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Timeful is a new calendar app that reinvents how you organize your time
Timeful (free) has launched today after a long development and beta phase. The app tries to capture everything that vies for your precious time and stores it in one place. It can import and sync your current calendars from iCloud, Google, Yahoo or Mirosoft Exchange. The app blends to-do's, events and what it calls "habits," which the developers define as a good practice you want to develop. When you enter anything into Timeful, you are asked about its priority and when the best time to remind you about that item is. It can be a specific time, or even something more vague like a weekday morning. There is a "frequency bar" to regulate how often you are flagged on lesser events. Timeful also wants to know when you sleep, so you won't be alerted during that time. The app comes out of a lot of research on how we use our time, so Timeful makes smart suggestions, rather than giving you alerts by rote. One of the people behind Timeful is Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, an expert in human fallibility and short-term thinking, so you get the idea that Timely isn't just another calendar app or To-Do list. "We've successfully applied technology to improve our lives in many domains – search, finance, music, shopping, you name it. And yet we haven't yet applied it to optimize the use of our most scarce resource – time – and there's so much algorithms and behavioral science have to offer," said Timeful CEO and co-founder Jacob Bank in a conference call we had last week. "Our first application is based on the simple observation that what doesn't make it onto your schedule is less likely to get done. By making it easier to put everything that vies for your time onto your schedule, including by automatically suggesting good times to do things, we hope to make you more productive and less stressed." Using Timeful is pretty easy, and there are some tutorial videos you can watch to fully understand how the app works. I was easily able to import my iCloud calendar, and I could decide if there were some categories I did not want to display or sync. What can become a problem with an app like this is that it takes a lot of time to enter items properly, which will, of course, have an impact on your time. It's also easy to get over-nagged by any app, which can also be a distraction. The Timeful developers seem to have thought about these things, and a lot of the scheduling and suggestion times happen behind the scenes and are driven by algorithms that should reduce distractions. Over time, Timeful learns what you do and when you like to do it, which will generate more accurate and timely suggestions. I think this app is worth a look for people who have busy schedules. Even retired people may like how it organizes your time. Timeful demonstrates some fresh thinking, and the app is sure to grow and improve. Although Timeful has some location awareness, I'd like to see it get more granular in that respect, knowing more than whether I am at home or work. Timeful requires iOS 7 or later. It is not a universal app, but will run scaled on any iDevice. The company is also working on a web-based version so you can interact with your calendar from anywhere. That version is expected to appear quickly.
iCaltoGCal.com syncs your iCloud calendar to Google Calendar
If you have ever tried to add your iCloud calendar in Google Calendar, you probably saw this error: "Could not fetch the URL because robots.txt prevents us from crawling the URL." That's because the https://www.icloud.com/robots.txt file tells "web crawlers" not to index anything under /calendar/ which is a good idea if we're talking about something like Googlebot, but should not apply when done in response to an interactive action initiated by a human. However, for reasons unknown, Google decided that Google Calendar should follow Apple's robots.txt instruction.[1] I have looked for a solution for this before, but today I found one: iCloud Calendar Proxy. The service could not be simpler: 1) Get your iCloud calendar URL from iCloud.com. 2) Paste the URL into the field at iCalToGCal. 3) Copy the new URL to Google Calendar. Boom! Now your iCloud calendar is available on Google Calendar. That's all you need to do, but there are a few provisos, a couple of quid pro quos you should know about. First of all, this process requires that your iCloud calendar be made public. Now, it doesn't seem likely that someone would accidentally stumble across your seemingly random 64-character iCloud calendar URL, but it's at least theoretically possible. You do not have to make the calendar public on Google.[2] You should also be aware that Google Calendar only updates "every few hours" and there is no way to manually update the calendar, so the Google version of your iCloud calendar might not always be up-to-the-minute. Still, until there's a better way, this is much better than nothing. iCalToGCal is offered for free by Jason Funk, but he does ask for donations to keep the server running. He also made "the sharing core of icaltogcal.com" available on Github, which means that you can set this up on your own server, assuming that it runs PHP. I set it up on mine in a matter of minutes, and then added the URL to my PHP script to Google Calendar instead of using the custom iCalToGCal URL. If you know any other ways to sync an iCloud calendar to Google Calendar, let us know in the comments. There are any number of reasons why Google might have decided to do this, including: 1) Wanting to avoid the appearance of doing something nefarious that Apple might object to, 2) wanting to make it more difficult for people to use iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar together with the hope that more people would choose to use Google Calendar instead of iCloud or 3) some other reason entirely. I generally try to apply Hanlon's Razor to these types of situations, but given the history of animosity between the two companies, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. ↩ Unfortunately for me, it does not seem possible to share only the "busy/free" information via Google calendar, which was what I was trying to do. That's not really relevant to the technical aspect of this; I just mention it in case anyone else was thinking of doing the same thing. ↩
