Fantastical 2 Debuts on iPhone With Reminders and Improved Event Parser

[Michael Scrip]

I hate this new trend where many apps have mostly white backgrounds when they used to have dark backgrounds.

I'm not a fan of the changes iOS 7 brings in this regard.

 

[jbennardo]

I hate this new trend where many apps have mostly white backgrounds when they used to have dark backgrounds.

I'm not a fan of the changes iOS 7 brings in this regard.

Fantastical offers a light and dark theme in settings.

 

[glasshead13]

1. Read the thread, yes.
2. By extension, yes.

Note that there is still no way to set a default calendar app, so if you tap on anything in NC it'll launch the Apple app.

Don't answer if it bothers you. Most of the responses in this thread are whining about the price, I'm not going to sift through every reply to try and see if someone asked the same question.

 

[Cougarcat]

Don't answer if it bothers you. Most of the responses in this thread are whining about the price, I'm not going to sift through every reply to try and see if someone asked the same question.

You're welcome.

 

[glasshead13]

You're welcome.

should i thank you for trying to tell me to read a thread? Did you answer my question? NO, you told me to read.... not going to thank you for a smart ass reply like that.

 

[Cougarcat]

should i thank you for trying to tell me to read a thread? Did you answer my question? NO, you told me to read.... not going to thank you for a smart ass reply like that.

Apparently you didn't even read my post. I answered your question and told you to read.

I can understand people asking questions that have been answered in 10+ page-long threads, but the thread was two pages when you asked that question. It would have taken you less time to skim the thread and find the answer than it would to post.

Back on topic, let's not derail the thread any further.

 

[glasshead13]

took me 15 seconds to post, doubt you can read 40+ replies in that amount of time.

Like I said, if you don't like it you don't have to answer. I never asked you specifically, I don't have a gun to your head.... skip along, jesus, some people will just do whatever it takes to puff up their internet ego.

 

[AppleInLVX]

What's the killer feature that makes this so much more desirable than the calendar baked into iOS? I've pretty much always been happy with it, and Siri integration made it that much better. I don't understand the hatred for the native app.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Excellent new version dev!

For those who think it doesn't fit in with the iOS 7 look you're dead wrong. The red is bright red, the white theme makes it feel more stock and all the little animations feel more like 7 than 6.

They've added plenty of new features (Reminders, directions for locations) and really tweaked how it works for the better.

The only thing it's still missing is showing empty days in the list (not just the calendar strip). That still screws me up when it hides the days that have nothing in them.

 

[bpcookson]

Bought version 1 but found myself not using it as WeekCal and Calendars 5 were both so much better. WeekCal has already had an ios 7 update for free, and is soon to get a complete new look and functionality, also as a free update.

Fantastical was always the worst of the three, by quite a margin.

I'll pass.

WeekCal doesn't show up when I search the App Store and Calendars 5 seems very high maintenance. What makes either of these apps superior?

 

[glasshead13]

What's the killer feature that makes this so much more desirable than the calendar baked into iOS? I've pretty much always been happy with it, and Siri integration made it that much better. I don't understand the hatred for the native app.

They took away the quick view of information in the day view. Now instead of getting a list of our upcoming appointments for that day, we are stuck with a long scrolling calendar. Some people just prefer to be able to quickly see what appointments they have on a given day, and what time those appointments are without having to scroll through 24 hours.

 

[Cougarcat]

They took away the quick view of information in the day view. Now instead of getting a list of our upcoming appointments for that day, we are stuck with a long scrolling calendar. Some people just prefer to be able to quickly see what appointments they have on a given day, and what time those appointments are without having to scroll through 24 hours.

I think they took it away because they added it to the Today view in NC. I don't miss it.

IMO the reason to use Fantastical is the natural language parsing. (This is especially useful on the Mac, with no Siri.)

 

[Razeus]

I hate this new trend where many apps have mostly white backgrounds when they used to have dark backgrounds.

I'm not a fan of the changes iOS 7 brings in this regard.

Image

Or you can change to the dark theme in settings and quit your moaning.

I love when people complain without ever using the app in question.

 

[page3]

WeekCal doesn't show up when I search the App Store and Calendars 5 seems very high maintenance. What makes either of these apps superior?

