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Apple Releases iCal

Freezebot writes, "Apple released his new iApp today, iCal. iCal is a calendar manager, which allows you to share your calendars online with your colleagues, family and friends, through your .Mac account. It is a free download." It also works with any WebDAV server. Friendly Canuck adds, "However, iSync is nowhere to be seen. I thought the whole point of iCal was syncing with other devices. Oh well."

31 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Mozilla Calendar by Your_Mom · · Score: 2

    For us non-Mac people, we can still play with Mozilla Calendar

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  2. Tcl ical by Col.+Klink+(retired) · · Score: 2

    I've been using ical since 1998.

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    -- Don't Tase me, bro!

    1. Re:Tcl ical by @madeus · · Score: 2

      When the Internet came out and someone said "It's fun surfing the Internet!" did you say "I've been surfing [surfline.com] for years"?

      I doubt it, because surfing is a verb, not a noun. But then that was obvious to everybody but you it seems.

      Apple (the recording company) did how ever say to Apple (Computer) 'hey, we've been using that name for years'.

      Just as Apple Computer have said to companies who make products that look like or have names that sound like their's (even ones that were clearly not actual attempts at rip-offs). The makers of some recent iPod software for Linux can testify to this.

      There is no way the post that drew attention to this hyporacy is a troll. I've known about for a while and it's quite amazingly hypocritical of Apple, even though the project has not been updated in some time.

      Even though 'Claris Emailer', 'Newton' and 'Cyberdog' are no longer active projects Apple would not hesitate to sue to prevent someone from using those names in conjunction with similar software (or hardware, in the case of the Newton).

  3. File Format by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 3, Informative
    One intersting thing is that the file format is text based and the structure seems quite obvious:
    BEGIN:VCALENDAR
    CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
    PRODID:-//App le Computer\, Inc//iCal 1.0//EN
    X-WR-CALNAME;VALUE=TEXT:Work
    X-WR-TIMEZO NE;VALUE=TEXT:Europe/Zurich
    VERSION:2.0
    BEGIN:VE VENT
    SEQUENCE:1
    I would have preferred an XML data format, but at least a text format means I can manage it using cvs (I don't want to buy a .mac account). The text encoding also seems to be UTF-8.

    Does anybody know if this format is used somewhere else or even documented?

    1. Re:File Format by foobar104 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Does anybody know if this format is used somewhere else or even documented?

      Uhhh... you mean vCalendar? Yeah, I think I saw some somewhere.

    2. Re:File Format by h0tblack · · Score: 5, Informative

      iCal uses an industry-standard iCalendar (.ics) specification. This is a text file that can be easily shared on the Internet. For more information on the iCalendar format, see http://www.imc.org/pdi/ or RFC2445. So yes, it's documented rather well and is far from a proprietary thing, you can relatively easily setup your own .mac iCal style server :)

  4. iCal Library by JHromadka · · Score: 5, Informative
    Apple also has a library of calendar subscriptions available. Movie and DVD releases, sports schedules, holidays, fall television premieres, and more.

    I was really hoping for iSync though, as I won't be able to really utilize iCal until the iSync beta is released later this month.

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    1. Re:iCal Library by khoward1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use OmniWeb and I didn't have any problem copying and pasting the URL's into iCal's "Subscribe" tool. It is a pain that they don't work with one click, but it's not like you can't get them at all.

  5. iSync by h0tblack · · Score: 4, Informative

    AFAIK iSync is in beta and will be available pretty much on schedule - end of september. I think Apple are using ical to push their .mac services for now rather than it's integration with iSync, which I'm sure will follow.

  6. So close... by Pathwalker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Arrrgh - not only did they leave out the feature I've been wishing for in a scheduling program, it looks like they almost put it in, but decided not to at the last minute.

    I work nights, and I would kill for a program that would let me create events that, for example, start at 6:00 pm on one day, and end at 6:00 am on the next, without having to resort to the ugly hack of splitting the event into chunks, so it avoids that unbreakable midnight barrier.

    I was excited when I saw the date box by the ending time when I created an event, but my hopes were dashed, when that box only became active for all day events...

    I guess it's time to dig into the export format, and see what happens if I create an event that spans days manually, and try to import it...