Daily iPhone App: Horizon puts a weather report in a calendar app
Horizon is an interesting little app that comes from a very simple idea: To combine your weather report and your calendar in one place. That may not sound like a big innovation, but it's actually not a bad one. Horizon's simple and straightforward design (put together by a young developer named Kyle Rosenbluth) makes browsing through your upcoming schedule very easy, and matching up outside temperatures and weather with what you're doing is more helpful than not. You can use Horizon as its own calendar app, or sync it up with any of your other shared calendars, including any you have available over iCloud. And you can grab weather from anywhere (Horizon will automatically pull in temperature readings based on your calendar event's location and time), and tweak just how the time and temperature are displayed. There's also a "night mode," which is useful both as a visual indicator of how late it is, and for opening the app up in the dark to check your next day's schedule. Horizon is a really impressive app -- it takes a few good ideas, and then really polishes them to a nice shine. Rosenbluth has put a lot of thought into that initial premise of combining the weather and your calendar, and it shows. Horizon Calendar is available in the App Store right now for US$0.99.
AppleScripting Notification Center > Scheduling Do Not Disturb
Mountain Lion's Notification Center is great for keeping you in the loop, but it can be a huge distraction when you need to get stuff done. Sometimes, a little peace and quiet is all you need to stay productive. As you may know, iOS 6 includes a handy Do Not Disturb feature, which can be turned on to disable notifications. It can even be set to automatically enable/disable itself at scheduled intervals. Mountain Lion also lets you disable Notification Center. Just open Notification Center and drag down to access a Show Alerts and Banners toggle switch. Note that this is a temporary setting, and disabled notifications automatically re-enable at midnight. Unlike iOS 6, though, Mountain Lion doesn't give you an option for enabling/disabling notifications on a schedule. At least, it doesn't provide a built-in option for this. With a little customized help from AppleScript, Automator, and the Calendar app, it is possible. In this post, you'll create two Calendar Alarm Automator workflows, which can be configured to run at scheduled times to enable or disable Notification Center alerts and banners. Note: If you have any trouble following along, you can download the completed AppleScripts and Automator workflows here. Building a Workflow to Enable Do Not Disturb (i.e. Disable Notification Center Alerts and Banners) 1. Launch Automator (in your /Applications folder) and create a new Calendar Alarm workflow. 2. Search the action library for the Run AppleScript action and drag it to the workflow area. 3. Replace the pre-filled AppleScript code in the Run AppleScript action with the following: The script writes to Notification Center's property list file and enables Do Not Disturb mode. It then quits and relaunches Notification Center in order for the change to go into effect. 4. You're finished building the workflow, so go ahead and save it as Enable Do Not Disturb. 5. When you save the workflow, Automator puts it where it needs to go (the ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Calendar folder). The Calendar app launches and a new event is created in an Automator calendar, which Automator creates if it doesn't already exist. The event should be configured with an Open File alarm that's set to run the workflow. Schedule the event for the desired time, such as every weekday morning at 6 AM. Now, every time the event occurs, the alarm should launch the workflow and Notification Center should be disabled. As I mentioned earlier, Notification Center automatically re-enables each day at midnight. So, if you plan to schedule Do Not Disturb overnight, then you'll need to create an additional event that disables it again at 12:01 AM. Building a Workflow to Disable Do Not Disturb (i.e. Re-Enable Notification Center Alerts and Banners) Now that you've got a workflow to disable Notification Center, you probably want one to re-enable it. 1. Create another new Calendar Alarm workflow in Automator. 2. Search the action library for the Run AppleScript action again and drag it to the workflow area. 3. This time, replace the existing placeholder script in the Run AppleScript action with the following code: This code updates Notification Center's property list file to disable Do Not Disturb. Then, it relaunches Notification Center for the change to take effect. 4. The workflow is done, so save it as Disable Do Not Disturb. 5. The Calendar app should launch again and another event should be added to the Automator calendar. This event should be configured with an Open File alarm that's set to open the Disable Do Not Disturb workflow. Set it to run on the desired schedule, such as every weekday morning at 9 AM. If everything has gone according to plan, you should now have Do Not Disturb workflows that disable and re-enable Notification Center alerts and banners at the desired times. Use your alert-free time wisely. Until next time, happy scripting!
Build a photo calendar with Automator
You've seen it in your Launchpad. You've seen it in your Applications folder. It's Automator. It sounds cool. It looks cool. It's got a cool robot icon. But, what can it really do, and why should you care about it? Well, Automator can do lots of things to improve and streamline your OS X experience. With Automator, you use building blocks called actions like ingredients in a recipe. When your actions are strung together, the result is an Automator workflow that can perform a series of tasks. Apple provides lots of built-in actions for automating things with Calendar, Mail, Safari, and more. You get even more actions as you install Automator-ready apps, like Aperture, BBEdit, Microsoft Office, and Transmit. What you can do with Automator depends on the actions installed on your Mac. So, you may run into limitations if you don't have actions for certain tasks, or if an app doesn't support Automator. For simple things like working with folders, images, and PDFs, however, it's a great tool that can save you time and let you do some fun stuff. In this post, I'll show you how to use Automator to create a print plugin that shows up in the PDF menu when you print a document. This specific plugin lets you print a photo calendar right out of the Calendar app.
BusyCal 2 adds new views, menu bar quick entry, gives up Sync Services
It was already among the leading Calendar/iCal replacement apps for productivity aficionados, and now BusyCal has received a boost of new functionality with the release of BusyCal 2. The update includes improved iCloud functionality, and is also compatible with Google Calendar and other services based on the CalDAV standard. It requires OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion; users of Leopard and Snow Leopard can still use BusyCal 1.6 to sync over the local network with 2.0 users. BusyCal 2 adds natural language support for event entry, a live 10-day weather forecast and even a new heat map view that gives you a glimpse at how busy the next 12 months will be. The updated app also works hand in hand with new Mountain Lion features like Notification Center for updates and alerts. A new menu bar applet (similar to Fantastical and Today) lets you browse the day's events without opening the full BusyCal application, and you can also use it to create new events and to-do reminders. In addition to the cloud service calendar access it offers, BusyCal retains its popular ability to sync calendars between instances of the app running on different Macs on the same LAN... with a caveat or two. Users of BusyCal 1.6 should note that there are several functional changes from 1.6 to 2.0. As Apple's Sync Services framework is deprecated in Mountain Lion, features in BusyCal that leveraged it (crossover synchronization with iCal/Calendar, Outlook or Entourage; direct calendar sync via iTunes to iOS devices) are no longer available. Since BusyCal 2.0 doesn't sync with calendar apps that support Exchange, the BC 1.x "hack" that allowed Outlook users to replicate their work calendars onto Google Calendar isn't possible in the new version. In fact, BusyCal 2 doesn't publish calendars to Google at all; they need to be created on the web side, then you can subscribe to them in the app. Another consequence of the rebuild is that LAN-shared calendars (not iCloud or Google hosted calendars) cannot be synced to iTunes devices or published to the cloud services; they are local network only. BusyCal 2 carries over the same clean, accessible aesthetic of its predecessor, letting you view the upcoming days, weeks, months or even years without being overwhelmed. The app is available for US$29.99 via the App Store, but you can take it for a free 30-day test drive via the official website.
