Fantastical Unifies Its Mac, iOS, and Apple Watch Calendar Experience With Weather, Tasks, Meeting Proposals, and More

[max2]

Update: App Store average rating is now down to 2.4 in Germany. 😂

Good.

 

[mmcmah]

Flexibits uses Google Cloud Platform.

• Flexibits servers are hosted on Google Cloud Platform in the US.

Security, Privacy, and Cloud Compliance | Google Cloud

Help keep your organization secure and compliant with Google Cloud. Learn about our privacy and security practices, cloud compliance offerings & more.

cloud.google.com

Your post presupposes that the Google Cloud Platform magically endows its clients with unbreakable security.

At the end of the day, the server endpoint still needs to be secured, the database needs to be properly set up and secured, any publicly-facing entry points need to be secured and the communications "end-to-end" need to be properly secured.

That takes work and maintenance and really should have been unnecessary if there weren't a desire to data mine, even if in an "anonymized" way.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Your post presupposes that the Google Cloud Platform magically endows its clients with unbreakable security.

At the end of the day, the server endpoint still needs to be secured, the database needs to be properly set up and secured, any publicly-facing entry points need to be secured and the communications "end-to-end" need to be properly secured.

That takes work and maintenance and really should have been unnecessary if there weren't a desire to data mine, even if in an "anonymized" way.

Me posting a link does not automatically state much less assume that nothing nefarious can happen. I don't think the way you projected I did. All I did was post a link answering the question about where Flexibts stores data.

 

[mmcmah]

Me posting a link does not automatically state much less assume that nothing nefarious can happen. I don't think the way you projected I did. All I did was post a link answering the question about where Flexibts stores data.

The question you were answering, as quoted in your response was: "They say it’s encrypted but have not really provided any details of how so it’s hard to confirm.."

So, to answer that question with the first link, the one to Flexibits' own information, is to provide an unvarnished response. To then further link to Google's Security documentation is to imply that it's all good because of their security model.

In a vacuum, the above can be readily dismissed as nothing more than information. When coupled with the general tone and positivity of your posts, as well as your dismissal of others' objections, your post sounds like what I originally posted.

 

[Apple_Robert]

The question you were answering, as quoted in your response was: "They say it’s encrypted but have not really provided any details of how so it’s hard to confirm.."

So, to answer that question with the first link, the one to Flexibits' own information, is to provide an unvarnished response. To then further link to Google's Security documentation is to imply that it's all good because of their security model.

In a vacuum, the above can be readily dismissed as nothing more than information. When coupled with the general tone and positivity of your posts, as well as your dismissal of others' objections, your post sounds like what I originally posted.

If the other member wants to know every single detail, he can work that out with Flexbits.

I didn’t state my opinion on the subject of encryption with this company. I posted a link with a general question answer for anyone interested.

Stop trying to inject your personaL bias into my post. It seems you are looking to find find something wrong with my posts to argue and I am not about that.

I don’t have a problem discussing the pros and cons of this situation. What I won’t do, is get into a back and forth with someone trying to extrapolate and argue with me about positions I haven’t made.

 

[rugmankc]

I installed free version of Cal366. First problem I had was seeing all lines of an event. If event was several lines long, only first few words displayed. If you tap on the line it goes to end and doesn’t show any words in between. Fantastical shows all lines. Haven’t tried it on watch yet.

Just tried it on the watch and on a much smaller device it shows all the lines of text for the event.

 

[Abazigal]

A couple more reviews of fantastical and the topic of subscriptions in general for your reading pleasure.

Matt Birchler breaks down his existing subscriptions.

Is Subscription Pricing Sustainable?

Subscription apps – are they a sustainable business model? - 9to5Mac What’s your view? Do you share my feeling that subscription apps aren’t sustainable, or are you happy with that approach, even when you have dozens of them? I took and look at the subscriptions page in the App

birchtree.me

A coverage by Jason Snell of 6colours.

