There’s quite a few people who have written about how to use QuickCal w/ Google delegate calendars, or non-primary Google calendars. This actually isn’t a simple thing to set up in Mac OS 10.6 (MUCH easier in 10.7), so I wanted to give you a quick how-to.
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QuickCal Desktop 1.1 is now available (Download on the Mac App Store!)
Changes from 1.0:
Wanted to give a huge thanks to Christian Bender for usability design and identifying quite a bit of bugs on this release!
Head on over to the support forums to discuss this release, and let us know of any suggestions you may have!
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I’ve seen a few negative reviews in the App Store about times not being reflected accurately. Things like:
I was upset to find that the appointments entered with this app came up ONE HOUR LATER on my iPhones main calendar. I depend on alarms as reminders and that means all my reminders rang ONE HOUR LATE. All my appointments also show one hour later than the app shows. This is unacceptable for a calendar utility. Please fix!
And one more:
This calendar was great upon first utilizing it..and I still think it will be useful, however, buyer beware that it changed all the appointments it had imported from my iCal to an hour later!!!! Luckily I answered the phone when my vet called to remind me of my appt
These issues don’t impact many people (those who live and work mainly from one timezone) – but others, it may.
So, what’s a dev to do to work on these? Fly 1500 miles to the west and cross a couple time zones, and replicate the issue. (Okay, that may not have been the sole purpose for the trip). But, issue replicated, and here’s the problem:
QuickCal deals with times localized to your current time zone. Phone is in San Fran, and you create an event at 6pm? The event is created for 6pm Pacific Time.
Here’s the problem – There is an iCal setting on your iPhone (under Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Time Zone Support), which if turned on (by default I believe it IS turned on), will cause iCal (and iCal alone) on your phone to localizes times to whatever timezone is picked there. This setting is there to support people who do quick trips out of their timezone, and want to ensure that an 8am meeting in Chicago tomorrow doesn’t show as a 6am meeting the day before if you happen to be on the west coast.
So, if you’re on the west coast, and that Time Zone Support setting is set to Chicago (example), entering an event into QuickCal for 6pm will immediately show up in iCal as 8pm. iCal is showing that 6pm time expressed in Central time. (And where things can get really messy is if you really wanted it at 6pm pacific, went into iCal, changed it from 8pm (central) to 6pm – and now what you’ve really done is switched the event to 4pm pacific (6pm central)). Head hurt yet?
… and Apple doesn’t currently give app developers access to that setting.
I will work on copying the Apple settings options for the time zone support and pull them into QuickCal in the next version, but there’s things you can do to fix the display issue right away:
1) If you want appointments to always show relative to the time zone you are currently in (and not pinned to some other time zone), change the phone setting for Time Zone Support to OFF
2) If you’re experiencing off-by-1/2/3 hours on your appointments, but you normally don’t switch time zones, there’s a really, really good chance that your Time Zone Support is ON, but you have the wrong time zone selected in that setting option. Verify that and fix it.
BTW, it really helps if people come to the forums to report problems as I have no direct way to respond or troubleshoot to individual app reviews.
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Two enhancements made to the “Smart Reminders” portion of this widget:
In previous versions, when creating an all-day event, reminders would be created to alert shortly before the event started. Problem with this, reminders (sometimes with sounds, if sync’d to iPhone) would wake people up shortly before midnight.
1.4 brings a change allowing you to pick a time the day before an all-day event to be notified, as well as optionally being notified on the day of the event as well. Thanks to @spcyfishandwine for the multi-day idea! This works quite well for you work folk, as you can be notified before you leave work for the day, and then again when you arrive the next morning. The notification times can be configured on the reverse side of the widget.
And, what good are all these additional alerts if the only thing the alerts did was pop a message? This version now also supports associating sounds with the alerts you create. If you have custom audio files you’d like to be able to use, ensure they’re in ~/Library/Sounds. (Audio alerts will only be set up on any near-term alerts you have. Any alerts you’ve set up through Smart Reminders that are firing more than a week away, these won’t blast audio at you)
Product page is here – jump over there for download links.
QuickCal 1.1 is now released (product page here, direct download link here). This version is mainly a look-and-feel release, as I think I’ve finally made a version that isn’t horribly tacky. I hope so.
I’ve also implemented a ‘help’ system of sorts, where you’re given hints and tips that rotate around (you can also force new hints by clicking on the gray part of the widget).
Also, Apple fixed their iCal bug – so now events will show up in real-time again as you enter them. Thanks Apple engineers!
Feedback welcome!!! Here’s a quick screen grab:
