Last month, I went on a bit of an adventure and considered the idea that maybe there aren’t that many third-party apps that are essential. It’s better to have thing. I’m not saying everyone should dump all their software and revert to defaults, but macOS’s default configuration has come a long way over the years, and the correct approach to setting up a new Mac is He said maybe we should start from the beginning. Learn the basics and slowly add more if you need a little more.
One of the apps I was thinking about while writing this was Fantastical by Flexibits. This has been my calendar app for over 10 years. After spending the past decade away from my calendar, I can barely tell the difference between a third-party app that costs a $57 annual subscription fee and the one that Apple provides for free on my device.
We also generally felt that most of Flexibits’ recent updates to Fantastical focused on features that didn’t actually improve the app’s use. I don’t plan on attending the meeting, so the opening function didn’t really work. And the meeting suggestion feature is now much more heavy-handed and Fantastical-centric than just using a lightweight scheduling app like StrawPoll. Most of the company’s focus over the past two years seems to have been on refining these features, which may be smart to serve its core users, but it just doesn’t sit well with me. yeah.
So I decided to spend a few weeks using only Apple’s Calendar app without Fantastical. Here’s what I learned.
survive by default
Unsurprisingly, the moment I returned to Calendar, many features were lost. I was used to Fantastical’s split interface on Mac and iPad. All events are listed on the left side of the screen, and the week view, which is my preferred interface, is displayed on the right side. Apple just wants to show floating blobs of color. (On the iPad, this was a problem because Apple’s Calendar also doesn’t show event start times in week view.)
Apple has a lot of calendar widgets, but they’re not as good as Fantastical’s. List views, in particular, aren’t as information-dense as Fantastical’s list widgets. Still, I switched to a calendar.
I have a set of default calendars that I always want to see, but sometimes I need to easily switch between other calendars to coordinate with my wife’s calendar or put something on a shared podcast calendar. there is. I used Fantastical’s Calendar Sets feature to switch views, but Calendar doesn’t have such controls. Instead, I created a Keyboard Maestro macro that clicks on a specific location on the calendar to hide and unhide it.
Speaking of multiple calendars, I’m baffled that Calendar can’t display multiple identical events on different calendars as one item. When you switch to the podcast schedule view, all Incomparable podcasts become a tightly packed stack of three identical items. One for my calendar, one for the calendar used by panelists, and one for the public calendar used by listeners and various automations.
But my biggest adaptation was in the menu bar. Fantastical offers a powerful menu bar app that lets you quickly add events and, more importantly, lets you see a list of events for the next few days without opening the app. Is there… nothing on your calendar?
I finally solved this problem using Itsycal, a free app from Mowglii Apps. Itsycal is spot on, but it’s not as pretty as Fantastical’s menu bar items, requires his second keystroke to add a new event, and doesn’t support natural language input for events. You also cannot edit events from within Itsycal.
starter calendar
So what’s the conclusion after three weeks of using Apple’s apps on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad? Actually, I feel like my initial suggestion about defaults was pretty accurate. Apple’s Calendar app is fine. It’s functional, maintainable, widget-free, and a free third-party utility even lets you display a nice quick-access calendar in your menu bar.
That said, it was also clear to me that Fantastical offers a much more convenient and polished experience than Apple. The calendar is pretty old and static, and some of its gaps are really puzzling. Especially quick access in the menu bar. Is Fantastical $57/year better? (I should mention that Fantastical also has a free version, but it omits some features that Calendar offers.)
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s probably easier if you schedule a lot of meetings and have other people schedule meetings with you. But for me, it was a little tough. Still, after three weeks of doing nothing, he feels he’s willing to spend $57 a year to get a better calendar experience than what Apple offers. But I also recommend that new Mac users start with Calendar (and maybe he’s Itsycal!) and give it a try before thinking about spending extra money on a fancier calendar app.
I wish Fantastical had given me a more positive feeling and value for the subscription fee over the past four years. I wish Apple would take a lesson from Fantastical and try to make the default calendar app a little less generic.
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