some of the missing features - feel free to add more!
LimeLite said:
Care to share what features are lacking and what you'd like to see done? It's easy to complain about something, but much more relevant to offer a reasonable solution. Also, as far as I know there's nothing that you can do with iCal and .Mac that you can't do with iCal and other options. Meaning that your .Mac account should have nothing to do with your decision. Now if there are things iCal does that you rely on that other calendar programs don't do, then perhaps all calendar programs lack what you need, and not just iCal.
in my opinion (some ideas are already mentioned):
1. drag & drop needs to be useful as for:
a. drag a 'to do' item into calendar and transform it to 'apointment' and vice versa
b. drag an e-mail and link it to either of the two
c. drag any file you need to link with a certain appointment or to do
(this is similar to the project centre in ms office)
2. attendees
a. in info tag: why bother to have attendees on the list if you can only edit (in address book) or remove them. why not to be able to see his phone number in order to call him or to send him an sms, and not just e-mail him?
b. in alarm: don't you ever put ex. 'call plumber' in your 'to do', but then you also have to put his phone number in the notes, although you already have him tidily in your address book (synchronized with your mobile, of course)?! why not simply to have an option to show his bl**dy phone on the screen?
3. time zone support
a. i agree with the need of 'flying time-zones' (you fly out from athens at 10 am local and arrive in singapore at 6 am new local)
b. for safe time-zone tracking one should have the info of the original time that the appointment has been adjusted from (for safety reasons)
4. birthdays
a. should be automatically updated, no need for a special software (apple wants it simple, right, but the lack of efficient way to solve something that forces you to use other software and waste your time is not simple, it's fautly!)
b. don't you want to know the person's age when it eventually comes out in your appointment?
c. don't you want THIS VERY PERSON to be attached automatically as attendee, so that you can mail him, phone him and whatever you want (see item 2)?
d. how about other 'anniversaries' not only birthday?
5. synchronization
a. multiple-day events are lost in synching with palm, unles you transform them into whole-day repeated event. can it not be solved in the synching program so that you put this as one option to be automatically recognized and transformed into the most appropriate format for the device it is shown at?
b. calendar publishing should be enabled for more calendars at a time.
c. you should have a possibility to publish calendars that can be changed by a group of users, each one on it's end (like hydra with multiple usre word processing)
well, these are only some (minor) thoughts i had as first impression - i may have more if i think about it more thoroughly, but this may be a starting point!
and again, it is not about 'tell me what features are missing so that i know, because for me all's fine the way it is' - if that's the case, then nothing is missing for you! i'm telling what i feel is missing for me, and i hope there are others that share my opinion. none of these things will make the use of ical any more difficult, on the contrary it will surely make many tasks easier, more automated and more fun to use.
mirko
