Partiful (rear) and Apple Invites on the App Store
Add another one to Apple’s list of third-party apps that it has endangered, as Apple Invites threatens the livelihood of event planning app Partiful.
It happens so often that there is a name for it, based on one of the earliest examples of Apple releasing an app or a feature to compete with a third-party rival. Developers know it as Sherlocking, and they know very well that it can be the end of their business.
With a glass half-full kind of view, though, there is a way to argue that Apple producing an app to rival yours will actually grow the market. There is even some logic to that, in two ways.
First, Apple will always promote something just about infinitely more and better than any small developer can. So it will make more people aware of, in this case, party or event planning.
Then it’s also true that Apple will only go so far in its apps. Apple apps tend to be very good — although Apple Invites is a bit shaky — yet they are never the most powerful option.
Apple Reminders, for instance, is an exceptionally well-made To Do app, but nobody will ever downgrade to it from Things 3, Todoist, or OmniFocus. Apple Calendar is excellent, but there’s still a strong market for the much more feature-rich Fantastical.
Partiful isn’t as well known by iPhone users as the likes of Fantastical or OmniFocus, but it’s also considerably newer than those. While the company was founded as a website in 2020, it wasn’t until 2024 that it launched either an iOS or an Android app.
Even so, Partiful’s developers have been critical of Apple’s launching Apple Invites.
What may make Apple’s move more painful is that even if you hadn’t noticed Partiful’s launch, Apple had. Apple included it as one of its 2024 Cultural Impact Finalists, although it didn’t then win.
Still, even before its iOS launch, Partiful was boasting millions of users, according to The Washington Post. So it’s a success and now Apple has come along to spoil things.
Inevitable development
As with practically all incidents of Apple Sherlocking apps, though, there is a further argument that it was inevitable. It’s an argument that goes right back at the start when Apple had a search app actually called Sherlock.
After Apple released Sherlock, a third-party developer created an add-on called Watson, which gave the app more features. Apple did then incorporate those features and that did then kill off Watson, but they were obvious search features that Sherlock would surely have gained anyway.
With Partiful, what Apple has really done is leverage its existing services. Apple Invites uses Apple Maps and Apple Music, plus Messages and Mail, to create and manage events.
It’s peculiar that you have to actively tell it to add your event to your calendar, but otherwise Apple Invites is tightly integrated into Apple’s services. It makes good use of what Apple users already have and arguably, it’s an obvious extension of Apple Calendar.
In fact, it’s so obvious an extension of Apple Calendar that there are elements of Apple Invites that compete with Fantastical’s scheduling features. It’s just also so obvious an extension of Calendar that it should be in that app.
As a standalone event app, Apple Invites is a clearer competitor to Partiful. Apple can’t touch that app for its Android version, or at least it hasn’t tried, and its reported millions of users are likely to stick with Partiful for its features and familiarity.
But there will unquestionably be users who might have tried Partiful, who now won’t. And that’s the kind of Sherlocking that gives Apple a bad reputation in this space.
Mid-cycle Sherlocking
One surprise about Partiful being Sherlocked by Apple Invites is the timing of it. While it announced its Apple Sports app, which at least tries to Sherlock some other sports apps, in February 2024, it usually waits until WWDC in June.
So Journal was announced at WWDC 2023 and clearly Sherlocked Day One. Password managers such as 1Password and LastPass saw Apple muscling in with Passwords after WWDC 2024.
Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools arguably Sherlock Grammarly
LastPass, 1Password and even Day One have continued and appear to have held on to customers. But even amongst AppleInsider staff, Grammarly has taken a beating with Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools from WWDC 2024.
There was no possibility, though, that Apple Intelligence would not feature Writing Tools. As far as AI and LLMs go, grammar-checking is particularly low-hanging fruit.
So you can argue that Apple is just pursuing the inevitable evolution of its apps and OS.
But what you probably can’t argue is that it’s going to continue doing Sherlocking developers.
