BusyContacts 1.0
BusyContacts is a contact manager for OS X that makes creating, finding, and managing contacts faster and more efficient.
BusyContacts brings to contact management the same power, flexibility, and sharing capabilities that BusyCal users have enjoyed with their calendars. What’s more, BusyContacts integrates seamlessly with BusyCal forming a flexible, easy to use CRM solution that works the way you do.
BusyContacts syncs with the built-in Contacts app on OS X and iOS and supports all leading cloud services, including iCloud, Google, Exchange, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
You may not need everything BusyContacts can do, because it’s a lot. But if you’ve felt limited by Apple’s Contacts (or just hate its interface, as TidBITS publisher Adam Engst does), BusyContacts might fill some of the gaps you’ve encountered. In particular, if you need to share contacts among a group of people, say, in a small business, or if you need to log and manage your interactions with people, then BusyContacts is likely what you’re looking for.
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That’s one place where BusyContacts’ useful filtering and tagging tools come in. Tags work essentially like groups in Apple’s Contacts, whereas filters are the equivalent of Smart Groups, letting you specify a set of criteria and then quickly view just the contacts that match them. But BusyContacts’ filters are far more powerful: for one thing, Apple only lets you create Smart Groups where a card matches a single criterion. BusyContacts supports multiple conditions, and you can see cards that match any, all, or none of them. It also lets you match on factors that Contacts doesn’t, so, for example, I can filter to see just those contacts that don’t have an associated picture.
I’ve been anticipating this for a while now because, like Engst, I’ve never been a fan of Apple’s Contacts application (or the former Address Book). My initial impression (after being put off by the installer) is that it has more features and a CRM focus that are interesting but not really what I’m looking for. I just want something basic with an interface that doesn’t get in my way, a sort of Fantastacts. As Moren points out, it doesn’t fix one of the most frustrating parts of Contacts:
I also wish I could easily rearrange the information in BusyContacts’ contact records. Reordering phone numbers requires a frustrating copy-and-paste dance; it’d be great if, in that aforementioned example with the area codes, I could simply drag my friend’s home phone number to the top of the list.
Update (2015-06-04): Gabe Weatherhead:
After using BusyContacts on my Mac for the past 6 months, I can declare it’s the most I will ever enjoy managing contacts.
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You can move a phone number to the top of the list by setting it as the Primary phone.
@John Good to know; thanks. It would still be nice to be able to arbitrarily reorder numbers/addresses.
