BusyCal - 1.0

In 24 hours of looking over the demo of BusyCal, there’s no question I’m out of here and onto their web store to buy two copies. I fully agree with krainin‘s review and interestingly enough, we both have tried many of the same PIMs over the years. Used Now Contact and Up to Date, got tired of waiting for updates so moved to Daylite which was powerful but odd in its approach and I could never get it to sync correctly (to their credit, tech support was amazing but couldn’t solve the problems). So for about 6 months, I used iCal and got used to the simplicity and directness after moving from Daylite. I tried BusyCal yesterday after hearing it would do a great job syncing to Google Calendars which it did. But there are many features that make this well worth the price. Tabs, a List View, far better appearing banners, rock solid syncing. I love the little touches like the week view shadow effect showing daylight hours. So cool.

I suspect that the authors of this product face a double edged sword. It looks so much like iCal which was a huge plus for me. Again, after NUD and Daylite, its so direct and easy on the eyes. The downside is users will say “Well iCal is free and this isn’t.” The functionality is so superior that I hope users will quickly see its worth the price, especially compared to the competition. I also suspect we’ll see updates and new functionality far faster than we’ll see iCal updates (or for that matter, Daylite updates) which is a plus.

Yes, it would be nice if there were a family bundle. I plan to buy a copy for the MacPro and the Macbook Pro but I’d eventually love to buy a 3rd for my wife who uses iCal. I’d gladly pay the $40 plus the 2nd 20% discount to get a total of three licenses. Still, the product is really one of the best pieces of software I’ve seen in a very long time.