iPod touch How well does the iPod Touch integrate with iCal?

[Jack Flash]

My primary rational for buying an iPod Touch is to use it as a PDA. Yes, I know many of you will argue that it isn't, but it's native Mac.

So, I am highly invested in iCal. I keep my schedule stored there, my assignments, bills, everything. It works well but it'd be nice to have that information on the go with the iPod Touch. So, how well do the two sync up? Will my calendars be there with full details? Will my To-Do's appear as well?

 

[bojan6089]

Really good. Im satisfied and i also use it for managing my calendars.
iCal syncs with ipod and the other way.
I like it. Its simple

 

[Cinematographer]

Basically it works and syncs very well.

But if you've got multiple calendars with different colors, they will all end up in the same color on the touch. If you want to enter a new event on the iPod touch, you can't choose the calendar. All the new events will be synced back to one standard calendar.

And no to-do lists on the iPod touch so far.

Hope Apple's going to take care of this - soon.

 

[mavis]

Calendars appear with full details, however as already mentioned all of your calendars appear as the same color on the Touch, there is no way to specify which calendar entries should belong to.

Also, while iTunes lets you choose which of your calendars entries created on the Touch (and sync'd back to your Mac) should belong to, no matter what you select in iTunes, all Touch-created entries will end up in the "Home" calendar (and if you don't have one, it will be created. EVERY TIME) ... I find that kind of frustrating.

 

[redAPPLE]

Basically it works and syncs very well.

But if you've got multiple calendars with different colors, they will all end up in the same color on the touch. If you want to enter a new event on the iPod touch, you can't choose the calendar. All the new events will be synced back to one standard calendar.

And no to-do lists on the iPod touch so far.

Hope Apple's going to take care of this - soon.

once "notes" becomes available, you could use that for to do lists.

my question is, the iPhone can manage multiple calendars or not?

 

[Jack Flash]

Calendars appear with full details, however as already mentioned all of your calendars appear as the same color on the Touch, there is no way to specify which calendar entries should belong to.

Also, while iTunes lets you choose which of your calendars entries created on the Touch (and sync'd back to your Mac) should belong to, no matter what you select in iTunes, all Touch-created entries will end up in the "Home" calendar (and if you don't have one, it will be created. EVERY TIME) ... I find that kind of frustrating.

Oh that is not good at all. I have all my courses as individually colored calendars, in addition to my Home, Work, etc calendars.

I also do not like that it doesn't sync back in the correct respective calendar.

Has Apple commented onwhen they might fix these errors?

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iTouch 1.1.2 (JB'd): Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48b Safari/419.3)

I haven't even heard of these problems being mentioned as bugs before, let alone when they would be resolved.

The workaround I use is to rename my iCal "Home" calendar to something else (like "Personal") so that any new entries from the Touch show up in their very own calendar in iCal. I can then easily move them into the correct calendar. Kind of a PITA but it works for now, until Apple decides to fix the problem (if/when that ever happens) ...

Kind of pathetic that Apple thinks it's appropriate to charge early adopters for the 1.1.3 update when bugs like this still exist. Hopefully they won't charge us again when they get around to fixing this one.

 

[kcbyemom]

Oh that is not good at all. I have all my courses as individually colored calendars, in addition to my Home, Work, etc calendars.

I also do not like that it doesn't sync back in the correct respective calendar.

Has Apple commented onwhen they might fix these errors?

Sounds like you're balancing a great deal. Like you said in OP it is native, if that is significant to you this is a wonderful PDA.
I keep my calendars primarily through iCal with pretty colors as well. I just sit down every couple of days and make sure imports look pretty for the month ahead. Right now I book stuff short and long term, I make sure I have enough details and I'll clean it up as I go if there isn't a "fix" in the future.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Kind of pathetic that Apple thinks it's appropriate to charge early adopters for the 1.1.3 update when bugs like this still exist. Hopefully they won't charge us again when they get around to fixing this one.

This is exactly how calendars works on the iPhone, so while it may not be optimal, it's also not some kind of special penalty assessed on touch users, or a bug.

I guess I'm not bothered much by this limitation. If it's on my agenda, I don't really need to know what calendar it's on in iCal. The syncing between my Mac and my touch is so far superior to the syncing I had with my Palm, I'm not complaining about the small limitations which currently exist.

 

[herve5]

What about doing it with php?

I for one cannot accept all my separate calendars to be merged in one single grey category; for this reason, I installed PHP on my touch, and intend to try PHPiCalendar and WebCalendar, the same open-source applications I already use on my webhost (the first one publishes any number of cals from iCal, with colors and a large variety of settings and filters, the second allows to input data that iCal can subscribe to afterwards).
This solution is not perfect in the sense it even adds more separate calendars, but indeed it has really worked for me and a small group pf people, for almost two years now: well before Apple introduced webcals in the latest OSX.

I'm not sure both PHPiCalendar and WebCalendar will also work on the Touch (I already ran some wikis on it, with the idea to replace the Notes.app allowing sync and searchability: only the lightest and fastest behave reasonably) ...but I'm sure I'll try ;-)
This week-end.