Apple just launched a new app today: Apple Invites. It’s available now on the App Store, and one of its best features is deep integration with Apple’s iOS app ecosystem. Here’s what that means.
Apple Invites features six integrations with system apps
Apple’s iPhone software ecosystem benefits tremendously from the millions of third-party apps available on the App Store.
But iOS is also built on the foundation of Apple-designed apps. And the number of apps keeps growing. Recent debuts have included Sports, Journal, and now today’s Invites app.
With this growing app portfolio, Apple has new opportunities to leverage the strengths of its ecosystem. Journal, for example, benefits heavily from pulling in data from other system apps.
Invites follows this trend by integrating with features and data from a whopping six other pre-installed Apple apps.
Current app integrations include:
- Photos, for shared event albums
- Music, for collaborative playlists
- Image Playground, which lets you create custom invite images
- Maps, for showing an event’s location
- Weather, to offer projected forecasts
- and Calendar, which you can add an event to with a tap
There’s potential for even more additions in the future, too. For example, Wallet app and Apple Cash integration could make event cost-splitting easy. Maybe Find My will join the fun at some point too.
Apple’s ecosystem strengths help Invites succeed
All of this demonstrates the power of Apple’s ecosystem.
Shared albums for photos, collaborative Apple Music playlists, weather and maps data, and other integrations elevate the Invites experience above competing app and service options like Partiful.
Even for low-key events, where I might be inclined to just use a standard calendar invite, these integrations make me want to use Invites instead.
Plus, Invites is beautifully designed, provides a great experience for both iPhone and Android users, and keeps event planning simple and fun.
The only real downside: event creation requires an iCloud+ subscription. But if you pay for even the cheapest iCloud storage plan (a payment the 5GB free limit makes almost necessary), you’re set.
Apple has long excelled at integrating hardware, software, and services into a great user experience. Now, it’s exciting to see how it can integrate its various apps together to make something special too.
Have you tried the Apple Invites app? What do you think of its app integrations? Let us know in the comments.
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