It's incredible to think that for many people this is a real problem that needs a real solution, because personally, I struggle to maintain social life. A few months ago I organized a party for the first time in my life, and probably it'll happen twice a year at most in the very optimistic scenario. This means that whatever new trendy way of inviting people is hip, it's not worth the effort to learn it, and it's just way more effective to use the methods I do know and I'm used to (physical conversations and texting).
Apple Invites
411–420 of 956 posts
Re: Apple Invites
#412CIA's top project thus far
Re: Apple Invites
#413I really hope this fails. Apple will use it's dominant position to create lock in like how they did with iMessage instead of cooperating with other platforms on a common standard. Oder friends and family are surprised when they want to video call over Facetime and find it hard to believe other people's phones don't have Apple apps.
Blame the telcos for the relative poor quality of text message multimedia (via MMS).
The telcos specify the size limits of MMS messages. iMessage has much higher limits in most cases, so iPhone has to use reduce the quality of the pics/videos to reach the lower size limits for sending to non-iMessage recipients.
For the telcos, why would they upgrade their size limits for MMS - it's just a cost centre for them. They probably make more by selling more iPhones as well.
Re: Apple Invites
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
If it's anything like the web version of Facetime, it's not gonna be a great experience for non-iOS users.
...there's a web facetime??
Re: Apple Invites
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
Re: Apple Invites
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope it succeeds. I hate FB and other “you are the product” products. I don’t care about “common standard” — I care about the best UX.
There are a ton of other options than FB at this point. Partiful is my personal favorite, and has way better features than Apple Invites has after testing.
Partiful is great! A little funky around the edges, but I keep giving them feedback hoping to be able to rely on a non-shitty indie platform for invites.
Re: Apple Invites
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 accessibl…
> 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.
Re: Apple Invites
#418My first though was „oddly specific“ but most people here seem to think this makes sense. Is my social life dead or what are you guys inviting so many people to? If I want to organize an event, I just write a message in the relevant group chat and get responses about who’s going to come.
That's exactly my thought. I don't even need a group chat and instead copy–paste a message to several individual chats, customizing the invitation message along the way.
This is definitely not for me.
Re: Apple Invites
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised more people here don't pay for iCloud for at least the bottom tier storage (50GB). The free 5GB is almost worthless in 2025 for doing nightly backups. I don't back up with Apple Photos but even with "just" app data my nightly auto backups are like 10-15GB.
Even on iPhone there are much better and much cheaper solutions out there (not to mention cross platform) and those have everything a couple of times better than Photos.app and then a bit more. Maybe except Apple's troupe of privacy claims.
Like what? I use Backblaze B2 to backup all my non-Apple stuff and that's $6/TB/mo. iCloud's 2TB plan is $10/mo, so actually cheaper per TB, but with Backblaze you only pay for what you use so it may be cheaper. But pricing is pretty comparable, and I can't even imagine what a PITA it would be to use B2 for Apple stuff, so certainly seems like a good value. Are you saying there are even cheaper solutions that also have good Apple integration?
Re: Apple Invites
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.