“Apple slipped in a quieter announcement today amidst the iPhone 4S chaos: The launch of a new app called Cards, which lets you create a real, physical card from your iPhone by taking a photo on your camera and choosing from a simple selection of 21 different designs,” Alicia Eler reports for ReadWriteWeb. “Then Apple mails for $2.99 (U.S.) or $4.99 (elsewhere). You receive a push notification directly to your iPhone as soon as the card arrives at its destination.”
“Since Apple broke the news about the Cards app, shares of American Greeting Corp., American Greetings, Carleton Cards, and others have slipped, according to reports on The Globe and Mail,” Eler reports. “Cards will be a free download app, launching on October 12 with iOS 5.”
Read more in the full article here.
Sending those Christmas cards just got a whole lot easier. 😀
Uh yeah. Buhbye halmark.
It’s a bully move to force Hallmark to hand their patents over to Apple. 😉
How many times do you find yourself needing to send a greeting card at the last minute! If their turn-around is pretty quick, this could be very big!
Since you can add your own text and images, you can customize a card to say exactly what you want. I won’t have to cross out a single word anymore in order to replace it with the actual word and meaning I am trying to get across.
This is a small thing, but another cool thing from Apple.
I’ve always liked the idea of being able to include a personal message and/or a famous poem in my greeting cards. I can see my self using this for sure.
Why send a card for $2.99 when you can do it cheaper and better for about a dollar? Check it out here at: sendoutcards.com/preview
Because these cards look much better and are hand embossed.
Windows sufferer – notice the dead giveaway, “cheaper”
Indeed, cheaper does not mean better. A nice Hallmark card cost over $5 some times and that doesn’t include postage. The ¢99 ones are usually pretty basic and not very nice. Like the PoS cards I saw in the video at that address.
This is a brilliant idea!
In an age where email has quickly developed the shortest attention span outside of a “GenY’er”, Apple is now promoting an easier and more effective way to send the old “personal note”, thereby increasing the attention span of the recipient and increase the perceived value of the sender.
Just brilliant!
Not to mention what a great contribution this is to USPS and the economy. 😉
just watch.. in the next few months there will be a ton of people trying out the new Card App, at least once.. (and sending it to themselves lol) thats a lot of revenue.
was this $2.99 for each card? or say sending out so many you get a discount?
1-2 cards for special (or forgotten) times is how I see it being used. Christmas cards… I do not.
I could see it for Christmas cards if there is a discount for volume like you suggested. At $2.99 each, sending out bulk cards could get prohibitively expensive.
I think this will be great for me though, I hate going to the store and picking out cards.
“Analog” version of the old iCards… 😉
(Apple helps the beleaguered USPS generate some extra revenue.)
I absolutely hate buying greeting cards, so I haven’t for the past 10 or so years. I think friends and family will be surprised to get a card from me after all this time!
Brilliant but I’ve been using a similar app, ThankYouPen, for a quite a while. Very similar. The convenience is amazing!!