
By account42 2025-02-078:49 Actually it's proprietary software that's more likely to be full of anti-patterns and flows designed in the interest of the corporation rather than the user while advanced functionality is missing because it might confuse the lowest common denominator user. Looking flashy and retard-safe design does not make a high quality user experience.
By mattmaroon 2025-02-053:361 reply I mean it does escape the cycle, lots of products charge money and aren't awful. The ones that are awful are mostly the ones people don't pay for, or things that use the freemium business model.
Most things that just charge a subscription are good and get better.
By account42 2025-02-069:32 More like most things that charge a subscription will eventually add ads and other anti-features because that's the only way to satisfy demands for infinite growth once the market has been exhausted.
By aidenn0 2025-02-0516:51
By culi 2025-02-052:15 Sounds like Partiful's time has come before its even had a chance to try to sustain itself. It probably doesn't even have the resources to fight apple on this
Not everything is in the position or can afford to transitionally tax the whole of the internet itself like big tech.
You're paying for Apple Invites whether you realize it or not. There's immense value in making their platform more sticky.
In a few years you'll read articles about uncool Android kids not getting invited to parties. And that's your answer.
One of these behaviors is way more insidious.
By ToucanLoucan 2025-02-0422:331 reply > You're paying for Apple Invites whether you realize it or not. There's immense value in making their platform more sticky.
I'm not stuck to Apple's platform, I'm quite happy here. Apple services aren't drenched in ads end to end. Apple's services aren't constantly asking for nickels and dimes; it's one charge, every month, for a buffet of services that are regularly added to and actually improved, making them distinct from... fuck, the rest of the Internet basically, which seems to boil down to a revolving door of stupidly named services backed by VC funding that get popular, quickly, because they don't charge anything and aren't drenched in ads, and then slowly they add the ads, but there's an ad free tier for not much money, oh but now there's ads in that tier, which is also more expensive, and then the service shuts down because they didn't hit 60 billion users before their runway ran out, but there's this new service...
And while I'm certain they do some spying and whatnot to facilitate targeted ads, they at least pay lip service to my privacy, and my experiences developing stuff for their hardware tells me that at least there is a whiff of security to their hardware. There are a lot of things as a developer I'm straight up not allowed to do.
The "insidiousness" of Apple's plan so far seems to be, largely, making damn good products that people want to use, and backing them up with cloud services that work well. I wish more tech firms took that approach to be totally honest.
By highwaylights 2025-02-0516:111 reply You're totally missing the point of parent. The cost is in how insidiously this behavior ostracizes Android owners over time, just like they've done for years with blue/green bubbles.
I'm an Apple user, and it serves me well, but it absolutely uses really sinister dark patterns to separate me from contacts in the Android world.
By ToucanLoucan 2025-02-0516:251 reply I have never gotten the blue green ostacization. It's a color. It denotes whether you're using iMessage or SMS (now the new standard, RCS I think).
Like I've heard of teenagers giving each other shit for it, I have never ever once in my life, myself or any person I've worked or been friends with, gives it a second thought. And if I actually heard someone attempting to make this into a thing I would judge them incredibly harshly.
By highwaylights 2025-02-0520:42 That’s entirely the point though.
I don’t mind it at all, nor would I care, but it others people that don’t have an iPhone (especially teenagers), and they also suggest this in their explanation (that a green bubble means the chat is no longer encrypted, even though WhatsApp and RCS exist).
It’s a dark pattern that they’ve rightly been criticized for, but no-one has thus far cared enough to do something about it.
By dvngnt_ 2025-02-051:18 This already happens. My adult friend group has to create a separate group chat for me and another friends and we get the invite after the main group.
partiful was actually a decent solution but they just got sherlocked
By whstl 2025-02-0423:31 > You're paying for Apple Invites whether you realize it or not
I mean, it requires a paid iCloud account, so... yeah.
By highwaylights 2025-02-0516:09 This already happens with green bubbles, it's not new.
I mean, you can invite anyone. it’s not limited to apple device invitees.
By highwaylights 2025-02-0516:13 Yeah, but like, with the crappiest possible version of this service that is a massive downgrade for them from something like partiful.