Apologies, try searching under Week Calendar. The views available are brilliant and are really customisable. The auto colouring and auto icons are really useful as are templates. Event entry is powerful and quick. Navigation is fast! The monthly mini text view is so useful. The author is really friendly and responsive.

Calendars 5 has a week view I really like and the full text input works well. It does far less than Week Calendar, but I really really like that view!! I don't understand what you mean by high maintenance? Download app and run. Nothing else required.

Bottom line is that all these apps work in the same way (they all use the same back end calendar store) so you can mix and match if you like.

 

[bpcookson]

What's the killer feature that makes this so much more desirable than the calendar baked into iOS? I've pretty much always been happy with it, and Siri integration made it that much better. I don't understand the hatred for the native app.

1. Information density and
2. UX design.

For the first, there is no quick way to see how many appointments you have in a day and you have all sorts of wasted space on a given day view to show you when something happens using a spacial method. Fantastical instead uses a rolling list, doing away with chrono-spacial depiction to instead pack more information where it counts.

This leads into the second point: you can scroll endlessly from one day to the next without moving around the app. Pulling down on the calendar provides a day ticker view (packed with chrono-spacial depiction incase you like it) that allows you to quickly jump to a relevant day; your list of appointments follows along smoothly.

These reasons alone make it far superior to the stock calendar app, nevermind their proprietary appointment creation method.

 

[jonnyb]

What's with the numbers on the top of the keyboard?

Image

To make it easier to enter numbers in an app that deals with dates and times.

 

[avanpelt]

Note that there is still no way to set a default calendar app, so if you tap on anything in NC it'll launch the Apple app.

I turned off banners and sounds for the stock Calendar and Reminders apps in Notification Center.

I enabled notifications inside the settings of the Fantastical app for both Reminders and Calendar events. Also, Fantastical now appears under Notification Center in Settings in iOS so I believe with my current setup, all calendar events or reminders will show up in Notification Center as being from Fantastical so tapping on them should launch Fantastical instead of the stock Calendar and Reminders apps.

Also, with read/write access to iOS Reminders now integrated into Fantastical, I just need Fantastical to access both my calendar and my reminders. I like that a lot more than having to constantly switch between the stock Reminders app and Fantastical.

 

[bpcookson]

Or you can change to the dark theme in settings and quit your moaning.

I love when people complain without ever using the app in question.

It's great that Fantastical has offered theme options, but his point remains: many apps are now super bright with no option to tone it down.

At least I can get to brightness quickly now.

 

[Cougarcat]

I enabled notifications inside the settings of the Fantastical app for both Reminders and Calendar events. Also, Fantastical now appears under Notification Center in Settings in iOS so I believe with my current setup, all calendar events or reminders will show up in Notification Center as being from Fantastical so tapping on them should launch Fantastical instead of the stock Calendar and Reminders apps.

In the MacStories review, it says if you do this your notifications are delayed 30-60 minutes. Do you notice this?

It's a nice feature, but it's really a band aid for Apple not allowing you to change default apps.

 

[canyonblue737]

I hate this new trend where many apps have mostly white backgrounds when they used to have dark backgrounds.

I'm not a fan of the changes iOS 7 brings in this regard.

Image

default is still the DARK background, the white in your picture is the OPTION.

 

[old-school]

The only thing it's still missing is showing empty days in the list (not just the calendar strip). That still screws me up when it hides the days that have nothing in them.

There's a calendar view, a week view and the dayticker can show empty days by switching on an option in settings.

 

[canyonblue737]

The only thing it's still missing is showing empty days in the list (not just the calendar strip). That still screws me up when it hides the days that have nothing in them.

in the options menu you can tell it not to hide empty days!

 

[avanpelt]

In the MacStories review, it says if you do this your notifications are delayed 30-60 minutes. Do you notice this?

It's a nice feature, but it's really a band aid for Apple not allowing you to change default apps.

I just created an event on my Google calendar and set a reminder and sure enough, my computer popped up the reminder at the specified time but Fantastical 2 on my iPhone was silent. That's a show stopper. I guess I'll be turning the stock Calendar and Reminder alerts back on on my iPhone.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[b001ean]

Can't you make reminders and events via speech with Siri anyway?

You sure can.

Siri would require a hit on data usage, though, yes?

 

[uniq]

I love the Mac app Fantastical so naturally bought the first iPhone version. However I hardly used it. And I really like the updates to the default calendar in iOS 7 so can't see myself purchasing this.