Apple’s iCal Team is hiring
Apple’s iCal Team is looking to hire a software engineer.
The job description 
on Apple’s web site says that Cupertino is “looking for someone eager to take iCal to the next level and increase it’s integration with other applications in Mac OS X.”
It goes on: “iCal is a calendar and scheduling tool for Mac OS X that is one of the premiere applications in OS X, and we have great plans.”
I wonder if those plans include unwinding some of the changes made to the interface in Leopard.
Dennis Sellers at MacsimumNews is not the only person who believes that Leopard iCal is a “a downgrade of the product” because of “the extra clicks needed to enter an event or to, for example, correct an entry”.
MacNN takes it further:
Some are saying that this “downgrade” is the sole reason that they can not upgrade to Leopard, and that Apple should ask its users what they need to change instead of doing what it thinks is best for everyone. The largest complaint is that the information ‘bubble’ is too inconvenient to call up – requiring a double-click – in contrast to the old pane that would update as a new event is selected. Almost all are imploring Apple to either modify the current method or to re-instate the drawer, giving users a choice of how they want to use iCal.
If you were King (or Queen) of the iCal Team for a day, what would you ask the new employee to fix first?
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Tags: Apple, Cupertino, iCal, interface, Leopard, the ical team
June 12th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Well, the first thing I’d change is the inability to modify an event arranged by somebody else. For example, I might want to rename it to something more meaningful to me than the name given by the organiser. I might also want to change the date or time when the organiser forgets to send an update.
Then I’d add a year view so I can get an overview of more than just a month at a time.
June 13th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I would like to have:
1- a “Background calendar”: the background color is changed to mark Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
2- as the cursor hovers the event, the text shows complete.
I do support the older editing mode. Few clips to the rest of us!
June 13th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I really miss being able to adjust date/time values with the scrollwheel on my mouse. I also miss being able to adjust the end date of all-day events by dragging the end of the event in Week and Month views.
-c
June 13th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Well, I say that iCal’s sync functions continue to need work. Unexpected conflicts and erroneous conflicts continue to occur. Other than sync issues, I’m happy with iCal.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:15 am
iCal currently clunky. Working around the editing limits took a while. Scripting support limited to existing applications, not mindful of what people want to do with generic behavior.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:43 am
I’d like to (finally?) see recurring To Do’s!
June 13th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I miss the way that, when you clicked on a single event, all the events that were on the same calendar would pop to the front. So if add or click on an event in your “work” calendar, all the other “work” events pop out. Why they’d lose this, I do not understand.
June 13th, 2008 at 5:59 am
One more: let e-mail notifications go to ANY address in your address book — not just your own. Sometimes you want to remind someone else of something they’re liable to forget.
June 13th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I also miss the event icons that would indicate whether the event had an alarm, or notes included.
June 14th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I wrote about my disappointments in the following Apple Discussion Thread…
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5707932#5707932
The inability to group local and subscribed calendars (ie to turn them on/off together or “republish” them as a consolidated calendar) is a MAJOR drawback for me.
June 16th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Date fields are horribly broken. I used to be able to type in a date. e.g. “July 17″ or “Next Tuesday”. Now I have to select each field and manipulate what it should be. This manipulation becomes an exercise in frustration when you try and delete a number only to have a single digit left that you want to delete but can not and have to leave it, type in the correct number and then go back and delete the errant digit. In addition in the reminder field if you choose to be reminded 1 day before an event and then decide to change it, you are now stuck with “the day before” making it another pain to try and get back to a number field.
Horribly horribly broken and all for no reason.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
As far as I’m concerned, iCal has been in dormant mode since the day Apple released it. Apple has this nasty habit of releasing an application for effect… See what WE have!… then letting it sit in stasis, adding the occasional bug-fix.
iCal wasn’t very good to begin with and the situation hasn’t changed.
Seriously, WHAT exactly has changed in iCal over the years?
The old Claris Organizer (now Palm Desktop) still beats it in terms of usability and features, though built on a pretty creaky foundation.
With Palm’s fortunes on the wane, I recently abandoned Palm Desktop (on my terms rather than by force, as sooner than later it WILL break… speaking of never upgrading an app) and have been trying several alternative full-featured third party applications.
SoHo Organizer is by far the best and best looking.
iCal is clearly the weakest, though you get what you pay for, I suppose.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I’ve be anxious to switch to ical and get an iphone but will NEVER do so because of the weekness in the to do’s… most importantly the LACK of RECURRING to do’s. In some businesses, to do’s are far more important than events. To do’s are different. They are “call client” that may occur every other tuesday or “buy stamps” that may occur once a month. Entourage and Now up to Date both are excellent examples of how to handle them. Entourage is the best. I have emailed this suggestion to apple for years, stating they would get more business users (who can afford iphones & new computers) if they would upgrade their central calender software to be business user friendly and incorporate the recurring to do as the other business calendars offer. I can never switch without this simple tool. I know I am not alone in wanting this upgrade because it is all over the discussion boards. Apple’s missing a large segment of potential customers with simple omission.
July 13th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
#1) RECURRING To-Dos. I would have switched over from my Palm Pilot years ago but for the lack of this. These are super-important to me. Things like “pay quarterly taxes” and “file regulatory reports” which have big consequences if I miss them. The only reason I switched over today is because now that I have an iPhone I want it to replace my Palm Pilot. For the time being, however, it looks like I’ll have to keep my Palm Desktop calendar around to keep those recurring to-dos recurring.
2) End times for events. I miss seeing end-of-event times in the text of the event. Sure, I know I have a meeting that begins at 3pm. When does it end? I have to guess from the shading in the daily calendar what time it’s over. I see no reason not to show the event as 3pm-4:30pm instead of just 3pm. Of course, this can be a configurable option.
3) Update to iSync would be nice, too. I couldn’t get my calendar to sync from my Palm Pilot to iCal despite repeated attempts and being a developer myself. I had to export from Palm Desktop and import to iCal instead.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:31 am
No To-Dos in iPod Touch or iPhone. Ignored. Abandoned.
How can Apple have just ignored a basic part of iCal? They say iCal syncs with your device but it does not mention that the to-dos are simply abandoned, no error, no message. There simply are no to-dos there at all. AT ALL.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I’m late to the discussion, but in addition to what everyone else has said, I would love to have a link between iCal and Mail – a preference in iCal to set a Mail account as the account for that calendar. Everything from that mail account is assigned to that calendar (editable) and everything created in that calendar gets sent via that Mail account. The current fly-by-the-seat functionality is just negligence on Apple’s behalf.