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Comment by mmacvicarprett | Hacker News Reader

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mmacvicarprett

This is ridiculous, just use Itsycal, it does all of that. Make sure to send a tip to the author!

https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/

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That doesn't support Google Calendar, from what I can gather

edit: oh, it does. I never knew macOS native Calendar can sync to GCal. The more you know!

OK this is quite useless then. Especially as it is an Electron app.

It uses the OS-level calendar account integration, so it supports whatever MacOS does, including Google Calendar - that's functionality I actually use, on a daily basis, right now.

That said, Itsycal doesn't seem to play well with meeting links - for example, I've never been able to click a Webex link from the Itsycal UI and have the meeting actually open; I think it's not passing the URL exactly, or something, but I always have to visit the Calendar app and click the link from there. Not sure if Zoom has the same trouble in Itsycal, but I can definitely see a potential win in something that does better with meeting integrations.

I'm still sticking with Itsycal at least for now; meeting link issues aside, it works really well for me and I'd rather wait for a real killer feature to switch. That aside, congrats and best of luck to the Superpowered team!

What do you have against electron?

Electron apps don’t really look or work right on a Mac.

There is plenty of reasons to not like Electron apps, but that they don't look right is not one of them, as Electron apps don't come with any styling built-in, it's all up to the developers of the apps to style things.

Yeah, that’s the problem: I don’t want to use apps written in frameworks that let the developer style the basic controls. If I’m ok a Mac, I want to see Mac buttons, dropdowns, etc. and I want them to be provided by the OS so I can rely on OS services working: the Cocoa input system is pretty sophisticated and I inevitably run into edge cases with attempts to emulate it in electron apps.

I see. I take it you never use a browser either then? Because most of the web apps don't have Mac styling, AFAIK.

I mean, it’s hard to avoid, but I try to use native apps whenever possible.

To be fair, OP was clearly talking about native apps. My 2c: an Electron app looks "alien" (for lack of a better word) on every platform that supports it. Especially so when it implements deep integration like a menu bar widget. One would expect it to obey the operating system human interface guidelines. This in itself makes it unsuited for the task. Even more so when the main reason to use electron (code reuse and ease of porting to other platforms) is not fully realized (as this appears to be mac-only).

They have a big CPU and RAM usage.

...which is not an issue on M1 macs, so far, but that's for now.

I for one am okay with the idea of spawning an entire headless browser for something that uses a full window - slack, spotify, etc. but for drawing a toolbar? That's a bit much.

itsycal FTW!

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