Looks aren't everything but in this app, they sort of
are
Calendar Plus 1.2
Scott Forstall may have been defenestrated through a
skeuomorphically beautiful digital window, but that doesn't mean that real
world-based GUI fluff isn't alive and hovering over his body. Such electronic
noise is apparent in Calendar Plus, whose primary appeal appears to be in its
visuals rather than its functionality.
Calendar
Plus 1.2
To begin with, Calendar Plus has exactly one functional
element. It stays up in your menu bar since iCal doesn't and provides you with
a fast glimpse of what’s on your calendar. Beyond that, Calendar Plus defaults
to iCal (renamed Calendar in Mountain Lion, but we'll call it iCal here).
Click the menu bar icon, and a large, brightly colored
calendar opens with a list of events jutting out in a pane on the left,
color-coded by which of your iCal or CalDAV calendars they appear in. Click a new
day in the calendar to see that day’s appointments, or double-click it to open
it in iCal. Want to add a new event? Double-click the day, wait for iCal to
open (at least it opens on the day you clicked), and enter the info there. Yes,
you read that correctly: you can’t actually create new events or edit existing
ones within the Calendar Plus app itself.
AnDal (Demo) -
CalDAV Calendar
Calendar Plus automatically reads the same calendars and
accounts you have set up in iCal, and you can also add Google Calendar and
Facebook, even if you don't have those accounts linked to iCal. But they’re
read-only as well: If you click a Google Calendar event, it opens in
www.google.com/calendar in your default browser.
The settings have some useful features you can set a
keyboard shortcut to open the app, and choose to have the weather displayed,
too. The 1.2 update brought a compact view that gives you another option, but
the problem is, the app is too hung up on aesthetics over function. Calendar
Plus seems to take great pride in letting you choose a theme and background
picture for your calendar, but we found these distracting. Case in point: the
"Calendar is attached by” settings lets you decide whether Calendar Plus'
window just sits beneath the menu bar, or if it dangles a little bit lower,
"attached" to the menu bar by bits of string or clothespins or chunks
of glass. That’s...nice?
You can pick a
color theme and select from several background photos...but you can't enter a
new event?!
Calendar Plus makes your iCal data a little more accessible
than if you had to open iCal every time. But its inability to add or edit
events without launching another app or your web browser is a shame, and the
questionable appeal of the graphical extras doesn’t redeem that shortcoming.
Fantastical ($19.99, www.flexibits.com) costs more but works like a menu bar calendar
ought to.
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Information
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Website : www.qbix.com
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Price: $4.99 Available in the Mac App Store.
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Requirements: OS X 10.6.6 or later
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(+) Fast. Does something iCal/ Calendar should do
natively.
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(-) Doesn't do much. Overpriced for what it does do.
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