Fantastical 3 steps out of Apple’s shadow

Fantastical 3 on iPad is a huge upgrade. The left sidebar can come and go with a swipe. I’ve been using Fantastical as my calendar app across all my devices for years now. I’ve come to …

sixcolors.com

And one more by one of my favourite blogs, Sweetsetup.

Fantastical 3 Review: The Best Calendar App Just Got Better

Fantastical Review: With version 3, Fantastical has become the definitive and best calendar app for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

thesweetsetup.com

I have reinstalled Todoist, and have decided to give the 2-week trial a go, mainly for the Todoist integration. We will see how it works out.

 

[Easttime]

A couple more reviews of fantastical and the topic of subscriptions in general for your reading pleasure.
Matt Birchler breaks down his existing subscriptions.

Is Subscription Pricing Sustainable?

Subscription apps – are they a sustainable business model? - 9to5Mac What’s your view? Do you share my feeling that subscription apps aren’t sustainable, or are you happy with that approach, even when you have dozens of them? I took and look at the subscriptions page in the App

birchtree.me

A coverage by Jason Snell of 6colours.

Fantastical 3 steps out of Apple’s shadow

Fantastical 3 on iPad is a huge upgrade. The left sidebar can come and go with a swipe. I’ve been using Fantastical as my calendar app across all my devices for years now. I’ve come to …

sixcolors.com

And one more by one of my favourite blogs, Sweetsetup.

Fantastical 3 Review: The Best Calendar App Just Got Better

Fantastical Review: With version 3, Fantastical has become the definitive and best calendar app for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

thesweetsetup.com

I have reinstalled Todoist, and have decided to give the 2-week trial a go, mainly for the Todoist integration. We will see how it works out.

Thanks for this! Good to see more facts and less emotion in this thread.
I'm happy with Things3 and I'm also happy back on Apple's stock Calendar apps for now until the dust settles and I see if Fantastical3's subscription price is worth it for me.
Interesting that they found a way to make proposed meeting times independent so that recipients don't need to be working in Fantastical to pick a preferred time and reply. That would be very handy. Beats struggling with Doodle polling.
Interesting to learn that they use Google's cloud space (in the US, what about where I live), and I'm still waiting to learn more about confidentiality. Flexbits' privacy policy is here: https://flexibits.com/privacy.
Task/reminder implementation looks like it might be better than it was before. I wasn't enamoured with F2's implementation and started using Things3. T3 reverses the integration by showing me today's calendar events at the top of the Today task list. Depends where I want to focus, and managing tasks I like to focus on my tasks lists.
Weather integration on iOS devices would be nice. Don't need it on my Mac, where I have handy widgets already.
Can't see myself using Calendar sets, but Interesting Calendars is neat.
They added some handy time zone management features.
The Zoom integration would be handy, but it's already pretty easy without special treatment in the stock app. I can see it being a tipping item though if all else was attractive to me.
The Lists view in the stock Calendar apps are handy but not so usable as in Fantastical. I can see missing that.
The Watch app has some handing views and flexibility.
Standing by, watching and thinking about paying the price to go back to Fantastical. All depends on whether it will ease my work.

 

[mmcmah]

A couple more reviews of fantastical and the topic of subscriptions in general for your reading pleasure.

Matt Birchler breaks down his existing subscriptions.

Is Subscription Pricing Sustainable?

Subscription apps – are they a sustainable business model? - 9to5Mac What’s your view? Do you share my feeling that subscription apps aren’t sustainable, or are you happy with that approach, even when you have dozens of them? I took and look at the subscriptions page in the App

birchtree.me

A coverage by Jason Snell of 6colours.

Fantastical 3 steps out of Apple’s shadow

Fantastical 3 on iPad is a huge upgrade. The left sidebar can come and go with a swipe. I’ve been using Fantastical as my calendar app across all my devices for years now. I’ve come to …

sixcolors.com

And one more by one of my favourite blogs, Sweetsetup.