Apple's calendar subscriptions servers unavailable to users [Updated]
For years Apple has made available their own and third-party calendar subscriptions on their iCal Calendars site. Now Apple has appeared to have taken their iCalendar subscription servers offline. The servers host iCalendar files which anyone with an app that supports the iCalendar (ICS) standard can subscribe to. iCalendar files can be used in popular apps like Calendar on iOS and OS X and Google Calendars. Subscribable calendars are an easy way for people to add a mass amount of data -- like holidays or sporting team events -- to their planners. Once subscribed, the calendars automatically update when any changes are made on the server side. I've used two of Apple's own iCalendar subscriptions (for US and UK holidays) in my calendar apps for many years, but over the last few days I've noticed that the subscriptions were showing a refresh error warning icon. After trying to refresh the calendars manually an error-1 dialog request started appearing. To be clear, Apple links many calendar subscriptions on its iCal Calendars site. The only ones that are affected, however, are the ones hosted on Apple's own calendar servers (for example, those beginning with: webcal://ical.mac.com/ical/xxxx.ics). I've reached out to Apple for comment to see if this is a temporary issue or if they'll be shuttering their iCalendar services for good. Users who are currently subscribed to Apple-served iCalendars will still see events in their Calendar apps since the last time it was refreshed. However, if you delete the subscription, with Apple's iCalendar server currently offline, there will be no way to get the entries back. Update: As of 7pm GMT on 08/21/12 Apple appears to have put their iCalendar servers back online.
Fantastical 1.2.2 available, prepares for Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper
Fantastical by Flexibits has been updated to version 1.2.2 to address, among other things, Gatekeeper support in Apple's forthcoming Mountain Lion. Fantastical is a fantastic tool for the Mac that I've been using for quite a while (here's our comparison of Fantastical and Today). It lives unobtrusively in your Menu Bar and offers fast, natural language creation of calendar events. You can also use it to edit existing appointments, browse what you've got scheduled and sync with iCal, BusyCal, Entourage, or Outlook. Version 1.2.2 prepares the app for Gatekeeper, allows for vertical resizing of the event list (Lion only) and adds notes to search results, which I appreciate. There's more, of course, and you'll find the full release notes here. Fantastical requires Mac OS X 10.6+ and is available for $19.99. This is a free update for existing users.
How to enable iCal's debug menu
ZDNet (via Macgasm) has posted a couple of neat iCal tweaks that should make your life a bit easier: Enabling the debug menu and showing two weeks worth of appointments at once. The trick involves a couple of Terminal commands. To enter debug mode, use the following: defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu 1 And, if you want to remove it, use the following command: defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu 0 Once you've got the debug menu activated, restart iCal. Here's what you'll see. There's quite a few tricks here, including the ability to have to multiple iCal windows open at the same time. You also can expand the week view to glimpse up to 28 days at once, which is a little too much. But like ZDNet says, being able to see two weeks at a time in week view is pretty handy. To switch the views, select the desired time from the "top sekret" menu and toggle between week and another calendar option. The new mode is enabled once you return to the week view.
Doodle adds iCal connector for cloud scheduling
Mac users of the cloud-based scheduling service Doodle will be happy to learn that the company has released a beta of its iCal Connector software for Mac. Doodle is a service that lets users send out potential meeting dates to friends or clients. Those recipients see a poll with the meeting schedule options; they can vote on which date would be best for them. The tentative dates show up in that user's calendar client (Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.). Users can see what other dates people choose as well. When the original meeting organizer looks over all the dates and chooses the best one for the group, all the tentative dates are automatically wiped clean from everyone's calendar software with only the chosen one left. Until now Doodle's third-party calendar support was limited to Google Calendar or Microsoft's Exchange calendaring. With the iCal beta, now Mac users can take full advantage of the cloud-based meeting selection service, no matter what calendar service they use. If you want to learn more about Doodle, check out this short video. Doodle offers both free and premium accounts for users. The Doodle iCal Connector is a free download.