I don’t want the uncool Android kids at my parties. Because then I have to listen to them droning on about the kids of things Android people drone on about.
By talldayo 2025-02-0423:25 Compared to all the cool stuff, like... checks the news ...Tim Cook's political backbone?
By Aromasin 2025-02-0514:07 Our club uses Spond for invites. I'm not sure what the financial side of it looks like, but it's been great for coordinating training/games/socials.
Evite was hot for awhile - totally gone downhill. Same as meetups. Tough to make those things as paid businesses which is probably necessary to keep them operating well (or at least take VC money and try and make a return).
By CoryAlexMartin 2025-02-0423:08 Meetup has become the worst service I use, bar none. They pretty much doubled our group fees from $200 a year to $400 a year, then started putting giant banner ads at the top of all of our member emails, then started locking essential features (like seeing RSVP lists) behind a member-level membership and started begging our members to give them money directly.
By bombcar 2025-02-0423:16 I think Apple's right about at least part of this - something like Evite isn't an app (or worth paying for), it's a feature that needs to be stuck onside another app that gets paid for.
Luma and Gemini have very similar logos, it’s kind of off putting
By pnw 2025-02-0423:06 Luma drives me nuts at conferences, I often end up invited to events without an address because they expect you to subscribe to their calendar feed rather than letting me put an entry in my own calendar.
By ghaff 2025-02-0421:32 I see very little use of either Evite or Meetup at this point though I imagine if I sought them out I'd see some continued use. (I do run into an Evite signup from time to time for a paid event.)
By ryandrake 2025-02-0423:38 For a short period of time back in 2013 or so, we had AnyVite, which was so much better than Evite in all ways. I wonder what happened to them. I think they basically disappeared.
I can highly recommend https://confetti.events/ for this.
Profitable small company (not affiliated but know the founders), won’t go downhill like evite.
By swyx 2025-02-0510:21 partiful i guess is the hot one in SF/NYC
Nothing beats https://www.when2meet.com/
I've used it for so much community organizing. It's such a simple tool and nobody has to make an account. You put in your name and an (optional) password. The optional password feature has served as a source of inspiration in my own projects. It pushed me to consider "does this really need an account? Can it be done without one?"
By acomjean 2025-02-052:28 Seems similar to when is good, which also has allows passwordless usage.
I paid to go ad free. We like it though it’s been down a couple times last year..
By lurking_swe 2025-02-055:46 looks awful on mobile. i do appreciate that it’s very accessible though.
Luma and Partiful are really good.
This Apple thing is going to turn into a "green text" social signalling thing all over again. If you have an Android, you won't be invited.
More scummy Apple social engineering bullshit. Kids that already hate on those having Android colored text bubbles are going to bully each other even more. And of course kids need the latest iPhone, too.
Apple is playing into this brilliantly and it's disgusting.
Non-Apple users are able to reply to invites so no one is going to miss any parties.
By butlike 2025-02-0516:32 Well, it says "No HomerS" We're allowed to have one.
This green text thing only happens in the US. Nobody really uses iMessage elsewhere.
Apple/iOS has market dominance in several places outside the US, including Japan, Canada, Scandinavia, and several other European nations. It has a slight majority in the UK.
Android has worldwide dominance overall, but people tend to communicate locally.
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma...
By piltdownman 2025-02-0514:35 Nobody uses iMessage in Europe. It's an american phenomenon like beepers, caused by different market conditions.
In Europe the kids use Snapchat. Adults use WhatsApp for most calls, messages and rich media, and maybe Signal/Telegram for select groups or grey activities. The elderly use Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.
By laken 2025-02-0514:18 Japan and most of Europe do not really use iMessage (Japan uses LINE, Europe generally uses WhatsApp), so I'm not sure exactly how iPhone market dominance is relevant to the previous commenter's point.
iMessage is nowhere near as popular outside the US, mostly because consumers do not expect to default themselves into some kind of single-manufacturer proprietary "ecosystem" that rivals Sony in how anti-consumer it is.
Thanks to the EU, you can just charge newer model iPhones with any USB-C cable now instead of having to pad Apple's profits further with proprietary dongles and cables that offer no additional value.
By dhosek 2025-02-0516:13 Your depiction of iMessage (which is essentially SMS+encrypted communication with enhancements to people who also have Apple devices) seems disingenuous, as does your explanation of why people use alternatives outside the US. Outside the HN bubble, most people don‘t care about things like proprietary vs open (and if they did, why the heck would they opt for propietary alternatives).
It shouldn't be allowed in the US. Lina Khan was going to put a stop to it, but tragically that didn't reach its culmination.
By tick_tock_tick 2025-02-0423:05 > Lina Khan was going to put a stop to it, but tragically that didn't reach its culmination.
Lets not kid ourselves she was going to keep focusing on minimum impact, likely to fail cases with good optics, and inventing more obtuse interpretations of anti-trust law while continuing to ignore any real monopolies she could.
Why? Does the color affect functionality or are we going to pass laws based on feelings?
It does. If you try to send a photo in an inferior green bubble chat, you get an error. Face time calls don’t work.
The text is harder to read for me because it’s low contrast and can’t be configured.
It’s significantly less secure, and a government agent required I use blue bubble imessage to submit an important document for security, and wouldn’t accept it by sms or email since both were not secure enough
That should work now because of RCS.
Email is secure enough though. People make up security rules in their heads all the time, doesn't mean it's true.
Tbh Apple's RCS implementation is so buggy it almost has me on the "they added bugs to keep people off of it" conspiracy train.
As in, during a conversation my phone would send RCS and the iPhone would reply with SMS only. This has happened multiple times with multiple people, and some where RCS won't let us communicate - the messages just disappear into the void, but only when sent from the iPhone.
By Aloisius 2025-02-051:22 This happens in Android to Android too, especially with Samsung Messages.
A lot of carrier's RCS implementations are buggy.
By whimsicalism 2025-02-0423:29 apple has intentionally handicapped rcs and it is still ongoing
If you're in the U.S. and a "government agent" told you to use iMessage, you are 100% being scammed. No way they would accept anything less secure than a fax message or a document portal that looks like it was set up in the 90's.
By TheDong 2025-02-056:25 It was certainly not a scam as the process completed successfully after iMessage-ing the required documents.
It wasn't the US though, yeah, but rather some american working for a foreign country's government.
Sending a message should just default to MMS, which I agree is lower quality especially for videos, but shouldn't get an error. I'm in multiple group chats with Android users and it's fine other than videos, which are from 2005.
I think SMS/MMS should just go away entirely though.
By TheDong 2025-02-0423:23 On my device it always gives me an error telling me to turn on MMS, which is turned on of course.
No, rebooting the phone doesn’t change anything, thanks for suggesting it
What are you talking about? Photos have worked in MSS group chats for 10+ years now. They send as shit quality but they work. And now mixed group chats are RCS which has all the important features of iMessage.
The error tells me to turn on MMS, which is already on.
RCS isn’t an obvious option anywhere
Settings > Apps > Messages > RCS Messaging
If it isn't there, About > Settings > General > About and tap the Carrier row. If it doesn't say RCS, the carrier doesn't support it.
Also one should note, MMS also requires carrier support and a few carriers don't support it in some countries.
There's a list of supported features for carriers worldwide at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108048
By TheDong 2025-02-059:03 Got it, I'll move to a country that supports RCS at my earliest convenience, and also not message anyone while I'm roaming to another carrier on vacation.
My carrier should support MMS, but I haven't yet had it work (and inbound messages to my number, like the picture of a family-member's wedding invite sent to my phone number, just silently vanish into the void)... I just kinda assumed it was working as expected since I'd heard so much about the green bubble issues.
> are we going to pass laws based on feelings?
This is very concrete fuckery.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/21/apple-doj-antitrust...
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bub...
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/21/doj-claims-green-bubbles-a...
By simplify 2025-02-0422:57 The concrete fuckery:
(Politico) Lower video quality
(NPR) Feeling unwelcome
(TechCrunch) Peer pressure
By dwaltrip 2025-02-050:29 Hate to break it to ya, everything humans do is fundamentally affected by feelings.
