BusyCal for Mac

User Reviews

• Apple's Lost Child

  garygladstoneFebruary 3, 2014

  Pros

  BusyCal in the calendar application that Apple should have delivered. Instead Apple chose unreadable elegance over customizable efficiency and, well, just plain fun. It has fonts, it has colors, it has bold, it has italics, it has Dingbats (if you have 'em) it has background colors....everything you need to make calendars flavored with your own tastes. Best of all, if you have not-so-great-eyesight, you can make reminders that you can read. Apple? Well, it's so elegant that the skinny grey fonts are mostly unreadable by the over-sixty crowd. Sometimes I just want to hug my BusyCal app.

  Cons

  So many choices to create your own look. You can play half the morning away.

  Summary

  Works Like Apples Should

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• Great App. Poor Pricing

  kazizaspazNovember 3, 2013

  Pros

  Love the colour scheme (bit brighter than Calendar). The weather feature is cool, I don't tend to pay too much attention to the weather and with the amount of time I spend on my calendar, it's great to have it there without any extra effort. Similar to the Calendar design, but obviously also has the reminders right there with you - the main reason I trailed this in the first place. : ) Great

  Cons

  PRICING. So, I trailed the product, was prepared to buy it, then mavericks came along, they decided it was worth bumping up the price. Now I'm not too sure if it's worth more than twice what I was prepared to pay, Being a student and all, it is a great product can organise all my different subjects and uni times, study times, reminders for assignments due are always visible in one app etc, but the price doesn't fit well with me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for paying for applications, the app designers need to make an income somehow.. but going from $25 to $64 because apple decided to bring out mavericks.. very frustrating indeed.

  Summary

  I love this product. I think apple should implement it this way, rather than separate the two reminders and calendar. However the fact that I trialled a $25 product, that bumped it's way up to $64 without so much as a warning (despite the fact that I had signed up for email reminders) is appalling customer service on their part. Should the price drop back down, I'll be one of the first to buy. Until then, I shall just wait patiently and hope the price comes down over my summer break! (already missing busy cal) : (

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• BE AWARE !

  joponeMarch 3, 2013

  Pros

  Good concept BUT

  Cons

  I use BusyCal for the past two years and in general the App is well built. Unfortunately, it is not that stable. On all my three Macs I have significant problems the search robot and also frequently with synchronizing. Whats worse the support sucks. No replies. In addition, despite it is one of the most expensive calendar apps, they charge for the minor upgrade to number two.

  Summary

  Product concept: OK Initial pricing: too expensive Additional upgrade penalty: a rip-off.

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• Rip off pricing and nil support

  paulkeleherOctober 22, 2012

  Pros

  A few superficial nice features

  Cons

  I paid $50 for this less than 3 months ago which was a bit steep for a few nice features. Now I have to pay the full product price for an upgrade; has anyone ever heard of such predatory pricing and bad customer care? They're trying to lure people in with an 'offer' of $29.99 but it doesn't bode well for proper levels of support, so I'd save your money and look elsewhere, otherwise like me you'll be ruing an expensive mistake

  Summary

  The pricing of this product has always been controversial; now it seems pretty clear. It's a rip-off.<br /><br /><span class='notifyMsg'> Updated </span>on Oct 22, 2012<p/>I wasn't over-impressed to begin with; now I'm furious!

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• Solved my Frustration with iCal

  apvocelkaFebruary 8, 2012

  Pros

  Displays Calendar better then iCal. Customize the calendar display including the font face and size. (For me this was the swinger to buy it). Drag-n-drop contacts, emails, and more. BusyCal performs automatic backups of your data. Works with iCloud (Have not done that yet but will). Etc.

  Cons

  You will have a hard time finding a Con with BusyCal. I haven't yet. So NONE.

  Summary

  My needs are simple. I am an old guy and wanted to be able to Color text and , most of all, have the ability to increase the size of text. I have searched many option and getting totally frustrated with Apple on this one. BusyCal may be a bit expensive for my needs but after using it , it relieved all my frustration of iCal. So , to me, it was worth every penny.

