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I hate the standard iphone calendar app

B

BigQid

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2010
203
3
The standard calendar app is not helping me. It takes appointments, but that's it. I need something to help me organize my life better, but to be honest I don't have a system for what that would look like on the phone. I do know that having my appointments appear as a simple list is not that helpful. I'd like to have the appointments appear as one color, with less emphasis on events. Google calendar integration would be nice.

1) What should I look for in a calendar app?
2) What is the best calendar app available?
3) What would you want a calendar to do even if it doesn't do that now? For example I'd like to be able to add items to my calendar by clicking on them from websites.
 
I have three excellent Calendar apps that I keep synced through the standard iPhone app.

[app]Pocket Informant[/app] has an excellent timebar monthview, and good event and task integration as well. It syncs to the iPhone calendar app, Google calendar, and Toodledo.

[app]SaiSuke[/app] is excellent for it's very efficient copy and paste, as well as being able to see multiple events for one day in monthview. It syncs to the standard iPhone calendar app and to Google calendar.

[app]Calvetica[/app] is a simple and fast calendar app, it takes less time to load than the other calendar apps. It only syncs to the iPhone calendar app.

I've got the iPhone calendar set up to sync with my Google calendars via CalDav, so it should automatically sync new appointments in the background. The advantage of CalDav over the Exchange sync is that I keep the same colors of Google calendar on my iPhone, and any Calendar app that syncs to the iPhone calendar app also keeps the same colors. Exchange sync randomly assigns your calendar colors, so your Google Calendar might be blue, but Exchange sync assigns it red, and you can't change the randomly assigned color.
 
how long have you been able to sync PI or Saisuke with the native iphone calendar app? Is that something new that's come up only in the last few weeks?

edit: do you mean with those calendar apps you can sync with google calendar which will in turn sync with the native iphone calendar?
 
Thanks a lot Gokunama. I will play with these and see which one is best.
 
princesultan said:
how long have you been able to sync PI or Saisuke with the native iphone calendar app? Is that something new that's come up only in the last few weeks?

edit: do you mean with those calendar apps you can sync with google calendar which will in turn sync with the native iphone calendar?
Click to expand...
PI sync to the iPhone calendar just came out yesterday. SaiSuke has been able to do that for a month I think.

You've got to set up the Google calendars on the iPhone calendar first, and then sync the Calendar apps to it. The iPhone calendar won't pick up any new calendars created in the other calendar apps.
 
Gokunama said:
PI sync to the iPhone calendar just came out yesterday. SaiSuke has been able to do that for a month I think.

You've got to set up the Google calendars on the iPhone calendar first, and then sync the Calendar apps to it. The iPhone calendar won't pick up any new calendars created in the other calendar apps.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by this? How do you set up pocket informant to sync with the native calendar app? I don't see this option anywhere after I updated.
 
Never mind I found the setting. But is there any way to change the calendar colors?
 
jw nyc said:
Never mind I found the setting. But is there any way to change the calendar colors?
Click to expand...
Hmm.. no. There's no way to change the OS calendars in PI. It's still possible to change the non-OS calendars though, so my guess is that was intentionally left out.
 
so then the way PI syncs with the native iphone calendar is through google calendar? or did i misunderstand you for a 2nd time? lol

edit: by chance, does toodledo now sync with the native calendar?
 
I've had PI since day 1 and it's great but it locks up constantly (usually when it begins syncing) and more times than I can count, i've had to "restore" my database due to some "corrupt" piece of data getting in and making it freeze at the syncing. Every release, they tend to release new bugs, and subsequent releases tend to fix the new ones but introduce additional ones. Complaints on their site usually results in a bunch of fanboys jumping all over you. otherwise good app, if you can get by the "high maintenance" nature of it.
 
I've had PI crash just twice. I have multiple calendars and a lot of events, but very few tasks. Wonder if the autosync is more prone to crashing, or why you have trouble with PI crashing. My only compliant with PI is it's lack of copy and paste, and the utilitarian UI.

prince sultan, here's how I have PI, google, and the iPhone calendar all in sync with each other. First I created the calendars on Google, then I followed the instruction here to sync the Google calendars to the iPhone calendar. This CalDav method takes a bit more time to set up, but I keep the Google calendar colors synced and uniform across all my calendars if I do it this way. Then you may have to reinstall PI to get the iPhone calendars to show up in PI, but any changes you make in PI will show up in the iPhone calendar, and vice versa, and none of that requires an internet connection. The iPhone calendar automatically syncs to Google calendar, so I never do any syncing with Google calendar from PI. I hope I explained that well.
 
you've been very helpful. thank you. i know it's only 13$, but i'm trying to decide if i even need to buy it or use the free version, since it appears to be meeting most of my needs at the moment. i could maybe use push alarms however...

i also read that the new version of PI was having a lot of issues with toodledo, so that's another reason for me holding back.
 
Local push notifications are nice, but you can do the same with iCal. I'm not sure if push notifications from a server are even supported anymore. I got the idea a lot of apps were having trouble with Toodledo, not just PI, fortunately I don't have a lot of todos, so I seem to be have unaffected by all this.
 
My complaint with iCal is the inability to create a recurring meeting that occurs daily but only on weekdays. It can be done in Pocket Informant, but if you are using iCal internal calendar with PI, it's a no go.
 
I am looking for an iphone calendar replacement just like calvetica. However, I'd like to show my appointements and items with text instrad of just a dot

I know PI does it but I don't need an all-in-one app as I use Things.

Any ideas?
 
[app]SaiSuke[/app] has the best monthview text layout in my opinion, especially when the itemview is replaced with the FULL screen monthview. The recent update however sometimes crashes even before it gets to the first screen.
 
The fullscreen monthview in SaiSuke.

photo.png
 
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