Fantastical: A new calendar app for Mac launches | Hacker News Reader

Fantastical: A new calendar app for Mac launches

flexibits.com

50 pointsbrianshumate39 comments

A lot of people who don't like it seem to be missing the point. When I want to create an event, I don't want to launch iCal or navigate to Google Calendar, I want to enter the event in as little time and as intuitively as possible.

Accessing the app from the menubar solves the issue of speed for me, and the natural language processing lets it all feel intuitive and (dare I say) "magical". It just understands what I'm saying.

And then when I want to actually review my day or week or month, I can pop open iCal or whatever calendar system I use.

It seems beautiful. Still, I am wondering: What's the difference between Fantastical and the billion of others calendar. (And, I really don't mean it in a harsh way as I'm really sad not to be able to try it since I'm on linux).

Is it the real-time sync with gcal? Or the smart event parsing..? The prettiness of it?

It must be some confluence of all of them, since Google Calendar + iCal already does everything this app does. We are missing something from our calendaring experience. I'm not sure what that is, but this app doesn't have it.

A good first try.

iCal and Google Calendar have 'natural' event creation? They have a menu icon with a small app that resides there? Etc..

Try it out. See what's different for yourself.

Google Calendar does have 'natural' event creation, except they call it Quick Add.

Yes, GCal has "natural" event creation. It also has a very intuitive method for entering multi day events via highlighting the days.

So I use GCal to edit my events and they show up in iCal, on my phone, and in a browser. A menu icon on my computer just doesn't seem that exciting.

I don't like iCal at all. It's too clumsy in almost every respect. The Lion update looks like a step in the wrong direction, too. The only promising feature is the natural language parsing, which IMO is an essential feature of a calendar.

I'm not sure how I feel about Fantastical, since I've only had it installed for 5 minutes. I've tried other iCal replacements like BusyCal, but they didn't seem like enough of an improvement.

There's definitely a space for simple NLP calendar input on the desktop, though.

What calendar software do you like? I've been looking for a good one, but I have yet to be really happy with any.

None really. I'm in the same boat.

I'm really liking Fantastical now, after a few days.

I use QuickCal [1] together with iCal. Syncing with my Android works over Google Calendar but adding events is way faster with QuickCal and a keyboard for me [2]. I used Google's 'Quick add' function for a while but got annoyed about the slow development [3] and the lack of functionality. Also, nothing is as fast as a native app that you can start with a shortcut. I can even switch between calendars in no time and it will tell me if my new event conflicts with an existing one while I type.

At the moment, I find the greatest annoyance in broken syncs with Google. Its so annoying, that I tend to use local iCal calendars only now. When you have a Mac Air in your pack, looking up and adding dates is often faster than with the phone anyway. Longterm though, I'm seriously thinking about going for an iPone and MobileMe just to get rid of this annoyance.

Fantastical looks great and I will give the free trial a shot later. But on first sight I can't see any obvious advantage over my current setup which was only $1.

[1] http://smellypuppy.com/quickcal-desktop/ $1 in the App Store [2] To be fair, I'm using a cheap HTC Wildfire and it feels slower every day. [3] You can't even add a reminder without using the Mouse! At least this was the case till two months ago and it seemed like the dozens of request didn't have an impact.

This is not intended to be a criticism of this specific app but more articulation of the mindset that I'm sure I share with many others. I hope this is interesting to the developers.

I probably won't give this app a serious shot because calendaring is something that is so intrinsically web that it's just not compelling otherwise. Immediacy and ubiquity are really the necessary ingredients. I can't install this, link my accounts, etc. I'd much rather hop on any old browser and be done with it. Google does a really good job of it. There are probably a few places to be improved, but it's definitely good. I'd like to see someone go after those things, but I'm much rather seem them done on the web.

Surely there are people who'd prefer it your way, but I figured I'd let you know where I'm coming from...

I just installed this and linked it to my Google calendar using Google's instructions here:

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...

Event changes are propagated both ways.

For me, this solves the problem of having to load a web page to look at my calendar. Now I can just hit the Fantastical shortcut (ctrl+opt+space) to quickly see what's on my calendar. Getting that plus the features of gcal is a big win.

I suspect I'll be purchasing a license when my trial runs out.

