[Macworld.com]

Moving from one end of California to the other gave Philip Michaels a newfound appreciation for Apple’s humble calendaring app. [more]

[Filipe_Martins]

Insanely great! Both iCal and the article. I read it twice and it means something:-)
iCal is real indispensable, that's right. And it got so much better, "tigered".
Having mastered syncing and "networking" calendars in one of the previous versions, we were amazed to find these features so much improved. If only we could figure out how to handle multiple time zones.
Any ideas?
A feature still missing in Tiger's iCal is a time zone manager. Currently, iCal will change the time zone when the Mac's time zone changes (e.g. when you take a flight from LA to London). It's nice, but also troublesome when you want to schedule things in advance. A way of displaying a second time zone as a reference wouldn't hurt a traveller, would it?
Anyway, iCal is a darn useful app.
Filipe Pereira Martins & Anna Kobylinska
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[auren]

If only iCal would integrate back and forth with Mail !!! Then it would be a true Entourage killer. I've tried three or 4 times to migrate to iCal and I love its many features and format. But as soon as I have to coordinate replying to emails back and forth with Mail, I give up in despair. Entourage just plain wins this game hands down. Come on Apple, let's get with it!

[galley]

I tried iCal back when it was first introduced, but was frustrated by the lack of a way to have daily reminders that don't clutter up the calendar display. For example, I take various routine medications twice a day, and want reminders to pop up at the appropriate times. But I don't want to see two items displayed for every day of the month on the calendar displays!
On my Palm PDA, I can mark these daily reminders "Private", and then tell its calendar program to hide all private items.
Is there a way to do this in iCal 2.0?

[Filipe_Martins]

In reply to:

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reminders to pop up at the appropriate times. But I don't want to see two items displayed for every day of the month on the calendar displays!
On my Palm PDA, I can mark these daily reminders "Private", and then tell its calendar program to hide all private items.

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You can keep such a "private" calendar in iCal which you hide by simply deactivating it (deselecting the checkbox). It will not be displayed, but the reminders will duly pop up (checked with iCal 2.02 on Tiger 10.4.2). I hope this works as you expected.
Filipe Pereira Martins & Anna Kobylinska

[Filipe_Martins]

Did I mention you can set it up as a recurring event, e.g. daily?
And instead of having a message pop up, you can execute a script, e.g. open a URL, to make it less of an event.
Cheers,
Filipe & Anna

[prachi]

In reply to:

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A feature still missing in Tiger's iCal is a time zone manager. Currently, iCal will change the time zone when the Mac's time zone changes (e.g. when you take a flight from LA to London). It's nice, but also troublesome when you want to schedule things in advance. A way of displaying a second time zone as a reference wouldn't hurt a traveller, would it?

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If you turn on Time Zone support in the preferences, you can change the time zone whenever you want. In addition, if you use the Inspector, there's a field that lets you specify the time zone for an event. These tend to suit my needs pretty well. Is there something more you're looking for?
-Prachi

[k2director]

iCal 2.0 really blew it for me. Why? Because the designers actaully REMOVED a useful feature: the ability to not only create new To Do items with a keyboard shortcut, but ALSO to enter in Due Date information for each new To Do by only using keyboard shortcuts.
The beauty of this feature is that you could quickly brainstorm a bunch of To Dos, and set them up without constantly moving your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse.
But iCal 2.0 removed that feature. Why???? Does no one else appreciate the ability to enter items and their due dates quickly, using only the keyboard? Do Apple's designers actually use their own product? Bozos...

[LostIntel]

In reply to:

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If only iCal would integrate back and forth with Mail !!! Then it would be a true Entourage killer. I've tried three or 4 times to migrate to iCal and I love its many features and format. But as soon as I have to coordinate replying to emails back and forth with Mail, I give up in despair. Entourage just plain wins this game hands down. Come on Apple, let's get with it!

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I agree here 100%. I enjoy using macs and products made by apple, but iCal's features really annoyed me. Also i found having to have iCal and Mail open just so i could use a calender, To Do lists and send emails was slowing my mac down. The ability to have all these feature wrapped up in one app. along with my list on contacts makes Entourage by far the better app for me /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[pairof9s]

I'd venture to say based on my limited evaluations that Entourage uses as much CPU as iCal and Mail combined. Entourage, and Office for that matter, is a very hungry beast (don't forget you have Office Notifications on in the background). To Entourage's benefit, the integration of email, events and tasks via the Project feature is the crowning item; the ability to collaborate these tools is unprecedented on a Mac.

