How iCloud Hijacks Your Meetings
You move into a new neighborhood, let’s say Springfield. Everyone is super nice, introducing you around, and you feel at home. Though they warn you from one person specifically — “Don’t get near the mailman”. “Why?”, you ask curiously, because good relationship with your mailman could be beneficial. “Just wait and see” is all they say. So you wait until you see.
The days pass, and suddenly, right as you exit your front door, you see the mailman. He greets you, and asks for your name. “Eyal, Eyal Yavor”, you answer, not sure what’s about to happen. He smiles back at you, saying “Nice to meet you, Eyal. Now that I know you live here, I’ll make sure all your mail is delivered right to your doorstep, at Evergreen Terrace 743.”
What a charming fellow, making sure your mail is delivered to your doorstep — It’s more convenient than the mailbox. From that moment on, all your mail is always right there at your doorstep.
The years pass, and you move away from Springfield to somewhere far away. You hand out your new home address to your old friends, and they promise to send you letters and care-packages.
Weeks pass, but nothing arrives. You’re very disappointed and set off to find new friends.
Apparently, all this time, the mailman saw all of Springfield’s mail addressed to “Eyal Yavor, far away city”, and thought: “Pffffft, those guys have no idea where Eyal lives, I’ll put it on his doorstep at Evergreen Terrace”.
So, at your old doorstep at Evergreen Terrace you have 20 pounds of letters addressed to your new home, your friends hate you for not responding, you hate your friends, and the mailman lived happily ever after. From time to time he asks you to buy more storage quota for only $5 a month.
iCloud is the crazy mailman
When an iCloud calendar user invites you to a meeting using an email address — and you once used this email address for iCloud — this invite will be sunk to the abyss which is iCloud Calendar.
Meaning- if someone invited bobdylan@gmail.com, this meeting invite will go to iCloud instead of his Google Calendar
Even if you stopped syncing iCloud calendar to your desktop or phone, even if you switched from an iPhone to Android, even if you haven’t logged on for over 2 years — This meeting invite will show up there.
This isn’t the first time. Apple notoriously locks in users without their knowledge. This is similar to the iMessage text hijacking issue Apple had in the past. Users who activated iMessage on their iPhone but moved on to Android, stopped receiving text messages from other iPhone users. Apple broke SMS. After a while and some noise on the internet, they released a self-service tool.
There is a solution for the missing invites, but as usual, it’s well hidden. People who left the iEcosystem will not even know that something is wrong, and will not suspect that they’re at fault. It’s the “Oh, you didn’t get my invite? Weird, I see it on my calendar” moments, where you assume technology is bad.
Technology works, it’s only Apple trying to control your entire experience, and doesn’t care about you when you move on.
You can login to iCloud now and there’s a good chance you’ll find some meeting invites gathering dust.
Fixing it
To disable this setting, login to icloud.com, and open your calendar.
From the bottom-left corner, click on the gear icon, and Preferences. Under “Advanced” in the top tab, you’ll find “Invitations” section.
If you’re not actively managing your meetings in iCloud (You use this email address’s Google Calendar or Office365 calendar), you should mark the second radio button and save.
It’s not just a rant about Apple
If you have an app or a service, you usually assume that some users leave. Make sure that it’s relatively easy to close the account. If a user’s inactivity may affect other users, let them know that X wasn’t seen for a while, and perhaps they should join the search party.
Don’t assume that non-active users are just in a 2-year vacation in Cuba, and will login as soon as they return
It’s cool for a user to have all his preferences and settings intact after 2 years of inactivity, but don’t prevent him from living his life during that period.
As long as the user has an account, active or not, the service is in charge of keeping his experience intact.
Solve for the churners once in a while.
In Meekan, we help people schedule meetings. All meetings are created on your actual calendar, sent using your calendaring system.
If you create a meeting and then stop using Meekan — You’re still the master of your meeting and can easily change it and update all invitees.
