'Fantastical 2' Launches for Mac With Yosemite-Style Redesign, Full Calendar Window

[MacRumors]

Flexibits today launched the much-anticipated Fantastical 2 for Mac, a completely new app that overhauls the existing Fantastical for Mac app and introduces a long list of new features.

Flexibits CEO Michael Simmons spoke with MacRumors about the new Fantastical 2 update for Mac, and he told us that while the original Fantastical app reinvented calendar apps, the new update reinvents Fantastical. The Flexibits team took everything they learned from Fantastical 2 for iOS and brought it over to the Mac.

To begin with, Fantastical 2 has been designed from the ground up to fit in with the Yosemite aesthetic, adopting a flat design, simple outlines, cleaner fonts, and brighter, bolder colors with two available color themes. It's also adopted many Yosemite-only features like a Notification Center widget, Handoff, and Action and Share Extensions.

The biggest change to Fantastical 2 is the introduction of a full calendar window. The original Fantastical Mac app was housed in the Mac's menu bar in a mini window, forcing users to open the built-in Calendar app if they needed access to a desktop calendar, but Fantastical 2 is a full-featured calendar app that combines that original menu bar calendar with a complete calendar window.

The new calendar window includes Day, Week, Month and Year views on the right, along with a left-hand menu bar that shows the current month and a list of upcoming tasks. Reminders and events are separated in the new version of Fantastical, and a toggle button at the bottom of the calendar window will switch the view from events to a list of reminders. Reminders can be added to Fantastical by prefacing entries with "todo," "task," or "reminder," and can be location-based with dates and time information attached.

Fantastical 2 continues to offer the same menu bar mini calendar window (now re-positionable), featuring the new design and the same toggle to switch between a list of upcoming events and a list of reminders. There's also a new Notification Center widget that displays a list of events for the day.

In addition to offering existing features like natural language parsing, deeply customizable alerts, automatic alarms, Reminder integration, and quick search tools, Fantastical 2 for Mac adds a powerful feature called Calendar Sets. Most people use several calendars with Fantastical, and with the new Mac app, it's possible to group different calendars into separate sets and switch between them using an easily accessible toggle at the bottom of the calendar window.

With Calendar Sets, work calendars and home calendars can be grouped together, and it's even possible to add geofencing to have calendar sets swap automatically depending on your physical location. Fantastical 2 for Mac also includes Japanese support for the first time, with full Japanese-language parsing, a feature that's also coming to iPhone and iPad in the next few months. It's also fully localized in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The app's language parsing engine is more robust, better understanding repeating events and offering more options for adding alerts.

Fantastical 2 for Mac's natural language parsing engine has been updated to be even more friendly and flexible. The parsing engine now understands expressive repeating events such as third Thursday of every month, every weekend, last weekday of the month, and more. Plus, users can now add alerts by ending their natural language input with phrases such as "remind me tomorrow at 3PM", "alert 1 hour before", or "alarm 3PM."

Fantastical 2 for Mac is Yosemite-only because it incorporates several Yosemite features. When a user has an iPhone or an iPad with Fantastical for iOS installed, it's possible to switch off between the iOS and Mac versions of the app with Handoff. With the new extensions, it's possible to highlight text in Safari, for example, and send it automatically to Fantastical with a link, or to add events directly from within apps like Evernote.

Fantastical 2, which is an all-new app, can be downloaded from the Mac App Store beginning today for $39.99. The app will be priced at $49.99 in the future, but it's currently being offered at a discount to celebrate its launch. [Direct Link]

Article Link: 'Fantastical 2' Launches for Mac With Yosemite-Style Redesign, Full Calendar Window

 

[joshwenke]

Exciting! A bit on the pricy side but for those of you who haven't used it... it's well worth the money!

 

[Jamiet361]

Looks amazing! Though that $50 price for a calendar app is a little steep.

 

[Cougarcat]

While this looks great for those who need all these features, all I really wanted was a Yosemite update for the existing menu bar app. They should rename it Fantastical Lite and bring this UI to it--I'd pay 5 or 10 bucks for the upgrade. At $40 for this I think I'll pass.

