An event planning app is announced by Apple
A Comparative Study of the Apple Invite App and the Partiful App on iCloud: A Gen Z-oriented Open-Source Event Invitation Service
Apple launched a new app, called Apple Invites, which lets you create, share, and manage invitations for events. It allows you to create a quick digital invitation that your friends can add to their calendar and collect information about the event. That includes your Android friends, who can access invites using a web-based version of the app on the iCloud site.
Partiful, a popular event invitation service that was founded in 2020 and has exploded over the past few years, appears to be very similar to the app. Both services have a mobile-friendly interface for responding to invites and getting details. Partiful doesn’t charge a fee, and it’s much more oriented toward Gen Z.
February 4th is an update. Initially, the story had covered the leak of the Apple invite app, but it was updated to cover the official launch.
The event’s info is shown with widgets, including one showing the weather forecast for that day and an Apple Maps box that you can tap to get directions. You can also create a photo album for people to peruse or add a music playlist, too, using Apple Music. I encountered a handful of quirks on the iPhone, such as invitations that wouldnt load and issues with getting the photo album in an invite to populate with pictures.
The experience has some hiccups for those not fully in the Apple ecosystem, which isn’t surprising. For starters, where an iPhone user can go straight to the invitation using your link (assuming they’re already signed into iCloud), Android users have to enter their email address and then a verification code to get in. If your friends don’t use an Apple account, you have to purchase an Apple Music subscription to hear their song, otherwise they’ll only get a preview.
It will be obvious that they aren’t getting the whole experience, since they will not see key details about your event or RSVP. Partiful offers the same experience but is a platform-agnostic product, according to the company and its co-founding CEO Shreya Murthy.