[Filipe_Martins]

Hi,

In reply to:

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(by pairof9s)
I'd venture to say based on my limited evaluations that Entourage uses as much CPU as iCal and Mail combined. Entourage, and Office for that matter, is a very hungry beast (don't forget you have Office Notifications on in the background) (...)

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Absolutely.
Tiger is a quantum leap as Philip Michaels points out:

In reply to:

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(By Philip Michaels)
So whats a record-keeping fanatic like myself to do? Just upgrade to Tiger.

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Yes, that's right! I wouldn't want to miss Tiger-only features like Smart Mailboxes. It feels soo good to un-clutter the mailbox and be able to actually concentrate on the job at hand. Newsletters and such wind up in the right mailbox by themselves. Tiger made life so much easier, even if I miss some lost features, too.

In reply to:

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(by Prachi)
if you turn on Time Zone support in the preferences, you can change the time zone whenever you want. In addition, if you use the Inspector, there's a field that lets you specify the time zone for an event. These tend to suit my needs pretty well. Is there something more you're looking for?

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I agree. You must activate time zone support to access the "time zone" popup menu. This feature does its job well indeed. However, iCal provides no visuals to help you differentiate between events set up in a different time zone (except for this popup-menu). As a result, you have to click on each event to find out if it refers to a different time zone or not. What is more, you can not view your schedule in the context of an alternative time zone (unless you switch your Mac's setting to that zone, of course).
iCal has proved very reliable so far, including syncing across time zones (no glitches). But as far as I am concerned, it leaves too much room for human error.
Let me illustrate.
If you frequently fly between, let's say, Chicago and New York, time zones aren't really that much of an issue. But if you have to hop from New York to London to Beijing, each time you change your time zone you can hardly recognize your own calender. If you can keep an eye on multiple time zones at a time in World Clock, why not in iCal?
But then again, it's iCal, not "World Cal" (like the World Clock widget), so perhaps we simply demand too much.
iCal's currrent functionality rocks, as long as I travel around my office. When we have to jet around the world, it becomes obvious that something is missing. At least the current version 2.02 is not yet up to the task. We will have to wait and see.
Filipe Martins and Anna Kobylinska

[larserikdahle]

I just recently switched to Mac, and I have to say I'm very happy so far. I really like the OS and all the great software, iCal included. It has to be one of the best and easiest-to-use calendar app out there.
But there's one thing that I can't understand about the Tiger version of iCal: The eight week limitation when syncing with my mobile via BlueTooth using iSync. Who doesn't plan their life ahead more than two months?
From what I gather, this limitation was fixable in Panther, one only had to find the right variable (number of days) in the appropriate file, and edit away. Now in Tiger, Apple have remarranged the architecture, and the variable in question can no longer be found.
This makes iCal all but unusable for me. I'm a freelance musician, and I need to plan my life ahead more than eight weeks at a time.
Since Entourage does not sync properly for me using Jonas Salling's MobileSync, I'm back to syncing my mobile with Outlook on my Windows XP machine again - which is a huge turnoff, since the functionality of iCal and iSync was one of the reasons why I bought my precious 12'' PB.

[scotty321]

Sorry, but iCal still remains the most unintuitive calendar program available on the Macintosh. The features you mention in this article are standard to ALL calendar programs, not just iCal. And iCal pales in comparison to just about every other program on the market. It is horribly unintuitive & difficult to use (not to mention that it lacks thousands of features that are packed into a program like Now Up-To-Date). There's not even a button to create a new appointment! Case in point: The plus sign in the lower left hand corner of the screen LOOKS like it might create a new appointment (arguably the #1 most commonly-used daily task that any user would do), but it actually creates a new CALENDAR instead (something that people do RARELY, if EVER). So let's say you double-click on a date to add a new appointment (unintuitive) or use command-N to create a new appointment, the problems only get worse. The highlighted text on your calendar is the title of your appointment, but if you actually want to make any changes to time, repeat, or add notes, then you actually have to mouse over to the info pane. The lack of many different views is horrible. No multi-user networking support, except for .mac synchronization. I could go on & on & on. The ONLY calendar solution for my money is NOW UP-TO-DATE, the only TRUE calendar program available for the Macintosh. iCal is a disaster of human interface & a horrible showcase of intuitiveness, and it is a shame that it comes out of a company like Apple. Sorry Apple, but iCal is a STINKER.

[dannross]

To me, publishing is the biggest limitation in iCal! You can only export a single calendar to the web, but common sense would dictate that I may want to share 3 or 4 calendars on a single screen - e.g. letting the grand parents see sporting events for three children and some of our other personal events. The only way to do this now is either publish five seperate calendars or make screen shots.
And another issue is iCal showing up in the dock. It shows 17 Jul and won't change. Any suggestions?