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• You will NEVE want to use iCal again.

  LoriSchJanuary 25, 2012

  Pros

  Easy to use and syncs with everything I have wanted it to sync with.

  Cons

  Very cumbersome trying to add icons to monthly calendar events which is VERY important to me. What I can and can't print, like a list of for example my appointments with a particular person over X number of years would be nice. If this is available, I haven't figured out how to do it yet.

  Summary

  Please support the BusyCal people so they don't go away. This is the best calendar program I have found out there for a Mac. Every friend i have told about it, now owns it.

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• Great app, I love it

  dudemanlaJanuary 1, 2012

  Pros

  I use this to sync with my iCloud calendar and it works like a charm. Great customer support too.

  Cons

  None that I see.

  Summary

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• Excellent Calendar to Replace iCal or Palm Desktop

  wrbtuSeptember 27, 2011

  Pros

  Superior "find events" feature Much more attractive than iCal or Palm Desktop Extensive "notes" may be attached to events Auto assignment of color to new calendar "To Do" List pops up &#38; must be dismissed or postponed

  Cons

  Doesn't allow user assignment of calendar colors Selecting a calendar to work with is not intuitive Function for easily changing dates/hours not present

  Summary

  I've been using iCal since it was available, &#38; also using Palm Desktop Calendar, which still works with Mac OS 10.6.8. I wanted a calendar which allows better finding &#38; listing of events than either of those two, &#38; BusyCal is perfect for that function. It allows a list view of events found, &#38; finds events over a period of a day, week, month, year, or decade. It automatically assigns a color to any new calendar created, which is a nice feature, but it should allow for a manual over-ride of the chosen color, in case the user wants to assign a particular color. When using multiple calendars, it's not intuitive. I had a hard time figuring out that clicking the check-box for a calendar pertained ONLY to visibility of that calendar's events, &#38; not to adding events or editing events for that calendar. To add/edit events, you must also highlight the calendar's name. It's possible to have one calendar's events visible, but any editing you do applies to an invisible calendar (if the visible calendar is not highlighted). In that case, BusyCal, makes the other calendar visible as well. A bit confusing until you get the hang of it, then it becomes simple. Both iCal &#38; Palm Desktop allow dates/times to be edited by either pressing the up/down arrow keys, or by using the cmd-[plus key]/ cmd-[minus key]. BusyCal has plenty of shortcuts for date/time entry, but omits that particularly useful shortcut. To increase or decrease the date or time, you must do additional typing, unlike the other two programs. I contacted their customer support (while still using a trial version) &#38; found them to be very responsive to my emailed question, even though I was not yet a paid user, so I rate their Customer Service very highly. This is a fairly expensive program for what it is ($49), but worth it if you need the advanced list feature, attractive look, overall ease of use, extended notes feature, etc.

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• Not compatible with Apple Mail

  appleusernycAugust 17, 2011

  Pros

  Shows the weather

  Cons

  Cannot import events from Apple Mail (Apple Mail's single most useful feature. Bad tech support.

  Summary

  Stick with iCal. Apple has if doing everything Busycal does and iCal is fully compatible with Apple products.

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• painless, intuitive, syncing and organizing

  calderwoodFebruary 21, 2011

  Pros

  It is astonishing how easily and effectively you can manage calendars across multiple systems with BusyCal. After a week of use, I could not go back to iCal; it has become my preferred means of accessing and entering data in Google Calendar too.

  Cons

  Two (very) small cons: syncing produces occasional duplicate entries; and date entry in the editing menu takes some getting used to -- I miss the iCal interface -- sometimes it's unclear if your edit is been without checking the calendar itself.

  Summary

  I'm pretty sure that this will become one of my top 3 indispensable aps (along with Launchbar and TextExpander.) As others have said, run it with iCal in the background in order to take advantage of the iCal services and scripting. Now if only they could use their considerable talent and imagination to take ToDo management to the next (hierarchical/GTD?) level..... Still, this is the most fulfilling calendar/todo program I have ever used.

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