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Series: App improvement discussion - App: iCal

Diatribe

Diatribe

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 8, 2004
4,258
46
Back in the motherland
This time it's iCal.
I don't have a lot of feature requests for iCal but I know some of you do.
Here are mine:

- ical to resize to former size (get bigger again) after info is closed just like it gets smaller to show info or how it gets bigger after to do items are closed

- let iCal remind me to call someone or send an email at a specific time asking me whether it should open mail etc. with the right email adress already etc. or open Adress Book showing the telephone number that I need to call

- to-do list due dates to be shown in the regular cal too

As always: Let Apple know.
 
Week numbers for crying out loud! A calendar is useless without week numbers.
 
gekko513 said:
Week numbers for crying out loud! A calendar is useless without week numbers.
Click to expand...

Exactly, I don't know why Apple omits week numbers. Also it would be nice if Address Book would automatically create birthday reminders iCal.
 
To do items

Better management of To do items; when you have a hundred they are pretty hard work to use. Plus repeats on To do items (not just appointments). And the ability to link files, emails and other arbitrary items to appointments and to do items (like in Entourage).
 
The sleep timer needs to be customizable or have "10 minutes before" etc. not just "in 5 minutes" or "in 1 hour" etc.

Better integration with Exchange. GroupCal is okay but not as seamless as it should be.

There needs to be a better indication that not all events are being displayed. Now I just get "..." when I have more events than will fit on the screen for one day in month view. If you're not careful you may miss an important event.

The font size should be customizable.

The window on the left should be closeable. I'd like to have the calendar take up the whole screen if possible.

The date on the icon should be current when the app is closed as well as when it is opened.

There should be an integrated menu extra like MiCal that shows your events for the day. It would be nice not to have to open iCal just to see my schedule.

Subcalendars. I would like to have subcalendars. This way I can have a main calendar for my family and one subcalendar for each family member . This would save room in the window on the left and allow me to show/hide a croup of calendars with one click.

Better integration with AddressBook for birthdays and anniversaries.
 
Zaty said:
Exactly, I don't know why Apple omits week numbers.
Click to expand...

Americans don't tend to use week numbers much, if at all. We either refer to things by specific dates, "week of [some date]", or vague references to quarters of the year. Granted iCal has an international user base, but since when has that been enough motivation for companies (Apple included)? :p


Col. Panic said:
There should be an integrated menu extra like MiCal that shows your events for the day. It would be nice not to have to open iCal just to see my schedule.
Click to expand...

What if they used the contextual dock menu like iTunes, but instead of showing the current track and common commands, they could show the current day's events? Hmm...


Anyway, I've pretty much stopped using iCal for several reasons, but it's been so long that I can't remember too many specifics. One thing I definitely would like to see is the ability to publish multiple "calendars" to the same web page calendar view. Who wants to have to view 4 unlinked pages to see events from 4 categories? That's why each calendar/category gets its own frickin' color! I've sent Apple feedback about this at least twice.

[edit: Removed the link to the iCal feedback page because I realized Diatribe already provided one. I guess I'm still learning to read. :p]
 
Basic Functionality Required

Here are my suggestions. Nothing inspired, all pretty basic stuff.

1. Customisable repeat timer for to do items
2. Ability to search to do items
3. When I edit an item in the To Do list do not scroll the list to where the item now resides or scroll to the bottom. Leave me where I am. When I periodically review my list I want to do it item by item.
4. Week numbers.
5. Ability to print to do items and notes.
6. When I cmd+K to create a new task ALWAYS have the text immediately editable.
7. Let me see more than one month at a time.
 
Better printing, with more control over printing. I'd like to see bigger month printouts, and be able to control the margins, for example.

It'd also be cool if the icon in the dock didn't require opening the program to display the correct date.

I'd also like a way to specify how the alarm works on my palm device separately from the computer alarm.
 
I'd like to be able to add pictures to dates..so i could import a pic of a birthday cake from iphoto for birthdays..or if i'm going to NY for a week i could stretch a picture of the NY skyline across the week.
 
i would like to see travel time implemented as well as a better way to have multiple events that have time fluctuations, for example, my work schedule changes each week, and at times its such a pain to enter it all in, perhaps a method of specifying five days a week and each week just having to adjust the times or whatever, im not sure
 
Boy, I hope they're listening -

My wish list for iCal -

An improved Sync Conduit that transfers the LOCATION field on iCal to the LOCATION field on my PALM. It does little good to know when I am supposed to meet with someone if I can't remember WHERE.

Repeatable TO DO items. I use them for recurring events such as the need to send invoices to clients. Currently put these in the Calendar, but it clutters up the calendar screen.

Printing Option that prints an entire day (or series of days) in a "memo" format that includes the event time/location AND the notes. Many times I will add agenda items for a meeting or directions to the client's location (hmm - see above) and without the print-out, I have to open the Mac just to check them.

And - while I'm at it - how about a MemoPad feature that syncs to a PDA?

Does anyone know if some or all of these will be coming in iCal 2.0? Or with Tiger?
 
All great ideas.

Apple has broken me with iCal. I can't even muster the strength anymore to give them Feedback.

3 years of doing the "Good Customer Thing" and sending them pages of missing features--basic, everyday features--only to watch tiny updates to iCal released. I doubt there is even one full time engineer working on it anymore.

I have surrendered to the fact that either Apple doesn't care about iCal one bit, or they are saving the "good" version for an Entourage competitor sometime in the next couple of years.

I am a broken man. Damn you iCal. It actually makes me wish (well, sorta) that my company hadn't standardized on Macs.
 
BWhaler said:
All great ideas.

Apple has broken me with iCal. I can't even muster the strength anymore to give them Feedback.

3 years of doing the "Good Customer Thing" and sending them pages of missing features--basic, everyday features--only to watch tiny updates to iCal released. I doubt there is even one full time engineer working on it anymore.

I have surrendered to the fact that either Apple doesn't care about iCal one bit, or they are saving the "good" version for an Entourage competitor sometime in the next couple of years.

I am a broken man. Damn you iCal. It actually makes me wish (well, sorta) that my company hadn't standardized on Macs.
Click to expand...

iCal has been the black sheep for a while now but remember that iPhoto was too the last 2 incarnations before 5. Now iPhoto is actually usable. I still hope that iCal 2 will provide a lot of the features we asked for.
 
iCal

Now that I'm thinking about it, shouldn't iCal include a way to track how many calories you take in in a day? ;)

Thanks, ebow, for bringing up the difference of location thing. I was about to ask why on earth people were wanting week numbers, which seem like utter clutter to me. I didn't realize it was something that is used in other countries. I'm kind of curious now *how* they use them and in what fields (banking, etc??).

I actually love iCal for its clean interface and ease of use. My biggest gripe was the "drawer" for event info, which has finally been detatched for us poor suckers who don't have 20+ inch screens.

Other than that, I would *love* it if full-day events stretched to show the whole title of the event. I find myself missing birthdays, etc., because I don't see them there. (Actually, how that I think about it, I may just go back and designate all birthdays as 7:30 to 8:00 to fix that.)

Another suggestion - in Week View - the current default for those who don't have large screens is for each day to show, for example, "Tue 8", since it can't fit in "Tue, Feb 8". On more than one occasion, I have put a meeting in on the wrong month, because the only month name visible (the mini-cal on the left) was in the month I needed, despite the fact that my main calendar was on another nameless month. I guess the suggestion would be to reduce "Tue" to "T" for pixel-challenged people so the month name stays visible.

As fer all your complicated suggestions, as long as they keep them hidden in an inspector so I can keep my clean interface. ;)
 
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