    1. Re:So close... by Pathwalker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I guess it's time to dig into the export format, and see what happens if I create an event that spans days manually, and try to import it...

      Oh well - it still truncates the events at midnight. The info for the event shows it extending to the correct time/date, but it is treated as if it ends at midnight, and the published version just extends a little too far down the page...

    2. Re:So close... by Van+Halen · · Score: 2

      Don't know why it isn't linked to the main iCal page, but maybe you can give Apple some feedback on this. They've been reportedly pretty good about listening to user feedback the last couple of years (but we'll see if they fix those iMovie or iTunes bugs I reported last weekend...).

    3. Re:So close... by ProfKyne · · Score: 2

      I work nights, and I would kill for a program that would let me create events that, for example, start at 6:00 pm on one day, and end at 6:00 am on the next, without having to resort to the ugly hack of splitting the event into chunks, so it avoids that unbreakable midnight barrier.

      Not only that, but you can't view any events that are later than 7:00pm in "Daily" or "Weekly" view modes! WTF is that?? (You can schedule them with the palette but then they disappear to the bottom of the window, out of sight.)

      The real cruelty is that it looks like there's a space for a scroll bar on the right side of the window (probably put there by the windowing API), but there is no scroll bar to use to scroll down. Enlarging the window has no effect either, it just stretches the currently-viewable area so that >7:00 events are still out of sight. I'm guessing that this is a bug, and I sincerely hope that a patch is released soon.

      --
      "First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
  7. uh... by kevin+lyda · · Score: 2

    isn't there an x application called ical (which has been around since 1993)?

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  8. Re:speed & webdav by foobar104 · · Score: 3, Funny

    does anyone know a webdav server for free ?

    Yeah, there's an obscure one that you probably haven't heard of.

  9. Sharing calendar online is silly? by teridon · · Score: 2
    The sharing page doesn't say anything about restricting access to your shared calendar to specific people. Does that mean anyone can look at your published calendar (assuming you are using .mac to publish)?

    I can see it now -- your published vacation to Bermuda is an invite into your home to lowlifes.

    --
    I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
    1. Re:Sharing calendar online is silly? by ChrisDolan · · Score: 2

      I don't know about setting up the .mac share, but there is support for user/pass authentication for webDAV shared calendar. It's under the advanced options of the subscribe dialog.

  10. the icon knoweth by mrpuffypants · · Score: 2, Interesting

    hell, i just think it's cool that the icon shows the current date...i've been looking for an easy way to just look at my iBook and know what date it is

  11. HOWTO: Configuring Exchange to publish Free/Busy by Fiery · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/five/70t3 _4.htm

    This useful document explains how to configure an Exchange server to allow the publishing and searching of Free/Busy information, and how to configure Outlook clients to use the F/B information.

    You could theoretically then configure iCal to use that same F/B publishing location -- at which point, iCal becomes a client for Outlook calendar sharing.

    Not a bad thing, really, and certainly useful information to have around.

  12. Quick iCal-iPod Sync until iSync comes out by helixblue · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you want to be able to view your iCal entries on your iPod, simply copy ~/Library/Calendars/* to /Volumes/(Name of iPod)/Calendars directory when your iPod is mounted up.

    No need to export all your calendars since it's just .ics files :)

  13. End of Sept. by matthew.thompson · · Score: 2

    The apple bod at Expo told me end of the month for iSync. Greets from Paris.

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    Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
  14. Re:"Share your calenders online!" by Garin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ummm... I think you're missing the point. It's not just for other people to a "admire", it's for them to use. You can have a shared calendar that other people subscribe to for their scheduling. For example, one soccer mom can make up the master carpooling schedule, and all the other soccer moms in her group can subscribe to the published version. Or you can publish all of your indie band's concert dates, so all your groupies can be sure to attend. I'm sure you can think of lots of examples where groups of people share a common event calendar.

    It's a way to publish a single calendar to lots of people at the same time, and have it integrate into their iCal seamlessly. Maybe you won't have a use for it, but I sure do.

    --
    In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
  15. iSync by the end of the month by funkboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was at the keynote. Steve said that a beta of iSync would be out by the end of the month, and that they were looking for a release sometime around the end of the year.

