Why is iCal not exactly thriving?

[dcnblues]

I don't understand, and would like to. I'm looking for the current (2009) 49er's schedule in iCal format, and the two places that seem most obvious, iCalShare and apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars seem to only have calendars from 2007 (iCalShare's football category) or Iranian soccer (on the Apple site).

Not a lot of current / useful stuff.

So I figure Google calendars must be the new app people are writing to, and perhaps converting to iCal. But nope, Google calendars no longer support searching for public calendars.

I can't believe the calendar I'm looking for isn't out there. Mac users have dramatically increased users past few years. In short, what's going on? I would really like to know.

 

[cuestakid]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/teams/sfo/schedule

ask and you shall receive-

But to answer your question it is really the same answer as to why fewer people use macs-companies are not going to make their products compatible with the mac ecosystem. However, if it is sports team schedules you are usually looking for then I would go to yahoo-they are the only site I have found that has ical compatibility.

 

[Pomeroy]

http://www.icalworld.com/sports.html

 

[mkrishnan]

But to answer your question it is really the same answer as to why fewer people use macs

I'm not really clear on why this would cause Apple to not have updated calenders it itself publishes on its own website... Unless your argument is that the Mac market is too small for Apple to make OS X work with Macs?

It's weird, Apple used to advertise this aspect of iCal pretty heavily, and it doesn't seem like something they've mentioned much recently. OTOH they've been aggressive in adding calendar server capabilities to OS X server and supporting CalDAV.

EDIT: But I think the 2007 you found was a dashboard widget for NFL schedules and not an iCal calender... The DB widget pulls data off the internet and so it might not have needed updating since 2007 to still get the current schedule.

 

[reubs]

Thanks for the link to Yahoo! Sports. I never would have checked there. I've been on the hunt for a composite schedule for SEC football, but I've had no luck. Ideally, the SEC site would have a composite schedule with game times, channels, and all of that info available on a subscribed calendar. How, I guess that speaks to the OP's question and subsequent responses: why should major groups spend time working on something that is not at least the major portion of the market?

 

[dcnblues]

Thanks, cuestakid. Couldn't have found that without you.

Actually, what I said was that mac users have dramatically INCREASED in the past few years, as they have. In 2005, market share about 4%, and now about 8, and it briefly hit ten in 2008, I think.

In any case, more users, and iCal is pretty useful, so I don't get why usage seems to have dropped. I guess there was just an artificial peak when it was new, and everybody was busy making calendars.

 

[cuestakid]

I'm not really clear on why this would cause Apple to not have updated calenders it itself publishes on its own website... Unless your argument is that the Mac market is too small for Apple to make OS X work with Macs?

It's weird, Apple used to advertise this aspect of iCal pretty heavily, and it doesn't seem like something they've mentioned much recently. OTOH they've been aggressive in adding calendar server capabilities to OS X server and supporting CalDAV.

EDIT: But I think the 2007 you found was a dashboard widget for NFL schedules and not an iCal calender... The DB widget pulls data off the internet and so it might not have needed updating since 2007 to still get the current schedule.

The only arguement i was making was that the actual people that make the calendar-those that physically write it, may nor may not be interested in making an iCal compatible version. Having said that, yes Apple could somehow find a way to get the same calendar that yahoo has. Why they don't I have no idea