I think this dev has unfairly received an awful lot of flack for what seems like a pretty standard donationware policy and a product description (for beta-level software, no less) that could have been better but certainly isn't the worst I've seen.

I gave SoCal a try and I quite like it. It's much more accessible than Organized and more functional than DoBeDo, both of which have functioned as my widget to-do lists for ages. SoCal's integration with iCal is better than Check Off's menubar list, and it omits all the unnecessary bells and whistles of MenuMinder ($10) or DeJumble ($19!).

Is it worth the $10 that the more feature-rich MenuMinder charges (as shareware, keep in mind) to get rid of the donation nag? I'd probably feel more comfortable donating $5. But it fills a niche that no other menubar to-do list does (at least the ones that I've tried), and I really can't quite understand why this app became the focus of so much animosity in its first few days on MU.

I'd like to award five stars just to counter the one-star gripefest below, but I'll keep my rating independent.

This is a great start for a truly easy to use task list app. I've tried Anxiety, which quickly became wearisome with its floating window, and various Dashboard widgets (the best being To Do Widget). SoCal, even at version 0.5+, is the most fluid way of managing to do items I have tried yet.

Of course, as a beta level app, SoCal still has a few missing features. The most important is already on the developer's roadmap: creating new tasks. Right now, SoCal can only manage tasks that already exist. The second missing feature (and the first I noticed was absent) is the ability to choose the sorting order. Right now the list sorts by priority, whereas I usually like to sort by due date. I would love to see a menu item near the bottom of the menu (along with About SoCal, Open iCal, and Quit) that let me choose the sorting order. Third, it would be very nice to be able to see the due date of an item in the list.

A last minor criticism is that completed items are indicated using a pushpin icon. A check mark would be much more appropriate (in fact, switching the pushpin to be the main menu bar icon and the check mark to be the completed item icon would make the best sense to me).

On the other hand, SoCal already includes some features that are just brilliant. First is the addition of flagging, which provides another way of differentiating tasks from one another. I've only had it for a few minutes and it already seems natural. (The term "flagging" is a bit of a misnomer, since no flag icon is displayed next to flagged items. Instead, a flagged item is shown in bold text. Personally I find this to be better than a flag icon, since it draws attention to the item more effectively.) Second, the Collections menu item gives fast access to all sorts of smart groups within your tasks, including grouping by calendar, priority, due date, completion status, and flagged status. It's a great way to get to just the tasks you need.

Finally, I love that almost all the things one would want to do with a to do item can be done with just one click. Move your mouse over an item, and a submenu immediately pops out to let you change its priority, mark it as completed, flag it, etc. Or just click once on the item itself to edit it in iCal.

Thanks to the developer. I look forward to seeing the upcoming versions!

I'm not asking anything from anyone.

I am *proposing* an application I first made for my own personal needs.
Parallel to this proposal is another : that the user considers investing in the development of the said app by contributing a donation.

That being said, I am glad I got things clarified for you here.
Thank you for your interest.

MIBRILANE's bug has now been fixed.

This tool is not quite ready for prime time. The app runs as a menu extra, and the Quit command is grayed out, making it impossible to quit from the app itself. Each successive click on the menu bar icon (a check mark) creates another duplicate section of menu commands above the previously displayed menu commands. Selecting the menu commands does nothing. Whoops.

Could be useful if it works the way it is supposed to (I'm guessing that it is a quick item entry tool for iCal), but looks extremely buggy and can't even perform it's base functionality. The developer should pull it and do more testing before release, or at least tag it as an alpha version, as that is what it is at the moment.