Back in July at Macworld NY, Steve Jobs announced iCal. With all of the other less positive announcements that day iCal was reduced to a byline. The only people who seemed to care about iCal was the good folks over at Econ Technologies, who were in the midst of developing a calendar app of their own for OS X until they found out about iCal.
This morning Apple has made iCal available and we are absolutely sure you will want to take a look at it.
A quick glance at the description of iCal and most folks will yawn, blink, then move on, but we urge you to really look at iCal and the potential it has. In particular, there are two features which make iCal stand out: the email alarm feature and the calendar libraries.
Other calendar apps have the email alarm feature but we donit know of any with this useful function that is free. Whatis more, the alarm can be sent to any standards based email client, like your cell phone if you have the ability to receive email. Now, youill never miss an appointment because you Mac, sitting at home, will send you an alarm telling you about your upcoming date anywhere you happen to be. Very cool!
The iCal libraries are what makes iCal truly stand apart from any other calendar. The initial libraries include the standard stuff: US holidays, Apple Store opening dates, but there are also libraries for events like SAT testing dates, college basketball game schedules, Fall TV show premiers, movie release dates, and much more. Information that you would have to cobble together from various places are now available at your fingertips. The potential of the libraries is staggering. Any organization can publish a library and post it on the web insuring that you know when, say Bloomingdalesi once-a-year 50% off sale will occur, cities could publish festival event dates, user groups could publish meeting schedules. All you need to do is subscribe and you instantly have access to when are where events important to you are happening. Extremely cool.
iCal requires Jaguar, so if youive been putting off buying it this may make you change your mind. It will certainly turn a few heads.