By thejazzman 2025-02-060:50 i read this take a lot but have never heard of it in practice (from my high school nieces)
what is overwhelmingly prevalent is political bullying; eg "make the dems cry again" was all over the school in various forms (t shirts, device backgrounds, etc)
green bubble hysteria really isn't a thing beyond nerds.
By highwaylights 2025-02-0516:08 I could see it being really useful for that, my only hesitation would be that here in Europe it would need to support Android due to how ubiquitous that is here.
Tend to agree. Hopefully Google will also offer their own alternative to this. (Free) Online invites just suck these days
By elwillbo 2025-02-0422:49 yeah, Evite used to really shine but now I feel like it's just an invitation to see ads
By canucker2016 2025-02-0422:224 reply I think some demographic info can be useful in judging the potential uptake.
Apple iPhone ownership amongst USA teens:
2024: 87%
2019: 83%
2014: 67%
https://www.iclarified.com/95177/87-of-us-teens-own-iphones-...
https://www.pipersandler.com/news/piper-jaffray-completes-se...
https://www.pipersandler.com/news/different-new-cool-accordi...
Smartphone marketshare for iPhone in various countries:
65%: Norway
59%: Sweden/Japan/Canada/USA
49%: UK
30-39%: Germany/Portugal/Italy
other countries are lower from my random sampling of developed countries (South Korea is dominated by Samsung).
Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/norway
Change last part of url to get info for another country
By green_leaves 2025-02-0513:093 reply Norway data from statcounter doesn't seem reliable. In just 4 months, July->October 2024, there's a 14% upswing in iphone total marketshare. Which implies that at least 14% of users bought a new phone, assuming (wrongly) that everybody would have changed from Android to iPhone (ignoring also deceases and teenagers getting their first phone). And the period doesn't even include Black Friday or Christmas. And barely the iPhone 16 launch that happened in September 20, 2024.
By ZeroTalent 2025-02-090:24 Samsung shoot itself in the foot as a phone manufacturer in the last 2 years. Battery life, forced apps, ads, and a pretty bad implementation of the Android OS while trying to sell the phone at the same price as the iPhone.
The S24 ultra still has an ancient 3x cam that has been left unchanged since the S21 ultra.
It's hard to compete when Apple has the Macbook + iPhone synergy/ecosystem advantage.
By varjag 2025-02-0513:45 I dunno most people I know here do appear to have iphones. And many of those who have an Android seemingly have an iPhone as work or personal device in addition. So 60+ percent doesn't sound unlikely.
By dubcanada 2025-02-0514:00 statcounter just uses data from website traffic, it's nothing more then Google Analytics
So the 14% increase is probably a single or few site(s) getting a insane amount of traffic.
> Creation of invitations requires an iCloud+ subscription.
I really wonder what the uptake is on iCloud+ subscriptions.
By crazygringo 2025-02-0423:141 reply Pretty high I suspect, since you need it if you want to back up more that 5 GB.
If you keep photos and videos without dealing with a separate service, it's pretty much a no-brainer. And the cheapest tier is $0.99/mo. for 50 GB so it's not exactly breaking the bank.
> And the cheapest tier is $0.99/mo. for 50 GB so it's not exactly breaking the bank.
This is a huge trick. Like any other service where the most friction is setting up billing... then they can increase the price easily. Do upgrades to other tiers require confirmation?
By crazygringo 2025-02-0423:392 reply You have to explicitly upgrade.
There's no trick as far as I can tell.
And they haven't increased the price of the $0.99 tier ever, and it's been around for 8 years I think. I don't think they've ever increased the price of any storage plan in the US ever -- prices in other countries have changed but that seems to do more with currency fluctuations.
Apple is known for their transparent pricing and easy cancellation. I don't think there are any tricks here.
If anything their trick is in how they describe the storage tiers on their website[1]:
> $0.99/mo for 50GB: Storage for thousands of photos, videos, and files.
> $2.99/mo for 200GB: Great for family sharing or larger media libraries.
