Today I experienced the feeling that, it seems, every independent OS X software developer is supposed to endure. Apple incorporated my iCalFix feature in iCal. (While I like the flattering thought that it’s “my” feature, I’m aware that it’s a fairly obvious one. They probably came up with that without help. But one can hope…). Anyways – iCal now has automatic alarms
Ah well. The sad part here is that I spent a lot of time working around another Leopard issue that I’d heard about – no more input managers in Leopard. And, since it seemed interesting at the time, I was trying to figure out how to best get my little application to still work with iCal. That was – apart from the learning experience – a waste of time.
And, as a learning experience, what, exactly, did I learn?
- I need to be a member of ADC, Apple’s developer program. If I had been, I would’ve seen seed editions of Leopard and would have known about this beforehand.
Corollary to the above – I need to charge for at least some of my software. ADC doesn’t pay itself. I’m sorry about that, because I liked the donation ware approach. At the same time, it’s depressing when you get a hit from e.g. lifehacker, 2000 people download your app, and not a single one of them donates. (At this point, a huge “Thank you!” to all of you who did donate!)
There’ll still be the odd small app that’s just not worth charging for, but do expect me to branch out into bigger projects.
- Don’t waste time on things that seem “interesting”. I could’ve concentrated on a lot of other things instead of trying to work around a future problem that I couldn’t even verify first hand.
And what will happen to iCalFix? Well, I’ve got a current version that supports Growl. I’ll take out unfinished features, polish the rough edges, and release it on Friday. From there on out, it depends on you guys: How many of you plan on staying pre-Leopard? Are there features I could add that would make you want to pay? (And if you’ve donated already, that’d be an automatic free license to 1.0, should there be a 1.0)
As for other projects, I’m exploring. Acorn seems to be nicely shaping up as a platform for all sorts of interesting graphics ideas, so I might spend some time there. I’ve got a couple of other ideas floating around, so I’ll explore those too – and if there’s something you desperately need for your Mac, you can always let me know…
Hi,
I’m sorry for your disappointment, but here’s an idea for a possible fix to the new iCal: the alarm sound.
It seems to me that you can’t change the default sound for the newly-introduced default alarms, and I just can’t hear “Basso.” So why don’t you give Leopard users the ability to select their favored sound?
Just an idea…
So far the automatic reminders only allow you to set reminders for X minutes before the event. Since I’m coming from Outlook (and since I’m also, unrelatedly, sane), I prefer to set my default reminders for 2 days without converting 2 days into minutes. So if you wanted to continue iCalFix development, you could address that (stupid, odious) limitation.
Also, something that again has super-bugged me after being on Outlook for years is that the interval options for getting iCal to re-remind you of an event after the initial alarm has triggered are pretty much useless, going as they do from 2 hours to 1 day. If you addressed this in iCalFix, I would very much pay for it. Not that I’m not going to send you some money right now but yeah, I think I should be able to specify in minutes/hours/days/weeks how long until I get my next reminder for an event, just like I can specify in minutes/hours/days/weeks how long before the event I get my first reminder. This seems like totally basic functionality to me.
Hi there I’ve been using icalfix since 0.6 i believe. i just upgraded to leopard and would like some help with removing it entirely
spotlight doesn’t seem to show any of the icalfix files, maybe you would know: where is every file associated with icalfix so i can delete it
Hi, i’m also trying to figure out how to uninstall iCalfix. I didn’t see it in LIbrary/InputManagers. Any feedback?
Thanks for making this awesome plug in and sorry it’s been incorporated, but it just goes to show you how good it was!!!
DROdio
Hi Robert,
First of all, thank you for iCalFix, it was very very useful while I was using Tiger.
I have a suggestion for a feature: allowing the user to decide for each event whether a reply should be sent when accepting or rejecting a message. It would be an incredibly useful feature, and fix a very large annoyance of iCal, both in Tiger and Leopard.
Thank you.
Just a quite note to say that iCalFix was a tremendous timesaver for me. Thanks for writing it!
Mike: Glad to see you enjoyed it!
ZZamboni, Joey, Marco: I’m not sure I want to continue working on Haxies – Apple is phasing them out, and I’m thinking of actually selling software. Not a good combo
Daniel: Video coming up soon
Hi Robert, thanks so much for iCalFix – it was a life saver on Tiger.
Every time I launch iCal on Leopard it informs me that iCalFix is not compatible, but there is no obvious way to remove it. I tried searching your site but to no avail – am I looking in the wrong place?
I also get the not compatible message and would like to know how to uninstall it
I am also in search of a way to remove iCalfix since accidentally installed it after upgrading to Leopard. I continually get an error now when iCal launches.
There have been numerous requests for removal procedures. Please advise…
First, thank you so much for iCalFix. It repaired a major defect of iCal.
The Leopard version of iCal is better in that it now has iCalFix functionality, but two other changes have rendered it almost unusable for me. Do you know if it is possible in principle to remedy them?
In week and day view, it used to have little indications on each calendar item showing whether there was an alarm or note associated with them. These indications no longer appear on my iCal.
There used to be a panel over on the right that showed the contents of the selected calendar item. Now you have to double click on the calendar item to see an “info” popup.
So in the old version I could scan the week to see which appointments had notes and click (once) to see the note. Now I have to double click in turn on every appointment to check for notes. That’s a major step backwards in usability. Perhaps I am missing something?
I’ve got a key project you might be interested in (and would LOVE it if you wrote an app to solve it)… It has to do with the lack of iCal’s to-do list to “auto-forward” incomplete tasks.
In short, I’m stuck between Now-Up-to-Date and iCal. I like iCal’s calendar interface, its sharing with Google Calendar, and its price
, but i can’t stand iCal’s to-do and task management (or lack of). It drives me crazy that I have only two choices, show all of my incomplete tasks (including tasks I’ve scheduled a month or year out) or only those in the current view (day). My work is much more task oriented than calendar oriented. As a result, I can have as many as 80 to 100 “to-dos” and without the ability to hide the future dos, it just gets overwhelming.
I like the way NUD handles it. My to-do viewer shows all current & incomplete tasks (even if those tasks were originally scheduled for a month or two ago). It also gives me the ability to print my task list, which I sometimes manually highlight to bring out the tasks I’m really going to do that day.
It’s an element of iCal that is sorely missing and would be a great add-on if it could be made. From what I’ve seen, the new iCal with Leopard still does not address these, so it’s an open niche.
Thanks again and feel free to shoot me an email at brian-=AT=-fairtaxation.org if you’re up for it. I’d gladly pay for such a feature and do what I can to help get it developed.
Hi Brian!
I’m investigating a couple of ideas related to OSX to-do lists, but if you need this functionality, you probably shouldn’t wait for me. Life tends to get busy whenever I focus on side projects…
Either way, thanks for the suggestion! I’ll let you know if I end up implementing it.
I wish leopard iCal would let me set an email for the automatic alarm, but oh well. In regard to managing the to do’s there are a couple of additional options. I am currently trying to resolve which works best with my workflow. First, I think it is easier to deal with to do’s in apple mail than in iCal. Second, the program Time Log also has iCal syncing built in and separtes to do’s from events. The last one which may help if you are dealing with projects filling everything up maybe a program by jumsoft called Process3. You can have individual projects as calendars that can sync as events or to do’s. You can also select sync for individual tasks so you don’t have to throw them all into iCal at once.
You can pick up Process3 fir free by heading over to Macheist and either doing the puzzles or getting the answers from the spoilers page. It’s great fun either way…