Sick of looking at Calendar’s antique-leather kitsch? BusyCal, just upgraded to version 2, will keep you sane with a more business-like user interface. But BusyCal just happens to be the best third-party calendar application for the Mac. I’ve been using it for a couple of years and really could not manage without it.
Until the end of the year BusyCal 2 is also a big bargain for new users. Both existing and new users can enjoy the $29.99 (£20.99) upgrade price in the Mac App Store.
BusyCal is highly customisable and includes a year chart with heat map, an improved and searchable list view and options to show the number of days per week or weeks per month. My particular favourite is the ability to move the month view forward or backward one week at a time. As an example, you can keep the current week at the top of the month and have the opportunity to see following weeks. This is a big improvement on a fixed month planner where you are continually moving back and forth.
It is possible to set month plan to show from one week to twelve weeks, thus giving you a full three-month snapshot which is highly useful for planning, particularly on a big screen. I prefer to set the month view to show five weeks, but it depends on how many appointments you need to handle.
Also new in version 2.0 is a Fantastical-like menu-bar dropdown which gives an instant overview of your appointments and allows details to be entered in natural language, just like in Fantastical.
Even if you are not sure you need an all-singing-dancing replacement for Calendar, I would suggest you download the 30-day trial version from BusyMac and see what you think. You will love it.
by Mike Evans, 22 October 2012
I lived with Busy Cal for quite a whlile – and it is good.
However, I became fed up with returning to iCal for printing – particularly in list view.
This is the deal breaker for me – BusyCal’s printing is very poor compared to iCal. Despite many requests on Busy Cal forums they still ave not corrected this in V2
Paul
Paul,
A good point. Since I seldom, if ever, print from the calendar I had not noticed this problem. As you say, it is still possible to open Calendar for printing but it is untidy. I wonder if anyone else has a view on this.
Michael