Fantastical 3 Review: The Best Calendar App Just Got Better

Fantastical Review: With version 3, Fantastical has become the definitive and best calendar app for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

thesweetsetup.com

I have reinstalled Todoist, and have decided to give the 2-week trial a go, mainly for the Todoist integration. We will see how it works out.

Excellent post to excellent reviews! Thank you!

It's nice to read a detailed examination of the features. For now, those features aren't worth it to me, but I will see if they fulfill their promise of frequent updates with frequent additions of new features to see if they entice me to subscribe.

 

[wills11]

So lame. Pretty soon, we'll all be paying a small mortgage in "subscriptions" just to have basic apps. Software companies have done extremely well by creating good products and updating them—competition. There are some upsides, especially when it comes to big, complex, and expensive software: one can switch to a competitor at any point, etc. But for a calendar app? Really? I just recently purchased Fantastical for all my devices—and you can now consider me an ex-customer of Flexbits.

 

[Bob-K]

Compared to the $99 per year (each) subscriptions for Sibelius and Pro Tools, which are infinitely more complex than any calendar will ever be, $40 per year for a calendar is absurd (IMO, of course).

Also: For $49.99, you can purchase lifetime licenses of Postbox (email client) and Chronosync (full-featured synchronization and backup app). Both of those companies have been around for longer than Flexibits.

Postbox is a particularly relevant comparison: they used to charge for major updates, then offered lifetime licenses, then switched to subscriptions (I think it was last year), and then last month wised up and brought back lifetime licenses (while still offering $30/year subscriptions).

There were two main things I liked about Fantastical, which are surprisingly hard to find in other calendar apps:

1. Simultaneous month and list views available in desktop, menu-bar, iPhone, and iPad versions.

2. Dark background in the list views. Overall, they really nailed the GUI details, IMO.

Calendar 366 comes close, though the GUI isn't quite as refined as Fantastical 2.

Moving on.

 

[Apple_Robert]

So lame. Pretty soon, we'll all be paying a small mortgage in "subscriptions" just to have basic apps. Software companies have done extremely well by creating good products and updating them—competition. There are some upsides, especially when it comes to big, complex, and expensive software: one can switch to a competitor at any point, etc. But for a calendar app? Really? I just recently purchased Fantastical for all my devices—and you can now consider me an ex-customer of Flexbits.

If you want to get mad, look to Apple for having some core apps that are rather anemic in daily use features. The developers are helping fill a needed void.

 

[jagooch]

The current version has all the same features before this new rollout. There is no real need to try and restore to a different date with a backup.

You install the new version, create an account, and don't subscribe (at all or) past the trial, unless you want to.

The Flexibits website makes it very clear what the new model is and what happens to use paid version 2 users. I even linked to the page.

I agree with your comments about an announcement etc. However, I think a lot of people on here, Twitter, and iMore, are making a lot more out of this subscription than it really is.

Flexibits hasn't taken anything away from us paid version 2 users. All they did was move to a subscription model. And in doing so, they added a few new features for version 2 non subscribers.

Yes, this whole situation could have been handled better. But, unless Flexibits makes a new announcement and policy to ease the pain of subscription for paid users, there really isn't much left to do besides contact the company and voice one's opinion and or vote with the wallet.

I think the main area of contention is that Flexibts has moved to subscription. The comments you made here and those are others across the net, are the same kinds of things that were voiced with 1Password, Apple, and several others companies (at various times).

The MacRumors Forums can be a hotbed at times for some people feeding off the emotions of others, whether good or bad. And before you know it, there are a lot of people overly angry about something simple, or making rash purchase, and then regretting them, because they got caught up in all the forum uproar.
[automerge]1580605971[/automerge]

A lot of the executive type business features I don't really have a need for. The weather feature is nice and could save me some money, by not continuing the paid weather subscriptions I already have.

