Apple Wants to Improve Event Creation With New Invites App

Apple is launching today a new Invites app on iPhones and the web that aims to improve the process of creating events and sharing memories with their participants. The app will require an iCloud+ subscription starting at $0.99/month to create events, but anyone will be able to RSVP to events created in the app regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device.

The iCloud+ requirement for creating events is a bit of a head-scratcher, but Apple believes it created a unique experience that regular calendar apps can’t match. While Apple Events requires iOS 18 or later, owners of recent iPhones will be able to use Apple Intelligence to create unique event invitations with AI-generated images and descriptions.

With an iCloud+ subscription, event creators can create invitations, share them with a link, and choose the details they want to share with others. They can also create shared albums and collaborative Apple Music playlists for their events. Without an iPhone, Apple Events can be accessed on the web at icloud.com/invites.

“Apple Invites brings together capabilities our users already know and love across iPhone, iCloud, and Apple Music, making it easy to plan special events,” said Brent Chiu-Watson, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Product Marketing for Apps and iCloud. The app does integrate with Apple’s Maps and Weather apps to give guests directions to the event and the forecast for that day, and guests can also manage how their details show up to others.

Apple Events is a quite surprising app for a company that, except for iMessage, didn’t have much success with its other “social” apps. You probably don’t remember the terrible and short-lived “Ping” social network that Apple launched iTunes in the early 2010s, but I certainly do. It doesn’t help that Apple Events locks event creation behind an iCloud+ subscription, and it also remains to be seen if people will see the value in features like shared albums and music playlists.