 

[winston1236]

Talk about overpriced...

 

[Chrjy]

I like Fantastical a lot and it's definitely my goto calendar on all my devices but $50 is very steep. I know developers spend a huge amount of time developing apps and it takes a lot of hard work but I'm not going to spend $50 to upgrade that's for sure.

Half that price and I'd consider it!

I think Flexibits will probably find the uptake is a lot lower than they expect.

 

[boshii]

There's no way I'm paying them again. I know nobody's forcing me to.

 

[Traverse]

I must really be behind the times, I find the default OS X Calendar application sufficient :/

 

[davidgnomo]

A discount for Fantstical 1 faithful users would be greately appreciated ...

 

[Cougarcat]

A discount for Fantstical 1 faithful users would be greately appreciated ...

They can't because they need to be in the MAS for the new Yosemite features.

Edit: not true, there's a non-MAS version.

 

[cmChimera]

They can't because they need to be in the MAS for the new Yosemite features.

Couldn't they just send out codes?

EDIT: Oh I guess it's free or nothing with promo codes.

 

[Andy-V]

I would have purchased the upgrade, but I simply won't at that price.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Calendar on the Mac works plenty great for me. $40 is a non-starter. Heck $15 would barely start a conversation.

iOS is a different tale, but I'm enjoying Calendars 5. Liked it better, don't remember why.

 

[4jasontv]

Couldn't they just send out codes?

EDIT: Oh I guess it's free or nothing with promo codes.

IAP in Fantastical 1 that provides a promo code, or email to request a promo code, for Fantastical 2?

 

[sammcj]

wow, it's currently $50AUD and that's with the 20% off?!

What were they thinking when they priced this? Yes it's probably a very nice calendar app - but it's just a calendar app!

Such a shame it's so badly overpriced. I guarantee they'd more than quadruple their market if they make it a flat $10.

 

[willrun4fun]

Holy Crap $40.

Wow the stock calendar app is looking more awesome all of the sudden.

 

[winterhalder]

Does it allow you to edit meeting invitees/attendees?

Anybody know if it allows you to edit the invitees (attendees) of a meeting?

This was a major, major short-coming of Fantastical 1.

I still use it - I like the look of it and it's great for quickly viewing the meetings of the day - but not being able to view/edit the attendees of a meeting is a huge (and very surprising) short-coming.

I don't see anything in the feature list that says this has been addressed - and can't confirm it from the screens either... hmm...

 

[TexasChemE]

Looks awesome, I simply can not justify that price though.

 

[mitso]

Although it would be nice to update there's nothing in the release that would really add to my calendar experience. All fluff and not much new substance. And they're even asking $39 for it. No thanks I'm good.

 

[n-evo]

The price is a joke and language support still poor. OS X Calendar has been supporting natural language for a while now (since OS X Lion I believe?) and supports Dutch.

 

[sfwalter]

Calendar on the Mac works plenty great for me. $40 is a non-starter. Heck $15 would barely start a conversation.

iOS is a different tale, but I'm enjoying Calendars 5. Liked it better, don't remember why.

From what I hear they are working on a Mac version.

 

[Narcaz]

They can't be serious. I really like the iPhone App, but i am not willing to spend this much for a mac calendar app. I thought the old price for the Mac Fantastical 1 was a little bit to high for the limited functionality. Even their iPad version is pricey for a blown up iPhone App.

 

[BJMRamage]

I don't use the regular default Calendar as much as i could. and reading through the story, thought this App was too much for me...seeing the price assured my thoughts

 

[capuzino]

According to short test session with the demo version it looks pretty much like a calendar app that would really make me use calendar on my Mac. Feature full and somewhat balanced design.

Sad they overpriced it.

 

[tgmn]

I paid for the first one. Now having to shell out an additional $40 (about to be $50) for the second one? Forget about it. Should have priced it at $20 and I wouldn't have thought twice about purchasing.