iOS 5 features: Reminders
Of all of the new bits and pieces of iOS 5, one of the apps I'm using the most is Reminders. It's a simple yet effective app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad that is used to set up self-reminders and task lists that are synced through iCloud. Let's take a look at this latest feature of iOS and Mac OS. The icon for Reminders describes at a glance exactly what it does -- it looks like a list of tasks, each with a check mark indicating completion. Reminders works on the concept of lists, and you can create any number of them. The app automatically adds a list called "completed" that contains any task that you have finished but have not deleted. To add a list, there's an edit button on the Lists page. With a tap you see the names of all of the lists that you have created, and can create new lists either on the device you're working on or in iCloud. For syncing, it's best to create new lists in iCloud. On the Lists page, a tap of a specific list ("Work" for example) displays all of the individual tasks underneath. %Gallery-136321% Creating tasks is also easy: you just type in the name on the Lists page. Once the name is entered, a tap of the task takes you to a Details page where you can enter in a reminder. How do you do that? Tap on the "Remind Me" button, which opens up a dialog asking if you wish to be reminded on a day, at a location, or both. Choosing a day to be reminded brings up a standard date and time picker for an alert, while choosing a location displays buttons for Current Location, When I Leave, and When I Arrive. A tap on Current Location brings up a list of locations -- usually your current location, a work location, and a "choose address" location. The latter only lets you pick addresses from your contact list. That's a real bone of contention for me, since I'd like to be able to set location reminders for businesses that aren't in my address list. For example, let's say that I want to be reminded to buy laundry detergent when I go to the nearby Whole Foods Market. I don't want to enter the grocery store into my contacts, but right now that's the only way I can add the location into a reminder -- that or go to the location and set the reminder using "current location." You can choose to repeat the reminder at a set duration, either every day, week, two weeks, month, or year. The Details page also provides a way to add a priority and notes to a task, or change the list that it is added to. You can look at your reminders not only by list, but also by date. The date view provides a calendar you can look at, or you can swipe between dates. For each date, any reminders that "come due" are listed. As with the Calendar app, you can tap a Today button to see what's on your agenda for the current day. On the iPhone and iPod touch, Reminders only works in portrait orientation. On the iPad, you can flip between portrait and landscape at will. How well does the syncing over iCloud work? If I entered a task on the iPad, then turned to my iPhone to bring up Reminders, the new task was already there. That's fast. Of course, the syncing also works with the Mac. "But wait," you may say, "There's no Reminders app on the Mac!" You're right -- but iCal does have a Reminders pane that appears. You can add new reminders in iCal (5.0.1 or later), and they'll appear instantly on all of your other devices. There's also the ability to add a local (on my Mac) or iCloud Reminder list from iCal, as well as a shortcut for creating Reminders using Command-K. But wait, there's more! If you want to access those Reminders from any other computer in the world, all you need to do is sign onto the iCloud.com site with your Apple ID, bring up the calendar, and there they are. Windows users who don't want to use the iCloud.com website should note that using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7, and Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars. Reminders is also integrated with Siri, although I was not able to test that integration prior to publication. Just ask Siri to remind you to do something at a particular place or time, and a reminder is created. This is going to be a powerful app, and it's something that really needed the fast response times and exceptional integration of iCloud. For me, it's replaced a handful of iPad / iPhone / Web apps that I was using for tasks, and it's free. I'm giving Reminders an enthusiastic thumbs-up, and several of the other bloggers here at TUAW have been happy with it as well.
Macworld's tips to make OS X Lion's iCal less annoying
The changes made to iCal in OS X Lion have definitely been polarizing, and even some of the novice Mac users I know have found some of them questionable. The word "fugly" has come up more than once when discussing iCal's new faux-leather trim, an interface choice that makes a little more sense on the iPad than it does on the Mac. Macworld came up with a few tips to dispatch some of the annoyances introduced in OS X Lion's version of iCal, including the new UI elements. Rather than copy all Macworld's tips here wholesale, I'll recommend you head there and check their advice for yourself. I will highlight one of their tips: getting rid of that execrable leather trim is not only possible, it's quite easy via a third-party program called Lion Tweaks, recommended by Macworld. The application bundles together several of the Lion-related tweaks covered here and elsewhere in an interface that's about as simple as it gets. Reverting iCal's skin to a nice, bland aluminum took less than a minute, and my eyes thank me for it. It's a modestly "hacky" solution to a purely aesthetic problem, but it's preferable to that oddball skeuomorphic design. Even after implementing all the recommended tweaks, it's worth noting that the article writer himself says that ultimately, "Use a better calendar program" is his top recommendation. For my part, the only reason I stick with iCal on the Mac is its integration with the Calendar apps on the iPhone and iPad via MobileMe (and soon iCloud).
Fantastical 1.0.2 for Mac supports BusyCal
While I read our review of Fantastical with much enthusiasm, as a longtime BusyCal user I simply couldn't afford to play dice with my calendar. But Fantastical 1.0.2 is now available, and the primary update appears to be that the natural-language calendar tool now plays nice with BusyCal. You can get Fantastical from Flexibits directly or on the Mac App Store.
Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop
Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the "day at a glance" type, but many of my fellow wage slaves liked these large desk blotter calendars that displayed a full month. Now there's a Mac app from WireLoad, Blotter (US$9.99) that turns your iCal events and tasks into the electronic equivalent of the desk blotter calendar. Blotter After you purchase Blotter from the Mac App Store, an app icon appears in your Dock. I have enough icons in my Dock, so I usually drag 'em off, and that was the case with Blotter. Not to worry, though -- once you've launched Blotter, a tiny menu bar icon appears for setting preferences and creating new events and tasks. Blotter can be set to auto-launch at login, and that's the way it should be. The main feature of Blotter is the beautiful translucent calendar that appears on your Mac desktop. By default, it shows the current week, but can be set in preferences to show the seven days or only weekday dates. The current date is listed as a large number, with the month, year, and day of the week listed below. There's also a list of To Do items, as well as a "Right Now" mini-view showing the next four or five hours at a glance. I have my Blotter calendar set to fade out after 60 seconds -- a quick click on the menu bar icon brings it back to full intensity. %Gallery-127505% Blotter isn't meant to replace iCal. Instead, it is meant to work with iCal so that you don't need to actually open your calendar to look at it. It's always there on the desktop for you to see if you need it, much in the manner those desk blotter calendars were on our real desktops in the past, soaking up coffee spills and giving us a look at what was coming up in the next few days or weeks. If you use Google calendars, no problem -- as long as you're subscribing to those calendars in iCal, they'll show up on Blotter. The calendar can be set to take up a lot of screen real estate or a smaller area, and in the smaller views it is movable to various locations on your desktop. There's a "narrow" mode that displays just the date, To Do list, and the Right Now mini-view, but it seems to defeat the purpose of Blotter for me. On my 27" iMac I tend to always have a lot of windows open, so they obscure the view of Blotter and also defeat the purpose of the app a bit. However, it's possible to hide windows temporarily by pressing Command-H repeatedly while in the Finder, and that makes it very easy to hide windows very quickly, glance at the Blotter calendar, and then return to work without taking my hands off of the keyboard. Within the Blotter preferences, there is a setting for displaying all iCal calendars or just a selected few. One of the few negatives I see with this app is that for some reason, the color of one of my calendars -- which is orange in iCal -- came over as a sickly olive color in Blotter. The two main calendars (home and work) showed up in their proper colors. What about adding new events and tasks to the calendar with Blotter? The app would be worthless without this capability, and Blotter makes it as easy as either clicking on the menu bar icon and selecting New Event or New Task, or by setting up a keyboard shortcut. In either case, a small dialog appears for entering in the scheduling information on the fly. Conclusion Blotter is a very attractive Mac utility for displaying iCal events and tasks on otherwise unused space on your Mac desktop. I fear, though, that Blotter might be made obsolete by Lion. While testing the next version of Mac OS X, I've found it useful to place iCal in full-screen mode. From any screen, it's available with a gesture and a click; much faster and easier than clicking on my desktop and hitting Command-H until I can see Blotter. Still, the translucent Blotter calendar is much sexier than even the Lion calendar in full-screen. Apple should take some design cues from the Blotter developers for the future. Don't just take my opinion about Blotter. I've included a video review of the app by friend and frequent TUAW TV Live guest Doc Rock, who was the person who turned me onto this amazing utility.
