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Apple Invites

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Re: Apple Invites

#501
post #491

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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?

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.

Re: Apple Invites

#502

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Seriously - not sure what they were thinking - but this confuses the hell out of everyone (especially if they have the Apple TV+ app installed on their smart TV directly and an Apple TV physical box hooked to the same TV)

Let's just hope they don't start producing TVs (the screens) alongside all of this!

I'm watching Apple TV+ on my Apple TV connected to my Apple TV running Apple TV.

Re: Apple Invites

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp absolutely has hardware lock-in. You need to be an Apple or Google customer to use it, and you need at least one Android or iOS phone.

Wow. I assumed you could use Whatsapp on the web but you literally can't. You have to have an Android or Iphone. I guess maybe there's a way to fake it with emulators on your computer but that's a lot of work that you shouldn't need to have to do.

An Android emulator with Play Services should work in theory, but I haven’t tried it. They could have extra checks to prevent that.

Re: Apple Invites

#504

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> Not sure how popular this will become Since Apple was too lazy to make it into a standard, it will probably go the way of App Clips. Niche idea, too few users to adopt it and no stakeholders with enough control to make it popular on other platforms.

What would a standard for party invites be? ics files and CalDAV are sort of an Apple standard.

iCalendar is RFC 2245[0], written by Microsoft and Lotus. CalDAV is RFC 4791[1] written by Apple, Oracle, and CommerceNet. Those are examples of open standards that Apple happens to use, but aren't Apple standards in the sense that they're something they cooked up internally by themselves.

[0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2445

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4791

Re: Apple Invites

#506

Interesting that Apple is finally releasing new app functionality outside of OS updates. Is it a new trend? Google made this shift a while ago, but mostly out of necessity to mitigate the impacts of manufacturers failing to release regular OS updates.

They've been doing this for awhile, but usually it was something announced for the next version of iOS, but only released/activated later.

Like Apple Intelligence.

Re: Apple Invites

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent $70 to send out birthday party invites to 40 parents on Evite. The free version sends an invite with ads, links to Amazon, and other tacky stuff. As an iPhone user with two kids switching to iCloud+ is cheaper than the alternatives. And I think many other parents will agree.

...Why? The competition I see for this is partiful ( https://partiful.com/ ), which is free, handles invites for folks without accounts (I don't have one, I am invited to parties via text message), and is clearly the inspiration/competition apples for this app given the visual similarities.

Simple: I’ve never heard of it until this thread. I get probably 20 birthday party invites a year from Silicon Valley-type families, and they are all using Evite or Paperless Post. There was a time when I would have looked for alternatives or rolled my own solution, but living busy toddler life means I pick my battles and grumble about it on Hacker News :)

I think they both used to be cheaper, but now they’re focused on profits. Same as Partiful will do eventually.

Re: Apple Invites

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but at least those don't have hardware lock-in.

WhatsApp absolutely has hardware lock-in. You need to be an Apple or Google customer to use it, and you need at least one Android or iOS phone.

I use WhatsApp on my desktop

Re: Apple Invites

#509
I like this. I'm a parent with multiple kids, and absolutely despise getting Facebook invites to birthday parties where I can't even see the invite because I don't have a Facebook account. Meanwhile every family I know uses Apple these days because the kids need iPads for school, so this finally gives a way of doing birthday/event invites that all families can see/use.

I agree open standards would always be better, but reality doesn't always work like that and instead everyone just uses Facebook "because it's easy". This is now easier, and more open than Facebook at least.

Re: Apple Invites

#510
post #377

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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…

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.
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