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Apple Invites

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241–250 of 956 posts

Re: Apple Invites

#241
post #90

Apple always sweats the details and I so respect it! Upon arriving at the kid's birthday party Android users get green balloons.

Green balloons, but they are deflated enough so that the #555555 (grey) balloons are clearly the superior experience. And then when people point out that the green balloons are intentionally hobbled, a voice tells them to just buy their mom an iphone if she wants a balloon that properly bounces.

I'd like some of what you are having.

Re: Apple Invites

#242

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.

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.

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

Re: Apple Invites

#243
post #159

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

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.

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

Re: Apple Invites

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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+…

Fair points.

Re: Apple Invites

#245
post #213

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.

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…

> 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.

Re: Apple Invites

#246

Earlier 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.

Can I use these more and better alternatives to back up everything on all of my iOS devices?

Re: Apple Invites

#247
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platform fragmentation is a generational thing. I thought email was a common denominator but I learned most people don’t check email or check it rarely. So different from the days when everyone had email. I still use FB and so do many of my friends my age (mid to late 40s). But a bunch have also migrated to Instagram. Among the younger generation, you’re a millennial if you’re on instagram because they’ve moved to Ti…

I wonder if it is rooted in similar things though. Right, like with email. People don't really read or check emails because spam became a serious problem. Then with social media, looking at facebook, there is definitely a big different in ad space in facebook between the time I used to use it to now. Where ads have effectively become the "spam" equivalent for social media. Ultimately, did success of these technologie…

>People don't really read or check emails because spam became a serious problem.

With the tabs in Gmail, very little leaks through to my primary inbox that isn't relatively immediately relevant (and not a lot of mail total). Often don't look at Promotions at all and maybe glance at Updates once a day or so.

Email is useful for me though, yes, a lot of my interaction with my circle of friends is over texts.

Re: Apple Invites

#248

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.

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.

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.

Re: Apple Invites

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. Marketplace seems to be one of the main use cases that's still relatively popular.

It's also the only bit of Facebook that hasn't turned into an endless stream of trash. I expect that not to last either, if you're looking for an idea then a localised marketplace alternative with social proof should be on your radar.

It still has a lot of trash, but 90% of it is trash you experience as a seller. Scammers are still really common, and I doubt the moderation has gotten much better since I failed to sell an empty aquarium because they couldn't be convinced it didn't have fish in it (although based on everything else on Facebook, there probably is just no moderation now).

Re: Apple Invites

#250
Event organization has been fractured for some time. Folks in my area have been using Partiful[1]. Bash[2] (now theBash) used to be in this space a bit but they left. Facebook has even added the ability for people without facebook to attend events on Facebook (they get an interface that shows them the event details and lets them put a name in "on" the event that isn't connected to an account).

I think Partiful is pretty good at what it does - no ads, can specify reminders, manages text blasts. The problem, to me, is messaging - how do you tell people about a thing? We are all getting tons of spam texts all day. Apple can cheat here because they own iMessage so maybe they will win overall - but still, what about your android friends? Time will tell. Good luck to everyone organizing events.

[1] https://partiful.com/

[2] https://www.thebash.com/

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