MobileMe: Some speculation about the transition to iCloud
I'll start this post off by stating the obvious -- there's a lot about how MobileMe services will transition to iCloud that we don't know yet. But I'm going to take a stab at some of the most pressing questions we've received from TUAW readers regarding the transition. As more facts come in, we'll update this post and/or let you know in a new article. First, let's talk about what's available in MobileMe as it stands today. The details are in that graphic above, which is taken directly from the web-based MobileMe service. There are web-based versions of Mail, Contacts (Address Book), and Calendar (iCal); there's Find My iPhone, which has already become a free service; there's iDisk, a "cloud-based storage" solution; and then there are things like Gallery and iWeb hosting. Speculation #1: Web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will be de-emphasized I'd speculate that the web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will get less attention going forward, and might even disappear on June 30, 2012. Seriously -- who needs them? If you have a Mac or three, you'll sync Mail, Address Book, and iCal through the free iCloud service. The same with your iOS devices, which will send Mail, Contacts, and Calendar changes to the iCloud, where they'll all be echoed to the rest of your digital world. For Windows users, you'll be using Outlook 2010 or 2007 to sync to the iCloud. The only scenario in which you might not be able to get to your "stuff" is when you're using a public computer of some sort at a hotel, on a cruise ship, or at a cybercafé in Spain. Of course, you don't want that to happen, so you'll have your iOS device with you. Hook up to Wi-Fi or use your 3G data service, and the problem is solved. That's why they call them mobile devices. [The counterargument would be that dropping web-based access to PIM and email from iCloud would be a pretty big competitive disadvantage for the service, compared to Google and Microsoft offerings. It's equally likely that the web components will simply flip over from MobileMe to iCloud without any new features or engineering effort -- since Apple is already doing a passable job on them. –Ed.] Speculation #2: iDisk disappears Apple's already stated that iCloud will back up your content -- music, photos, apps, and documents. But there's nothing out there about what will happen to your other stuff. I personally have about 15 GB of iDisk storage available to me on MobileMe, of which I've actually used about 3 GB. All of my important data is sitting out in my Dropbox, syncing between my Macs and iOS devices. I personally don't see the need for iDisk in this world of Dropbox, but there are others who may be using iDisk since they either don't know about Dropbox and similar services or don't want to migrate to them. I think iDisk is going to go extinct, but that Apple will provide iDisk users with a variety of third-party cloud storage solutions and warn them to migrate their data well in advance. There is a full year to prepare. Speculation #3: Gallery is toast Gallery was Apple's way of creating web-based photo albums of your photos for sharing with friends and relatives. Once again, I can't see a need for it in the post-MobileMe world. Apple has already provided an "out" to those who want to share their photos to the world -- iPhoto supports sharing pictures to both Flickr and Facebook. I don't know what Flickr's membership is these days, but Facebook has well over 600 million users, and a good number of them may be former or current MobileMe subscribers. Those two services are perfect for photo sharing, and I'd be willing to bet that the current number of photos hosted in Gallery is a tiny fraction of the number out on Facebook or Flickr. Another reason I think Gallery is going away is the tendency for people to use iOS devices as a sort of electronic photo album. I don't know how many times I've seen my wife show off photos of our trips to friends or complete strangers using either her iPhone or iPad. It's a lot easier than telling them to go out to some long-winded MobileMe URL to see a gallery of pictures. Speculation #4: So long, iWeb hosting As the author of several editions of a book on iWeb, I have a vested interest in the future of this Apple product. However, the future just doesn't look all that bright for iWeb. The software hasn't been updated recently, and there is a lot of rumbling out on the Apple Support Forums about what will happen when MobileMe disappears. My guess? Apple will once again tell MobileMe users that they need to find their own hosting. iWeb can publish websites to a number of hosts, so it's no big deal to republish on a new one. I even wrote a post almost two years ago about how to use free Dropbox space to host an iWeb site, so there's a solution. Finally, a significant portion of the people who set up iWeb sites initially were putting together personal sites. Many of those people have probably gone the easy route and are either letting friends know about their lives via Twitter and Facebook, or have set up sites with free services, like Blogger or WordPress.com. Nevertheless, judging by the frustration and concern on Apple's support boards, this may be one of the trickiest transitions to manage. Conclusion Before some of our readers who are adverse to change go all ballistic on me in the comments, remember what I said at the beginning -- we don't really know what's going to happen to some of these services between now and the demise of MobileMe on June 30, 2012. All of this is speculation about what will happen, based on my personal perspective. If you have an alternative idea, or you're a disgruntled MobileMe employee who wants to spill the beans, please let us know about it in the comments or send us a tip via the "tip us" button at the top of the page.