> $9.99/mo for 2TB: Plenty of space for all the family’s photos, videos, and files.
Other than the $0.99 tier, these storage numbers are comically low for the uses cases Apple describes in plain English. But that's par for the course with Apple... An arm, a leg, and your firstborn for storage and RAM upgrades. As in hardware, so in SaaS cloud storage, I guess.
By Schiendelman 2025-02-051:251 reply I did professional photography on the side for the better part of a decade before needing to go above 2TB. You don't have to hoard.
I agree on photos, but when I hear "larger media library" I assume we're talking video content, both family videos taken on phones and commercial media (TV and Movies). Maybe I'm misreading but either 200GB or 2TB are both very small for a whole family's collection of video media.
By Schiendelman 2025-02-052:35 Are you thinking of their television shows or movies or something? That's not really a use case here.
By pertymcpert 2025-02-069:38 Does any significant slice of the population store TV shows and movies on their phones or laptops?
By solid_fuel 2025-02-054:00 Honestly, most families do not maintain a digital collection of media. And I say that as someone who does. Most families just have a netflix or prime or apple tv subscription, maybe cable. If there's a collection, it's probably DVD or Blu-Ray still.
> There's no trick as far as I can tell.
I think that is the trick.
99 cents is so innocuous, that people set up billing to allow it. People who set up their apple id without a credit card will probably attach a card to their account to get the 99 cent storage "deal".
At that point, upgrading to the next tier is inevitable as phones have been steadily increasing in storage capacity.
I think it would be nicer if your icloud storage capacity matched your primary device.
By crazygringo 2025-02-0513:59 There's no winning then, is there?
If a company doesn't offer a super cheap tier, then people complain it's too expensive and they're paying for space they don't need.
If Apple does offer a super cheap tier, there are complaints it's some kind of trick.
The $0.99 tier has been great for my needs. If you have a 64 GB phone you never need more. If you have a larger phone you quite frequently don't need more -- a lot of my phone storage goes to song, podcast, and video downloads. That stuff doesn't need to be backed up, and isn't by default.
I think that nearly everyone who has an iPhone (at least who didn't get their phone deeply discounted second-hand) has a payment method set up with Apple. I don't remember the numbers from when I had to know ~5 years ago, but it was in excess of 95% in the US.
By m463 2025-02-055:48 "with this one trick, you can get everyone to register a credit card!"
:)
I avoided subscribing for years out of principle, just backed up my photos locally (which they make as painful as possible — afaik it’s not possible to just plug your phone into a Linux machine and grab all the new photos).
I finally caved a few months ago when I got tired of fighting with the awful backup storage UI that makes it difficult to determine why the backup is failing even though it’s smaller than 5GB.
Apple has every incentive to make that UI as bad as possible while still being functional.
By ZeroTalent 2025-02-090:20 But, in my experience, it's extremely fast. Noticeably faster syncing than Dropbox. And even the Windows client is being constantly updated.
Don’t you need to get iCloud+ if you want to have more than 5GB iCloud storage? I would guess it’s probably more than 80% of users.
By bombcar 2025-02-0423:14 That's where most of it comes from - iCloud+ is different than Apple One.
iCloud+ for 2TB is priced just where if you have ONE other Apple service, you're probably better off with Apple One.
(I admit I misread this whole thing as being a feature of Apple One.)
By jxdxbx 2025-02-0423:09 I switched to iCloud for my personal email once it supported personal domains (switched from Fastmail). It’s all I need really. Work is Gmail of course, with its annoying-in-retrospect tagging system instead of folders, which causes havoc with traditional mail apps.
By plandis 2025-02-053:30 Not sure but services overall is one of Apples fastest growing business segments.
By johnofthesea 2025-02-0510:17 I remember seeing everyone with iPhone >10 years ago in Norway. Then it dropped - it was pretty visible that is why I remember. Haven't been paying attention about last ~4 years.
Yeah, and they'll likely make this Appley only to create social pressure for even more uptake.
Yuck
By Salgat 2025-02-0422:40 Unless you use their inferior web version that pressures you into also getting an iphone.
