Macworld Forums: Gems Revisited: Fantastical 1.1 and Moom 2.3.1 - Macworld Forums

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Does any utility facilitate the widening of the scroll bars and reintroduction of scroll arrows in Lion?

I don't know why you keep praising Fantastical so much. For $20 it should do significantly more that the $2.99 QuickCal, which also uses natural-language input and lets you check off tasks directly in the menubar. When I was looking for a way reasonably priced way to quickly add and track events and tasks, QuickCal was the clear winner.

brobdingnagian, on 26 October 2011 - 06:19 AM, said:

I would like to know the answer to this question

This post has been edited by Dan Frakes: 27 October 2011 - 02:30 PM

Quote - "Lion's version of iCal offers similar functionality, but Fantastical simply works much better,"

Strange comment. Do you have any form of evidence to support it?

I acquired Fantastical effectively for nothing because it came as part of a software bundle. I deleted it after several weeks because, to be quite honest, it offered absolutely no advantage whatsoever over iCal.

Sadly, this seems to be true of so many MacWorld "Gems". They are clever solutions to problems that do not exist.

brobdingnagian, on 26 October 2011 - 06:19 AM, said:

Unfortunately, not that I'm aware of.

Gradivus, on 27 October 2011 - 08:11 AM, said:

In testing both, I've found that Fantastical is noticeably more accurate at figuring out what my natural-language event descriptions mean.

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Few Mac Gems, due to their low prices, are going to be do-everything apps that everyone will find necessary. In fact, there's no piece of software that I'm aware of that has universal appeal. If you don't find a particular Gem compelling, that's fine. Perhaps you'll find a few out of the over 1,000 we've covered over the past decade. Because every Mac Gem we've covered over the years was chosen because someone found it to be useful and noteworthy.

jcvd, on 26 October 2011 - 08:33 PM, said:

I've seen similar comments from a number of people, but the truth is, Fantastical and QuickCal are different things. QuickCal is essentially an add-on to iCal for quickly creating events and for viewing a few days' worth of upcoming events—if that's all you want to do, QuickCal works well. But it's not as complete as Fantastical. When I originally looked at QuickCal, it had clear disadvantages compared to Fantastical. Here are just a few of the major ones:

QuickCal couldn't sync events with remote calendars—it required iCal to be running to sync events to anything but a Google Calendar calendar. (Fantastical has native CalDAV sync included.)
QuickCal showed only a simple list of upcoming events—you couldn't view an actual calendar or view events more than a week away.
QuickCal couldn't search your calendars.
QuickCal didn't let you edit events—it could only open them in iCal (or BusyCal).
QuickCal couldn't display detailed information about events.
QuickCal's language interpretation wasn't as good.
QuickCal didn't integrate with Address Book to invite attendees.
QuickCal didn't work with Entourage or Outlook.

Since I originally looked at QuickCal, it has improved, but in my opinion it still doesn't match Fantastical—most of those limitations remain, and I still think Fantastical's UI is much better. QuickCal does have a few minor features you won't find in Fantastical, but I don't find them to be compelling enough to make up for Fantastical's clear advantages if you're looking for a program to use instead of iCal.

Believe me, if QuickCal actually was as complete as Fantastical for $3, I'd be celebrating it. (And, in fact, I do plan to cover it at some point as a low-cost iCal add-on.) But given their differing capabilities and goals, it does a disservice to both Fantastical and QuickCal to equate the two.

As for the price of Fantastical, I consider $20 to be quite reasonable for a program that I use many times each day, every day, and that can effectively take the place of iCal. (Many people pay $50 to replace iCal with BusyCal.) Consider your hourly wage, and then consider the amount of time—and frustration—a good piece of software will save you over the next year. If it's still not worth it to you, that's fine—people make more or less money, and every individual will value a particular title differently. But for many Mac users, $20—the price of a few cups of coffee—isn't a lot to pay for something if you find it truly useful.

<quote> Strange comment. Do you have any form of evidence to support it?</quote>

I second Dan's comment on this. I found Fantastical to be more precise in guessing what I type.

Everyone has difference preferences and results. For example, I'm a LaunchBar user, yet I've given QuickSilver a try many times and constantly found out that LaunchBar guessed my abbreviation far better for me than QuickSilver ever did. That does NOT mean QuickSilver is useless or everyone experiences the same result as I did. I'm glad we have both on our platform to address various users with different preferences and styles.

<quote> I acquired Fantastical effectively for nothing because it came as part of a software bundle. I deleted it after several weeks because, to be quite honest, it offered absolutely no advantage whatsoever over iCal.</quote>

Again, I second Dan on this. I'm sure Fantastical won't be all that useful for some people. But some people find it quite useful. I contend that Fantastical's ability to work with several different calendar applications alone is worth considering for some people, not to mention other features that complement iCal. You might or might not find those things relevant in your case.

<quote> Sadly, this seems to be true of so many MacWorld "Gems". They are clever solutions to problems that do not exist. </quote>

Very myopic view, I must say. Mac Gems matter because workflow matters. As for me, I don't see anything wrong with trying to make things more convenient for me at the expense of machine time, which is vast compared to human time these days. John Gruber explains this really well in these articles:

http://daringfirebal...cument_syndrome
http://daringfirebal...03/deal_with_it

In fact this applies to many apps. After all, why use Twitter or Facebook when I can just email everyone? Why use Coda for web development when TextEdit is perfectly capable of editing HTML/PHP files? Why Chrome or Firefox when we already have Safari? Why use computer at all for that matter?

Quote

Very well said. I find it particularly true in my own case. I use my Mac for living and it's very important for me to reduce workflow friction as much as I can. Mac Gems are very critical in the process.

Workflow friction really matters. The less of that, the better, and the less of that means more income and more things getting done in less time and effort.

I've been using MenuCalendarClock for years, and it does the job well. The basic features are free, or you can buy the advanced version now $19.95 ...

I have Fantastical and like it, though I've never compared its natural-language interpretation to iCal's. It would be interesting to hear, from those who find Fantastical better, some examples of input that iCal misinterprets but Fantastical doesn't.

Dan Frakes, on 27 October 2011 - 03:45 PM, said:

Funny, that none of these things really matter to me (except the language interpretation, which I find to be excellent in QC); so weren't to be considered. I guess in that sense I was making an unfair comparison. My Calendar needs are aptly met between iCal and QuickCal, but there are sure to be different strokes for different folks.

Dan Frakes, on 27 October 2011 - 03:45 PM, said:

To me, people that pay $50 for BusyCal are either crazy or have money to burn. It would be lovely if I fell into the more favorable of these categories, but I don't. Again, however, I have little use for what I consider to be a marginally better feature set than that of iCal. If I were to covet any features, they would be the capabilities to set recurring tasks and to set recurring events on specific days (say M-F). The latter I do in Google Calendar, the former I'm still in want of (though hardly $50 worth of want).

Though it may be true that $20 is not that expensive in and of itself, there is a whole world of software that merits the attention and careful consideration of my tight computing dollar and to spend almost as much for a simple app as I would spend for an entire Apple OS just simply doesn't work for me.

I did see that you've also posted a review of QuickCal and I'm happy about that. It gives people like me that need to be more selective about their buying choices a more informed set of options. Thank you.

This post has been edited by jcvd: 28 October 2011 - 09:43 PM

Dan Frakes, on 27 October 2011 - 03:45 PM, said:

And, oh yeah, where do you buy your coffee??! I get 2 lbs for $6.99 = 270 cups.

This post has been edited by jcvd: 28 October 2011 - 10:19 PM