    What I want is the version of iTunes that knows about Rendezvous and adds everybody in the room's shared playlists to your iTunes playlists and can stream them on demand. They demoed that today, along with a bunch of other cool stuff. Steve also threw in a good measure of Windows bashing.

  16. compatability with mozilla? by sootman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have iCal on my 10.2 Mac and Mozilla's calendar on a Win2k machine. Out of the box, they don't seem to want to read each other's .ics files. Opening them in a text editor shows they're both plain text and quite similar. Short of writing my own parser/translater in Perl or PHP, does anyone know how to get them to play well together?

    In other news, http://www.apple.com/ical/library/ is a pretty sweet page. Just as a mailto: link opens your mail client with the proper info in place, they have webcal:// links that automatically open in iCal. nice.

    my only problem with ical so far is the grey they use to show selected dates is sooooo close to white.

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    1. Re:compatability with mozilla? by King+Babar · · Score: 2
      Where would one define "webcal" as a protocol, anyway?

      Is this a job for Protozilla?

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      Babar

    2. Re:compatability with mozilla? by sootman · · Score: 2

      At first I thought you meant that the webcal:// links wouldn't open in Mozilla's calendar, then I realized you probably meant you visited the page with mozilla, clicked a link, and iCal wasn't alerted. Is that right? I first thought it was an apple/microsoft explorer/ical exil/monopoly thing, then the answer hit me. Unfortunately, the answer only works for Explorer which, we already know, doesn't have the problem. In IE, there are two things in the prefs (command-semicolon) that let you deal with non-http and non-html: receiving files:file helpers, for file (mime) types, and network:protocol helpers, which decides how to handle mailto:, ftp://, gopher://, etc. links. Mozilla 1.1 only has the MIME dialog. If you can find out how to make Mozilla open Eudora or Outlook instead of itself when you click mailto: links, you'll be on the right path.

      Come to think of it, how did you *ever* do this with Netscape? I have never browsed much on a Mac, except IE at work, where I rarely click mailto: links. At home, I use Eudora, but when I clicked on a mailto: link in Netscape, I was happy to use NS to compose and send the message. In IE for Mac and Win you can choose what app to launch for email. Hmmm...

      The guy who responded with a link to http://protozilla.mozdev.org/ might be on the right track, but it seems like overkill.

      You can try figuring out what MIME type apple is serving the .ics files as and set that in Mozilla's options, but I think Moz will get stuck on the webcal:// part before it starts worrying about the mime type.

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    3. Re:compatability with mozilla? by smallpaul · · Score: 2

      webcal links are not a feature, they are a bug to work around another bug.

  17. Re:"Share your calenders online!" by Garin · · Score: 2

    Sounds like a job for the Mozilla calendar project. They already have a system that works quite well. Check out http://mozilla.org/projects/calendar to see what they have.

    I'm not a programmer, but I would imagine that it would be relatively straight-forward to put the required support into that project to deal completely and seamlessly with iCal. vCalendar is pretty simple to parse, and I don't imagine webdav would be tough to put in. Maybe I'm wrong though, since (as I say) I'm not a programmer.

    --
    In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
  18. Re:has anyone implemented by foobar104 · · Score: 2

    syncing of their iCal with an apache web server or some such?

    Yup. Did it today. It was really tough. I had to actually type the whole URL of my WebDAV server into the "Publish..." dialog box. Apple better make it easier if they expect people to use this thing....

  19. Security hole between iCal and Mail? by efp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hello world,

    Has anyone noticed that when using iCal to invite other individuals to events (say meetings), Mail immediately reports the following warning:

    Warning

    An AppleScript is attempting to send a message. Do you want to allow this automated message to be sent? If you click OK, all other automated messages will be sent without asking first until you quit Mail.

    Huh? That strikes me, at least, as rather omninous. Especially as responding to the meeting invitations you receive results in the same warning.

    This seems like a very tempting spot for a trojan horse or some other such spoof. Thoughts?

    --
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  20. Apple: please choose new names by g4dget · · Score: 2

    Like "OS 9" and "X", "ical" already has a well-established meaning: ical is the name of a venerable UNIX calendaring program, still in pretty wide use. It would be nice if Apple were a bit more sensitive to other people's software products, be they commercial or free.