If you’ve configured the app to plug directly into Google Calendar from the settings, clicking an event will launch a new tab in your web browser, rather than iCal from the preferences, you can also set refresh times (from 3 minutes to 2 hours), choose how many days to display and show or hide end times for events. Clicking on one of them will launch iCal like Fantastical does, though QuickCal doesn’t offer an additional popover to display more event information without the need of opening iCal. As for the app’s interface in the menubar, it’s really just a simple dropdown menu listing all your events grouped by day. Overall, I was pleased with QuickCal’s natural language results. QuickCal’s entry box has got some additional perks, too: you can enter calendar tasks (which I don’t really use) by entering a “todo” prefix, or, alternatively, choose to open a newly created event directly in iCal by hitting Command+Return. Conflicts can be enabled and disabled on a calendar-by-calendar basis in the settings, which also offer some options to choose the calendars you want to use, or the default one for new events. Provided you have more than one calendar configured in iCal (and thus recognized by QuickCal) or multiple events on the same day, QuickCal’s conflict recognition will inform you when something is happening at the same time. As I said above, you can rely on natural language input to add your events and appointments, so say you have to go buy some milk tomorrow at 5 PM, you can type “buy milk tomorrow from 5 pm to 5.30 pm” and QuickCal will begin filling the required calendar fields embedded below as you type. These actions will bring up a standalone panel with the cursor automatically placed in the text entry field to start typing. QuickCal lets you add a new event by hitting a keyboard shortcut or clicking on the “New Event” option in the menubar. Both apps have some features in common, but the implementation is ultimately different and exclusive to each one of them. QuickCal is also fundamentally different from Fantastical in how it lets you start adding a new event, and the design of the event list in the menubar has a simpler look that, unlike Flexibits’ app, doesn’t embed a full monthly calendar, bur rather only shows upcoming events in a vertical list. QuickCal is indeed very similar to Fantastical in how it enables you to write down events using simple, plain English, and it’s got some additional functionalities that integrate the app with iCal, or directly with Google Calendar’s online interface. That is not to say the Fantastical developers “copied” the main features of QuickCal – I’m just surprised I didn’t know about this app before. Surprisingly, QuickCal works a lot like Fantastical. There’s also an iPhone version available, but after the break I will take a look at QuickCal for Mac – the review of the iPhone version will follow later this week. Because I’m a sucker for new software I love to play with and I care about my readers’ app recommendations, I decided to download QuickCal for Mac and take it for a spin. After my Fantastical review, several readers pointed out in the comments and via Twitter that QuickCal, another calendar app that works from the menubar, does more or less the same things of Fantastical, only with a more simple and standard UI and at $0.99 in the Mac App Store, as opposed to Fantastical’s $14.99 introductory price. You can just write “meeting at coffee shop tomorrow at 5.30 PM”, and Fantastical will know how to handle it. When I reviewed Fantastical, a new calendar utility by Flexibits that lives in the OS X menubar, I was impressed by the design of the app and the support for natural language input, a feature that allows you to write down your calendar events quickly using nothing but plain English – say you have a meeting tomorrow at your local coffee shop, with Fantastical you don’t need to click on checkboxes and date fields to get your new event set up.
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