My little Mac hasn't the resources to run iCal, and everyone asks me the date. My need is not to schedule reminders (but hour ones to stretch), but quickly check the date and local holidays. TinyCal is a new kind of application, perfectly suited to the 'status menu' to the right of the Desktop's Menu Bar, where it displays a number: the day of the month.

There are many preferences, but mine drops down three months (resembling Unix's old 'cal' format), with the current month in the center, current date circled. Moving the pointer over the tinted dates displays what holiday they are. The interface is a model of elegant simplicity. This allows it to take about 2 MB of chip memory, as opposed to iCal's 15MB, though the disk memory is about the same. This can make a great difference on computers with little memory.

Though I also have Apple's date status running: day of week and time, my computer takes 20 seconds to display the date (it swaps) when I click this. TinyCal drops down its menu instantaneously.

Combined with TinyAlarm, Pixelated Software offers the perfect applications for the status menu. They are in keeping with Unix philosophy: small (interface), simple, each doing one thing extremely well.

If TinyAlarm disappears because the current applications overwrites its icon with its menu bar, just define a 'hotkey' of your choice or click the desktop. ('Finder' takes little space on the menu bar.)

TinyCal and TinyAlarm both greatly enhance MacOSX. Those who can pop-up iCal in a second may not need these, though usually you only need a quick calendar overview and simple alarm clock. iCal doesn't provide these easily.