Apple’s new Invites app promises to make event planning a breeze — at least, as long as you’re an iCloud+ subscriber.
Apple’s latest product isn’t the awaited MacBook Air M4, or an upgraded Mac Pro, but instead a new app called Invites.
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It’s very much a case of an app doing what it says on the tin; it’s an app that allows you to create an invitation to any kind of event straight from your iPhone, share it out to an email list and even add a party playlist and shared photo album.
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You start from a selection of existing backgrounds, or use your own photo, fill out the details for your event including location, which also allows for the Invites app to provide weather forecasts for your planned soirée. All so far, so neat, and the Apple Invites app is a free download as well.
So why the “subscribe” bit in the headline, I hear you ask?
Well, it’s because while anyone can get invited to an Apple Invites event via their email address (even heathens to the Apple world using Android phones, oh my!), you can only set up an Apple Invites event if you’re already an iCloud+ subscriber.
Apple Invites (at least for now, but it seems likely that it’ll stay that way) also only allows you to make up a music playlist using Apple Music.
So while the app is free, it’s basically a play to sell more iCloud+ subscriptions, or make them ever-so-slightly more appealing to folks already paying for an iCloud+ subscription. A very classic Apple walled garden approach, then.
Apple also doesn’t appear to be playing nice with its developer community either; as MacRumors notes at least one app developer with a very similar service is calling Apple out for seemingly contravening its own developer guidelines around copycat apps. Is there one rule for devs and another for Apple? It’s long been the case.
This Gif applies, I feel.
It’s also curiously limited only to iOS, not iPadOS, and Mac users are (as I read it) left only with the option to either mirror their iPhone to their Mac screen or access the service via the iCloud web portal.
If it were me and I had lots of detail to put into an invite, I’d want to do that from a full keyboard and larger screen, but maybe Apple knows something about party planning that I don’t.
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