BusyCal 3.10.4 (401052) September 13, 2020 BusyCal is an award-winning desktop calendar that combines personal productivity features for individuals with powerful calendar sharing capabilities for families and workgroups. BusyCal 3.10.2 is an award-winning desktop calendar that combines personal productivity features for individuals with powerful calendar sharing capabilities for families and workgroups. Respected long-time Mac developer, BusyMac today is proud to announce the much-anticipated release of BusyCal 3, a major upgrade to its best-in-class calendar. BusyCal iOS 3.0.6 Sep 20, 2016 BusyCal iOS 3.0.5 Sep 14, 2016 BusyContacts 1.1.2 Sep 12, 2016 BusyCal Mac 3.0.6 Sep 10, 2016 BusyCal iOS 3.0.4 Sep 06, 2016 BusyCal 3 for Mac and iOS video tutorial by ScreenCastsOnline Sep 01, 2016 BusyCal iOS 3.0.3 Jul 28, 2016. BusyMac has released BusyCal 3.6.1, a maintenance update for the calendar app with a lengthy list of improvements and bug fixes.BusyCal now lets you accept all invites from the Inbox by holding down the Option key when accepting an invitation, ensures the Info panel translates dates into local time when the timezones are different, improves processing of CalDAV meeting invites for shared. Also new in BusyCal 3 is support for travel time, one of the most requested features. Travel time allows users to block out the necessary time to travel to an event location. Users can set a fixed amount of travel time or determine it automatically using the integrated support for Apple Maps and Location Services.
Back in December, there was a discount bundle that included both Fantastical and BusyCal. I thought it odd to have two calendar programs in one bundle, but it was actually a stroke of genius marketing, because I bought the bundle specifically to test out both calendar applications as replacements for iCal. I won’t keep you in suspense: Fantastical won.
In theory, I didn’t have to buy both applications to try them out. Each program can be downloaded and used for free for a couple of weeks. In practice, though, a calendar program—unlike, say, a text editor or a web browser—doesn’t get the kind of intense, hours-long use that allows it to be properly judged in a limited time.1 At least that’s the case for me; I’m sure there are heavily scheduled people who can judge a calendar in just a day or two.
So I’ve been using both programs in parallel since late December. I doubt I really need to describe either one—they were both given workouts by several reviewers back when Lion came out and everyone was horrified by the new iCal that came with it—but for completeness, here’s the nickel version:
Fantastical is a small calendar that lives in your menu bar and pops out when you need it. It’s main claim to fame is a natural language engine that allows you to enter events by typing sentence fragments instead of tabbing from field to field. An example: Lunch with Janet on 3/13 at 11am at Panera. Fantastical will interpret this sentence and fill in the description, date, time, and location fields.
BusyCal is best known as “iCal with more and better syncing and sharing options.” It, too, has an entry system for times and dates that’s less rigid and clumsy than iCal’s, but it isn’t as sentence-like as Fantastical’s. I gave BusyCal a brief tryout a couple of years ago and decided that its advantages over iCal weren’t worth $50.
Both Fantastical and BusyCal read and write iCal’s data files, so you can switch back and forth between all three calendars.
My reasons for wanting an iCal replacement?. Like everyone,2 I find the faux leather look annoying. It’s not the skeuomorphism per se that bothers me—a little skeuomorphism never hurt anyone3—it’s the jarringly ugly color Apple chose: a yellow-brown that brings to mind the phrases “puke” and “baby shit.” There’s also the problem with the dates being too pale for my 51-year-old eyes. And the navigation delays. If you want to look three months ahead, rapidly tapping the right arrow button or typing ⌘→ three times in succession won’t get you to the month you want because iCal waits until its page flipping animation is done before deigns to accept another “next month” command.
Fantastical has a simple month view that pops out of the menu bar when you click its icon or type its hotkey (⌃⌥-Space by default).
The day numbers, although gray, are dark enough for me to read easily, and today’s date is prominently marked.4 The entry field at the top of the window is where you type the sentence fragment that defines a new event. You can scroll forward and backward either by clicking the arrow buttons or typing the → or ← keys. As with iCal, ⌘T brings you back to today from wherever you’ve scrolled to. Clicking the mouse on another window or tapping the Escape key5 puts the window away.
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Everything about Fantastical works as it’s described to work. The natural language parsing for event entries has never been confused in the three months I’ve been using it. The fields in the event definition area fill in as you type in the entry field.
