Archive for October 29, 2012

Monday, October 29, 2012

BusyCal 2.0

Adam C. Engst:

Other enhancements make it easier to find and view sets of events. Most notably, Smart Filters store sets of calendars, view settings, and event filters as toolbar buttons. With them, you can easily just look at holidays and birthdays, for instance, or clear out the non-essential events to focus on just those calendars that you share with work colleagues. Also welcome is a new Find dialog that helps you find individual events scattered throughout your entire calendar, independent of the current view.

I initially tried BusyCal due to the iCal regressions in Mac OS X Lion. With Mountain Lion, I am back to using Calendar, chiefly because I find its month view much more visually pleasing. BusyCal’s colored text on a colored background is harder to read. However, BusyCal continues to have better features: a month view that’s useful at the end of the month, more flexible scrolling, better searching, etc. It also has a global menu, although it pales in comparison with Fantastical’s. BusyCal is unfortunately only available from the Mac App Store, meaning that the upgrade pricing will be short-lived. There’s a free 30-day trial on the Web site.

Mysterious iOS 6 Cellular Data Usage

Matt Neuburg:

It’s becoming more and more difficult to ignore the numerous reports that iOS 6 on an iPhone or iPad can use far more cellular data than iOS 5 or earlier systems did. Anecdotal evidence is hardly to be trusted, even when it arrives in large quantity, but surely a massive thread such as this one on the Apple Support Communities cannot consist entirely of people who are mistaken or misapprehending the phenomena. Moreover, some of us here at TidBITS are convinced that we’ve experienced the problem in our own lives.

I’ve yet to hear a compelling reason that I should update to iOS 6. In favor of iOS 5: lower cellular data usage, better Maps, better Contacts groups, better battery life, and a phone keypad that isn’t hideous.