Apple Launches Apple Invites
56 comments
·February 4, 2025cleverwebble
crossroadsguy
Here friends just send a message on WhatsApp. I do not know anyone who has hosted a house party of 79800 people so that they are struggling with this. But then again I guess some geographies have it more complicated, isn't it?
lxgr
A (for most of the world, in any case) possibly surprising fact about the US is that WhatsApp is not very popular there.
This indeed causes problems when wanting to create a quick ad-hoc group for a party invitation etc., if at least one of the invitees is not an iPhone user.
jillyboel
You had to reach out to your friends to hang out with them? How horrible...
ninininino
For people in their early 20s to mid 30s in the NYC area, I'm starting to see mass adoption of an app called Partiful for managing social invites and events, it has a lot of nice features for sending invites, RSVP management, sending text blasts out to attendees (you can schedule reminders the day before or whatever).
Analemma_
My social group also uses Partiful. It works great, but it's a little worrying that it's so useful while being free: I can't see how this possibly could make money, so I assume the enshittification is coming any second now.
talldayo
> 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.
Mindwipe
I don't think it's that they've entirely ditched FB, but FB is genuinely terrible at surfacing event invites. It would prefer you to have to scroll through a bunch of irrelevant garbage in your feed that it had "recommended" instead so the product team can high five themselves over badly designed engagement metrics rather than worry if the users don't actively despise their product.
maratc
It's always nice to see some first-party apps from Apple[0], but historically the "iPhone-only social networking" hasn't been very successful — iTunes Ping or Game Center haven't been a huge hit, while group messaging in iMessage has only gained some traction within the US and virtually non-existent almost everywhere else.
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[0] One can even say "first first-party party app" in this case :)
Jeremy1026
Fortunately you don't need everyone to be on iOS to reply. So you can send your Android using friends invited and they'll just get a weblink.
eloisant
So that's a green bubble situation. You get a subpar experience, your iPhone friends get a subpar experience from including you, and eventually they'll yell at you "well just get an iPhone already!"
Mindwipe
It still requires people to read a text message.
It may as well be delivered via carrier pigeon outside the US.
infecto
In this case they don't need an Iphone to RSVP though. Seems like a good implementation. The challenge is for the organizer not the folks rsvping.
sambamonkey
I'm unclear what your comment has to do with this app, which isn't a social network, and which communicates just fine with other phones.
crossroadsguy
If you have watched the launch video, and if there was one to begin with, did they say [First Time Ever in an iCloud+ Account]™?
bredren
[delayed]
nxobject
In an age where every social media app tries to do everything – Reels and statuses and DMs – I'm glad that there are apps that try to do one thing, but do it well.
mrcwinn
Apple always sweats the details and I so respect it! Upon arriving at the kid's birthday party Android users get green balloons.
reader9274
Another service offering from Apple, where iCloud+ is required to send invites. They can't be more clear that services are their future.
racl101
It would be nice to move away from Facebook for this sort of thing.
syassami
Now is the perfect time for Apple to enter this space. Facebook and Instagram have shifted away from personal connections and are now dominated by promoted content.
ChrisArchitect
Official release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42934513
cglan
I don't see how this competes with partiful. Feels like it'll be another half baked never updated app from apple. I wish they'd open their apis and integrations more. Feels silly that these apps get first class access to apple apis, meanwhile better made apps are forced to do weird workarounds, or simply have no integrations.
dewey
It’s based on the new GroupKit API, which sounds like something that would be available to other apps in the future. Otherwise it would just use some private API.
anotherhue
> Creation of invitations requires an iCloud+ subscription.
nitinreddy88
This is first thing I noticed and Uninstalled
kylebenzle
But think of the status symbolism! To know that someone has had to spend so much $$$ just to send you a message! Next they should do it for phone calls too!
HumblyTossed
Interesting. So a lot of people still use FB for doing this. I wonder if this will be the tool for getting them off of FB finally.
egypturnash
"Requires iOS 18 or later". Well nobody will be inviting me to any parties with this, I'm still using a 6s.
lxgr
Invitees can apparently use a webapp to RSVP.
I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. I didn't really realize this until when I used it to create an event for a house party... I was somewhat surprised that only 2 people out of 15 even saw it. I ended up resorting to good old text message and that worked, but it was tedious. Not sure how popular this will become, but having a social-media-less event invite/broadcasting system would be nice, and having one that most people with an iPhone have access to covers much of my friend base