If you favor week or days views (I don’t), Fantastical is not for you—it’s month only. The only other downside I’ve noticed is that it has no facility for defining repeating events. You’ll need another calendar program for that or if you need to print your calendars.
Update 3/11/12 As pointed out by Alex Chan in the comments, Fantastical does have a syntax for entering repeating dates. I was confused by the layout of the event definition area, which doesn’t have a “repeat” field until you type one of the key words (like a day of the week or “every”) into the descriptive sentence.
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There are examples in Fantastical’s help system (which, of course, I didn’t look at because why would I do that?) for defining yearly and weekly events.
For a while I thought BusyCal would be that second calendar program. It is, basically, iCal without the baby shit. I can see its date numbers clearly, I can tap ⌘→ as many times as I like in rapid succession and BusyCal will scroll that many months forward.
But there are two problems with BusyCal:
It has no AppleScript dictionary. I was surprised to see this, as the folks at BusyMac want to position BusyCal as iCal Plus. Not being scriptable is a definite minus.
It doesn’t sync to iCloud fast enough for me. More than once I’ve added an event to BusyCal on my MacBook Air, waited a few minutes, then closed the lid and headed out of the house. On checking my iPhone later, that last event was nowhere to be found. This has never happened with iCal or Fantastical—they seem to sync new events right away.
I can live without scriptability. After all, I still have iCal for scripting.6 But the uncertainty surrounding iCloud syncing is unacceptable.
So after three months of testing, I’m able to declare Fantastical a success. It’s not a complete replacement for iCal, but it does enough that I can keep iCal off most of the time. Even if Apple comes to its senses and reskins iCal in Mountain Lion (I’ve heard that some of Address Book’s problems have been fixed, but nothing about iCal) or some later version of OS X, I’ll keep using Fantastical for its fast and simple event entry method.
It really is everyone, isn’t it? I haven’t seen a single person step up to defend iCal’s new look. ↩
Many design experts came out of the woodwork when Lion’s iCal and Address Book came out. These latter-day Corbusiers, armed with a new word, took to the ramparts to decry ornamentation in their computer user interfaces. None of them, oddly enough, have argued against the Trash or folder icons. ↩
In a skeuomorphic way, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone. ↩
There’s a symbol for the Escape key, ⎋, but I tend not to use it because I don’t think it’s as obvious as the others. ↩
Surprisingly for a menubar application, Fantastical is scriptable. Its main command is parse sentence, which takes as its sole argument the string that you’d type in the entry field:
Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to query it for existing events. ↩
BusyCal 3.3.8 | Mac OS X | 19.31 MB.
BusyCal is an award-winning desktop calendar that combines personal productivity features for individuals with powerful capabilities to share calendars for families and workgroups.
Busycal 3
BusyCal is an award-winning desktop calendar that combines personal productivity features for individuals with powerful capabilities to share calendars for families and workgroups. Unique features include a panel modeless information to facilitate data entry; A two shown on the calendar and automatic advance to completion; Repeating To Dos; customizable calendar views including a list view and displacement month and week views; Styles and adjustable font sizes, live feeds of time, phases of the moon, graphics, sticky notes, and more. And when BusyCal lances for the first time, all your data are imported iCal instantly. BusyCal automatically syncs with iCal, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and other applications and devices that sync to MobileMe or Sync Services. If you later decide to return to iCal, all your calendar data will be updated.
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BusyCal allows families and workgroups to share calendars with MobileMe, Google Calendar, iCal Server and other CalDAV servers. You can even share calendars with other users BusyCal on a local area network without requiring a server. And BusyCal syncs with iCal, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and other applications and devices that sync to MobileMe or Sync Services.
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Characteristics
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View and edit event details on a panel of non-modal information.
Repeat to create two shown on the calendar and delay to completion.
Displacement of the month and week views.
Customizable list view lets you filter and sort events by date, calendar and more.
See live weather forecasts, the times of sunrise / sunset and moon phases directly on your calendar.
Fonts, sizes, styles and colors customizable event.
Add graphics to your calendar.
Add virtual sticky notes to your calendar.
Sync with iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch via MobileMe, Google Calendar or iTunes.
Synchronizing with MobileMe Calendar and other computers / devices that are synchronized with MobileMe.
Synchronizes with Google Calendar and other computers / devices that sync with Google Calendar.
Synchronize with other users BusyCal on a local area network or the Internet.
Share calendars with others, with password protection and SSL encryption.