I like the new layout and many of the functions. Flexibits has made a point on their website and online of stating that they already have a lot coming very soon with updates. If some of those new features are ones that I would use, then that is money well spent for me. If conducive updates don't come etc., then I won't continue the yearly subscription.

Yeaaaah ,no. I won’t be be opening an account and I won’t be installing v3. I don’t do subscriptions and I don’t want to lose features by “upgrading”. I’ll let Flexibits go their own way. I’ll go mine.

 

[johannnn]

The current version has all the same features before this new rollout. There is no real need to try and restore to a different date with a backup.

You install the new version, create an account, and don't subscribe (at all or) past the trial, unless you want to.

The Flexibits website makes it very clear what the new model is and what happens to use paid version 2 users. I even linked to the page.

I agree with your comments about an announcement etc. However, I think a lot of people on here, Twitter, and iMore, are making a lot more out of this subscription than it really is.

Flexibits hasn't taken anything away from us paid version 2 users. All they did was move to a subscription model. And in doing so, they added a few new features for version 2 non subscribers.

Yes, this whole situation could have been handled better. But, unless Flexibits makes a new announcement and policy to ease the pain of subscription for paid users, there really isn't much left to do besides contact the company and voice one's opinion and or vote with the wallet.

I think the main area of contention is that Flexibts has moved to subscription. The comments you made here and those are others across the net, are the same kinds of things that were voiced with 1Password, Apple, and several others companies (at various times).

The MacRumors Forums can be a hotbed at times for some people feeding off the emotions of others, whether good or bad. And before you know it, there are a lot of people overly angry about something simple, or making rash purchase, and then regretting them, because they got caught up in all the forum uproar.
[automerge]1580605971[/automerge]

A lot of the executive type business features I don't really have a need for. The weather feature is nice and could save me some money, by not continuing the paid weather subscriptions I already have.

I like the new layout and many of the functions. Flexibits has made a point on their website and online of stating that they already have a lot coming very soon with updates. If some of those new features are ones that I would use, then that is money well spent for me. If conducive updates don't come etc., then I won't continue the yearly subscription.

They did take away stuff from existing users. Now the UI completely filled with buttons that results in a nagging premium popup screen. I find this extremely annoying.

This app is now almost as expensive as Disney+. Like seriously, a calendar app almost having the same price as Disney+?

I love the Apollo Reddit app. It’s $1 per month. For productivity, I love the Due app. Its $5 per year.

 

[ecstaticax]

i bought fantastical for iPhone and iPad. I paid two years for todoist. I decided that subscription was too much. I bought things for iPhone and iPad. I massively use Apple watch LTE, I have two of them (one for night one for day). Things doesn’t sync with two watches. Their app is not also not indipendent from iPhone. So I left things for iOS reminders, which is VERY GOOD (watch lte app is perfect, Siri integrstion is perfect, you can share lists). I will test fantastical with no subscription, but 40 euros for a calendar is really too much. Probably I will leave it for ios calendar

 

[VaderRulez]

So looks like the general consensus is, everyone is not getting the subscription. I am in the same boat as well. Shame as it is a decent app, but overpriced for a calendar app.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Just got Calendar 366 for my iPad/iPhone. Love it. I really like the way it mixes Reminders and the Calendar into one view without having to constantly switch from Month to Day view. Thanks to @BasicGreatGuy for the info provided.

Thanks to other posters here - wife and I got Apollo for Reddit.

 

[zapnyc]

Fantastical are focusing on the professional market where $5 a month for a sophisticated calendaring application is a huge productivity gain and an absolute bargain. Fantastical has already been priced towards the high-end, and it makes total sense.

They'll undoubtedly have less customers by adopting this subscription model, but I am sure they will make a lot more money every year. Having less customers to support for more money sounds like a big win for me, and they'll have more consistent revenue to invest more in the product.

People also need to keep in consideration you are getting the app across all platforms for this price. So if you've previously purchased Mac, iPad and iPhone versions, the new monthly all-inclusive price will sting less.