How to: Share iCal calendars without MobileMe
This how-to over at Gearz.de will help you share your iCal calendar around even if you don't have a subscription to Apple's online MobileMe service (a very forgivable offense, especially since its expected replacement iCloud service is now just a week away). Unfortunately, the writeup is a little technical, as you'll need to actually configure your local web server to share out and broadcast the calendar to anyone who needs to read it. That means you'll need to do a little console typing and config file editing, but as long as you follow directions, it should work just fine. A simpler solution might be to use an app like BusyCal to do the syncing for you, or even just use a service that's already in the cloud, like Google Calendar (which is what I actually do). But if you're already tied to iCal, either because you've got a calendar on there or just because you like the app, following those steps should help you get sharing to anyone up and running.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help fix iCal's fonts
Dear Aunt TUAW, Why does Apple make it impossible to adjust the font in iCal? God, I sound like an old person... But seriously, wtf? Frustrated, Your nephew Brian B.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: CalendarBar
For most office-bound people, checking their calendar is one of the biggest chores of the electronic world. On the Mac, we've got many great options for managing calendars, including iCal, but what about a fast way to check your schedule from your desktop? That's where CalendarBar comes in. This little gem of a Mac app sits in your menu bar, ready to tell you what's coming up at a moment's notice. Click the icon, and a menu showing all your up-and-coming appointments and important dates drops down for easy viewing. CalendarBar will integrate with iCal, meaning you can view any calendar you can sync with it. Even if you're not an iCal user, CalendarBar can connect with Google Calendar and even Facebook for events and birthday integration. Clicking an entry will launch the appropriate application and take you to that specific event. In iCal's case, it'll launch and bring up the properties for the event. For things such as a birthday reminder from Facebook, CalendarBar will launch your default browser and show you the person or event of interest. Tasks from iCal are also displayed, with the ability to limit them to a set time period and clear them right from CalendarBar. Reminders can be sent via Growl. The menu bar icon can show you the current date or display the number of calendar entries. The drop-down menu also has extensive customization options, with the font, style, width and dates all adjustable. If you're someone who has all their dates, meetings, birthdays and reminders plugged into an electronic calendar, and you need fast at-a-glance access, then CalendarBar is an absolute no-brainer. It's small, simple, slick and fast for US$4.99.
Microsoft releases Office 2011 Service Pack 1
Office 2011 version 14.1 (Service Pack 1) is now available from Microsoft's website. As announced on April 6, the update includes a variety of improvements to the new Outlook for Mac, including built-in support for Apple's Sync Services which allows users to more easily synchronize Outlook data with other Mac OS X software (like iCal and BusyCal) and devices (like the iPhone and iPad) through iTunes. The update also includes the usual fixes for "critical issues" and patches a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker "to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code." Microsoft offers more details about the software update on its official Office for Mac blog. Even if the update isn't showing in Office's AutoUpdate utility yet, you can download the 246 MB package here. [via MacUpdate]
Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility
The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook for Mac, in particular, there have been a few holes in the feature lineup. None of them are necessarily showstoppers, but the collection of odd omissions has given the flagship mail/calendar/contact management platform an air of unfinished business over the past few months. Good news, though: Microsoft's Office for Mac blog reports that we will be seeing Service Pack 1 for Office 2011 next week. The big-ticket returning feature for Outlook is calendar support in Sync Services, meaning that Outlook calendars may once again synchronize locally with iCal, BusyCal or tethered iPhones, iPod touch or iPad units through iTunes. Outlook's punch list also includes editing support for Exchange's server-side rules (which last appeared on the Mac in Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9!), the return of the Redirect and Resend options in addition to simple message forwarding, and editing of messages in the Inbox. Excel is also getting better Solver integration, and there are sure to be hundreds of other bug fixes and minor improvements. While the Sync Services calendar support is welcome, it's slightly ironic that it's coming back to Microsoft's PIM at the same time that Apple's MobileMe calendars are transitioning to CalDAV -- which in turn is breaking Sync Services support for those hosted calendars via iCal and BusyCal. That means there still won't be a supported way to get MobileMe calendars to synchronize with Outlook for Mac (or Entourage 2008, for that matter), at least in the short term. There are some Outlook users who will be able to synchronize to MobileMe's CalDAV servers... but they aren't using Mac OS X. 32-bit versions of Outlook 2007 or 2010 on Windows can indeed sync up to MobileMe, with the help of Apple's MobileMe control panel on Windows XP, Vista or 7. The Office 2011 SP1 download will be available sometime the week of April 11; we'll let you know when it drops. Hat tip to The Loop.
