miCal, the missing calendar for the iPad
Some people love the built in calendar of the iPad, while others hate it. I’m somewhere in between, liking the overall design, but finding it rather restrictive and lacking in features. Small things like not being able to pinch to stretch the calendar tiles drives me nuts, and it’s generally very “Apple” with a set way of doing things. miCal, aka missing calendar for iPad, aims to give users a more customizable experience.
miCal is basically the middle choice in the calendar market; more advanced than the built in calendar but still not the overwhelming feature pack that is the 5-times-as-expensive $15 Pocket Informant HD. The main view of miCal is best in landscape mode in my opinion, where it gives you a split view with a narrow sidebar on the left and the actual calendar on the right. The sidebar will display birthdays.clock, weather and things like that, whereas the main calendar area can be set to daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or list view calendar mode. From there on out, miCal’s features are mostly under-the-hood. You have a lot more options with regards to e.g. setting default alarms, adding location data to events, when a day starts and ends, how long ahead and after to show a birthday etc. It makes it easy to activate features you need and remove those you don’t, making it feel more like your own calendar than a borrowed one that’s made for someone else, which is the impression I always get with the built in calendar. Naturally it syncs with the calendars you have otherwise set up on the iPad, so you can even use both this and other calendar programs if you so want.
All in all miCal is a great calendar app that gives a bit more freedom without breaking the bank or feeling like you need a user manual, which can be the case with those “ultimate” calendar apps.
[iTunes]