Bottom line - yes, this will be a huge turn off for most normal users now. They will make similar comparisons that you have done and conclude not worth it. But to be honest, Fantastical was always overkill for people who just wanted a nice-looking calendar app that was a bit different to the one Apple builds-in. This really has always been an app aimed to solve the time is money problem for professional people.

....Still No.

I'm a professional. I've had V2 for years.
Is it indispensable? That's the bar in my mind for subscriptions. No it is not.

The music industry is a good comparison.
Software developers are a bit like the record labels.
After streaming exploded, the relatively expensive CD market lost ground, had to drop in price, and shrank. B*tching & m*aning ensued. But in the end (now), the labels returned to profitability - just with a different business model, much of which is LOW-cost streaming subscriptions. Value is relative and out-in-the-open. Disney+ is 6.99.

 

[finalcut]

I am glad I've been using Calendar 5 for so many years with the week horizontal view. Tried Fantastical in the past and went back to Calendar 5.

 

[Spaceboy88]

I am glad I've been using Calendar 5 for so many years with the week horizontal view. Tried Fantastical in the past and went back to Calendar 5.

I just revisited Calendars 5 and have to say that it's pretty much offering everything that Fantastical does without the ridiculous subscription. The only thing that I wish they'd add is a notification center widget on iOS that lets you jump to another day the way Fantastical does. A nice to have, not a need to have for sure, but other than that, I see no reason most people wouldn't be completely happy going from Fantastical to Calendars 5.

 

[jagooch]

"Fantasticalagedon" doesn't quite roll off the tongue though. 🧐

I’ve been trying to make #fantastical2gate happen on Twitter. I like the ‘gedon one, too.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Anyone know of a website that list cool calendars that can be imported into Fantastical? I know the new version has many to choose from but, I am looking for more.

 

[HouseofG]

Just got Calendar 366 for my iPad/iPhone. Love it. I really like the way it mixes Reminders and the Calendar into one view without having to constantly switch from Month to Day view. Thanks to @BasicGreatGuy for the info provided.

Same here. Bought Calendar 366 and not looking back. Thanks everyone for your thoughts on that one.

 

[ErikGrim]

Same here. Bought Calendar 366 and not looking back. Thanks everyone for your thoughts on that one.

Another thumbs up for Calendar 366. The Week/Month + event list is just as good as Fantastical, and switching between calendar and reminders is even easier.

 

[zed2]

The option to delete an event on the watch in calendar66? I didn’t see it.

Sorry my Bad, was reading on my phone and didn't see the full question..

On my watch I'm only really interested in seeing my next events in a complication, and a list. I have no need or desire to create, delete, or edit an event on my watch.. Screen is too small for that.

My Phone is never very far away from me, and if I'm looking to arrange a meeting then I'll do that on the phone.
[automerge]1580727200[/automerge]

The question you were answering, as quoted in your response was: "They say it’s encrypted but have not really provided any details of how so it’s hard to confirm.."

So, to answer that question with the first link, the one to Flexibits' own information, is to provide an unvarnished response. To then further link to Google's Security documentation is to imply that it's all good because of their security model.

In a vacuum, the above can be readily dismissed as nothing more than information. When coupled with the general tone and positivity of your posts, as well as your dismissal of others' objections, your post sounds like what I originally posted.

Lets not fight, we're all after the same thing here.. We want to understand the security implementation so we can be reassured that they have taken all precautions with our data.

At the moment for me I do not have that. I've asked them via twitter several times to provide some details, but so far not had a good response. The original privacy policy they published was just wrong and contradictory. I think they have pushed a new version now, but it still leaves a lot of security questions unanswered.

For me I can not see a use case where I'm away from my phone and still need to have a new appointment synced straight away.. why could the watch not cache the update and sync via Bluetooth when in range??

How many times really are you going to be out without your phone to hand and need to create/delete and appointment, and go "oh cool I can do that on my watch"???

For me I just don't see it.