133: Apple's All-New 'Invites' App

Earlier this week, Apple announced "Invites," which is designed to help users plan group events like birthday parties, graduations, vacations, baby showers, and more. Users can choose a background image or generate one using Image Playground and customize the look of the invite with different fonts. Apple automatically adds in data from the Maps and Weather apps so that invitees have all of the information they need for an event. People who receive invites can RSVP and the sender can track who has responded. There are options to create a dedicated shared Photos album and a collaborative Apple Music playlist for the event.

Invites is an iCloud+ service, which means that it is available to iCloud+ subscribers only. ‌iCloud‌+ is priced starting at $0.99 per month, and it provides users with additional ‌iCloud‌ storage over the free 5GB that comes with any device. While anyone is able to respond to an Invite that's sent out, creating invites is limited to ‌iCloud‌+ subscribers.

We discuss Apple's ‌iCloud‌ website and accessing the company's services from non-Apple devices, since Invites is also available via icloud.com. In addition, we reflect on the other apps that Apple has introduced in recent years, including Clips, News, Journal, and Sports.