Is it? I do most on my organization on the train from and to work. So i cannot use a fancy web app, because I am constantly switching cells and dropping in and out of 3G land.

I would say that calendaring is the canonical example for the need to sync. But web? No, not at all.

So is mail. I like that I can access my Gmail account from everywhere, I don't ever want to live without that feature. I still prefer to use a native mail application on all the devices I own.

As far as I know you can link this up to your Google calendar. Why should you force yourself to use Google's UI when you can have the best of both worlds?

(If you think that Google's UI is superior or if you think that the sync is imperfect you certainly shouldn't use this app.)

I sync all my google calendars down to iCal and my iPhone and have no issues with syncing. Sometimes there will be a tiny window of time where I don't have everything synced on my machine but my gCal is my master calendar. I just installed this app and it's nicer for me than having to open iCal.

Props to the developers!

Calendaring may be intrinsically web, but humans aren't. At the very least you need a local client that allows you to get at the information in your calendar without being connected to the internet.

Ideally, this is a seamless integration. Outlook, for example does this so well you barely feel it.

Practically speaking, I almost always enter calendar entries on my phone nowadays. Still, the way it parses the entry in real-time and shows the result is very smart. I expect Google Calendar to copy it immediately since they already have the natural language parsing, but it can be a bit of a shot in the dark whether it gives the right results.

Interesting that this is on the Mac App Store, mainly because I didn't think that Apple ever introduced a proper API to add icons in the menu bar.

Very curious how the developer added the arrow to the Keychain request window? Had no idea that could be done. Anyone know how that was done?

10.5+ has API for accessing window info for other processes. A search for "CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo" should return plenty of information.

Does this app have its own data store that it syncs with iCal or does it just use the built-in calendar data store? I am always much more skeptical of trusting yet another app to sync properly (no duplications, lags, etc). These apps tend to make life harder since I have to deal with their issues rather than just being a better interface to the same data.

I'd love to know.

Just bought it and it looks great. However; it uses 70MB RAM which seems a bit steep for this type of program. It is not possible to move its location in the menu bar which is irritating. An alarm clock/countdown timer would also have been nice, which is really what I need on my Mac.

Your post comes off as complaining. 70 MB of RAM? I'll bet you have at least 1 GB. RAM is meant to be used. An alarm clock? Then download an alarm clock app if that's what you want. Do you want a kitchen sink too?

FYI, if the developer is reading this, please let me delete events from the widget.

That and editing are now at the top of our list. Getting 1.0 out the door was our #1 priority :)

Job well done.

Editing and deletion weren't $15 / 1.0 features?

I think that I see... You should clarify on the page that this views other calendars, and does not have it's own storage. You say that it "works with your favorite calendar application", but you mean that it "augments" or "views" your favorite calendar application.

IMO, "works with your favorite calendar application" is the clearest way to express that concept.

OK, I'll try it out. iCal is definitely too much of a pain and riddled with numerous serious bugs.

In addition to normal language entry and bug fixes, I also need cell phone sync with phones other than iPhone.

follow up to previous post: OK, this is not what I thought it would be. It's a menu bar widget that allows text entry and little else. The widget isn't resizable so it only shows a few upcoming events at a time, 1-31 days, but you have to use a slider to see most of them. There's no proper calendaring, I can't go to a date for example. Seeing what is coming up next week is clumsy enough that iCal is a better choice.

Too bad. Needs tons of work. As it is, it would be OK as a freebie, but even as such I'd probably uninstall it after a while because of it taking up menu bar space and not being very useful.

This is just my user usability and usefulness feedback. It is not a flame. Downvote it anyway if you must, that's what is done. Polite criticism and honest feedback is not tolerated on these boards, I am used to it.

I've been looking forward to this. I'm downloading the trial right now. I'll be interested to see how good the plain-language parsing is.

Same, just installed it and it looks great.

I have wanted this app for ages. I just bought it, it works beautifully. Thank you for building this.

"All your events are belong to us"

Got scared when i read this. Gotta be a mistype (second headline, middle of page).

It's a reference to an old meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

I had a feeling it was some inside joke. Not sure about expressions like these. If you're not familiar with the reference, it just looks like incorrect grammar or a typo.

I do like the trend of having apps that can launch from the menu bar like Alfred, Dropbox, Growl.

can't configure it to start weeks on sunday.

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