BusyCal
Rich iCal-like scheduling & to-do app with Mac & Google sync.
Version: 1.0
I found it at last! The best single user and small group calendar & scheduler for the Mac !!!
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: krainin Thursday, October 01 2009 @ 05:54 PM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: 1-6 months
Recommend Product: YES
BusyCal is a winning calendar and scheduling program! It works flawlessly, and is very flexible, customizable and intelligently designed. BusyCal is a welcome solution if you have frustratingly given up on Now X, after literally years of waiting, only to find Now X in its current state to be undependable, buggy, confusingly cluttered, overproduced, unintuitive, albeit at least relatively attractive to look at. To various degrees I have sampled as many PIMS as I could find for the Mac and have discovered all of them to be simply lacking, faulty, or unacceptable in various and important ways, including such programs as: SOHO Organizer 8, Contactizer Pro, UCalendar X, Things, Daylite, and my previous old standby Now Up-to-Date. In fact Now Up-to-Date which was originally a masterfully designed program, and way ahead of its time, (initially developed by the creator of BusyCal), no longer fully works in Snow Leopard. Now Up-to-Date’s alarms and notifications are now inoperable, and according to one of their spokespersons, there are no plans to make it fully operable with current or future versions of the Mac System. Many have commented on how responsive both the developer and the business head of BusyCal are when it comes to suggestions and inquiries. However, there are still a few relatively minor extras as well as visual enhancements that I’d love to see added to BusyCal, but I suspect that because the two individuals who head this company have already proven themselves to be so responsive to suggestions, that we may see some or all of these features implemented in the near future. In no particular order, here are a few of my hoped for additions: (1) Improve the overall appearance of BusyCal by providing for the possibility of a variety of background color schemes or themes behind month, week and day views. (2) Create some shaded color difference between alternating lines of the To-Do list, such as currently exists in Now Up-to-date and Now X, which like the addition of background colors to months, weeks, and days, would serve to enormously enrich and liven up the overall look and feel of BusyCal. (3) Find a place to include a miniature set of adjacent monthly customizable calendars that you can choose to be always visible, and that display the current month and say the next two coming months, such that you can click on any date in these miniature monthly calendars, and you are shown that highlighted date in the current full calendar view. (4) In addition to a column style for the weekly view, also have the possibility of choosing a rectangular stacked block view of the days of one week, similar to what both Now Up-to-Dat and Now X offer. (5) For all To-Dos in addition to “Done” or “Completed” also have an additional option such as “In-process” or “Partially Done.” (6) Allow the “Find” and filter function to locate text in dated events and dated To-Dos that are not displayed in the current view. (7) Have the names of the days of the week customizable with regard to their size, color, boldness and font type, because currently the font size for the days of the week is too small and doesn’t stand out enough. Improvements such as these would turn BusyCal into an even better and more attractive calendar and scheduler than it is now, and for single users, families or small organizations and business groups, as I’ve said, BusyCal is already the very best that there is! And just to be clear, I personally don't know the developers of BusyCal nor am I affiliated with their business in any way.
Overall Rating:
Ease of Use:
Support:
Features:
Quality / Stability:
Price:
Comments
No user comments.