HANSJOERG  This application is absolutely fantastic! I had been using BusySync and it worked seamlessly well. Also, there's even a great upgrade offer for existing BusySync customers.  
(Version 1.0)

JULIAN KRAININ  Just one additional suggestion that I have for an extra feature that I forgot to include in my previous review of BusyCal. In the "New Event" and "New To Do" windows, include a mini-month so that you can simply click a date on the miniature month and thereby quickly enter a new date, instead of only being able to enter a new date by typing it in as numeric text in the conventional slower and slightly more cumbersome way.  
(Version 1.0)

JULIAN KRAININ  BusyCal is a winning calendar and scheduling program!!! It works flawlessly, and is very flexible, customizable and intelligently designed. BusyCal is a welcome solution if you have given up in frustration on Now X, after literally years of waiting, only to find Now X in its current state to be undependable, buggy, confusingly cluttered, overproduced, unintuitive, albeit at least relatively attractive to look at. To various degrees I have sampled as many PIMS as I could find for the Mac and have discovered all of them to be simply lacking, faulty, or unacceptable in various and important ways, including such programs as: SOHO Organizer 8, Contactizer Pro, UCalendar X, Things, Daylite, and my previous old standby Now Up-to-Date. In fact Now Up-to-Date which was originally a masterfully designed program, and way ahead of its time, (initially developed by the creator of BusyCal), no longer fully works in Snow Leopard. Now Up-to-DateÂ’s alarms and notifications are now inoperable, and according to one of their spokespersons, there are no plans to make it fully operable with current or future versions of the Mac System. Many have commented on how responsive both the developer and the business head of BusyCal are when it comes to suggestions and inquiries. However, there are still a few relatively minor extras as well as visual enhancements that IÂ’d love to see added to BusyCal, but I suspect that because the two individuals who head this company have already proven themselves to be so responsive to suggestions, that we may see some or all of these features implemented in the near future. In no particular order, here are a few of my hoped for additions: (1) Improve the overall appearance of BusyCal by providing for the possibility of a variety of background color schemes or themes behind month, week and day views. (2) Create some shaded color difference between alternating lines of the To-Do list, such as currently exists in Now Up-to-date and Now X, which like the addition of background colors to months, weeks, and days, would serve to enormously enrich and liven up the overall look and feel of BusyCal. (3) Find a place to include a miniature set of adjacent monthly customizable calendars that you can choose to be always visible, and that display the current month and say the next two coming months, such that you can click on any date in these miniature monthly calendars, and you are shown that highlighted date in the current full calendar view. (4) In addition to a column style for the weekly view, also have the possibility of choosing a rectangular stacked block view of the days of one week, similar to what both Now Up-to-Dat and Now X offer. (5) For all To-Dos in addition to “Done” or “Completed” also have an additional option such as “In-process” or “Partially Done.” (6) Allow the “Find” and filter function to locate text in dated events and dated To-Dos that are not displayed in the current view. (7) Have the names of the days of the week customizable with regard to their size, color, boldness and font type, because currently the font size for the days of the week is too small and doesnÂ’t stand out enough. Improvements such as these would turn BusyCal into an even better and more attractive calendar and scheduler than it is now, and for single users, families or small organizations and business groups, as IÂ’ve said, BusyCal is already the very best that there is!  
(Version 1.0)

YAZSOFT SUPPORT  Unbelievably well coded and designed. Seamless upgrade from BusySync / iCal to BusyCal. Great job!  
(Version 1.0)

TREKKER  Great calendaring program from the original developers of the legendary Now-Up-To-Date app of the 90's. It's easy to use, stable, powerful, syncs flawlessly with others, MobileMe, and my iPhone, has great ease-of-use functions that iCal lacks, and is a joy to use!

On top of all this, the developers are super responsive. I've emailed three times very late at night and on weekends with suggestions and questions expecting a reply in a couple of days, and to my total surprise my emails were answered instantly and personally event hough it was late at night and even on a weekend.

As a long-time Now-Up-To-Date and Contact user (since the early 90's) I've been looking for a replacement since the program was getting old and creaky and wouldn't sync with iPhones. The current Now developers -- not the BusyCal people who were the original developers -- promised a delivery date for NowX that has come and gone almost three years ago and even took people's money for the upgrade without delivering that upgrade until last month -- almost three years later than they said they would and after years of empty promises! To add insult to injury, the new version is hard to use, unintuitive in many everyday functions, lacks copy and paste, lacks undo, lacks drag and drop, has no ability to share with others on a network or over the internet, and you can't even manually copy its database from a desktop computer to a laptop reliably without serious and many times unsurmountable problems, is buggy, has serious sync problems and is overall a frustration and a serious waste of time. I've also tried Daylite, Contactizer Pro, and SOHO Organizer, but have always come back to BusyCal.

BusyCal is what Now-Up-To-Date used to be, except updated with all the modern technologies including flawless syncing -- and it's a joy to use on top of that! Add to that their responsiveness and I think they have a winner on their hands! Highly recommended.  
(Version 1.0)

MAX GAAV  I tried several apps like 'Things' and 'OmniFocus' as Apple's iCal is pretty restrictive in it's features and ways of working. While 'Things' and 'OmniFocus' are excellent apps, for me they tend to lead to 'playing around with them' rather than increasing my productivity.

Dated events/appointments obviously are best managed in a calendar environment. But organizing tasks can best be done in a multi-column app which allows features like start/end date, tags, the hierarchical place in a work breakdown structure etc. And this one of the points where BusyCal excels over iCal, by allowing listviews with a wide choice of activating/deactivating columns for extra info per entry.

Until now I use OmniOutliner for my projects and tasks, but any spreadsheet could do the trick too. But the main drawback of these apps is the lack of a calendar, alarms, syncing possibilities and a bit 'raw' working procedures.

BusyCal is indeed -as the developer says- like an iCal Pro version, and an 'iCal' which appears to be developing quickly. The developer is open to suggestions and very responsive. Even in beta it is already very stable and reliable. Also his site is top-noch, well structured and feature-rich. It all feels very trustworthy.

I'm now using BusyCal for a couple of weeks as replacement for iCal, and I expect it to become my future tasklist-manager too. Just a few refinements and some extra features more and this is one of the all-time killer-apps for the Mac. My suggestions in these:

* Small pop-up calendar for entering a date (like the due date)

* View option for tasks only, with editable columns (name, functionality) and sorting functionality.

* Larger graphic field in the todo's. Double clicking should lead to a search for a graphic on your Mac.

* Editable tags-lists (which is now semi-featured)

* Editable lists for info-prefs like 'location' and 'alarms'.

* Customisable Toolbar (fonts, colors, accessing address-book and Apple Mail etc.)

Thank you for your intelligent work. Look forward to the developments!  
(Version 1.0b14)

MAX GAAV  I tried several apps like 'Things' and 'OmniFocus' as Apple's iCal is pretty restrictive in it's features and ways of working. While 'Things' and 'OmniFocus' are excellent apps, for me they tend to lead to 'playing around with them' rather than increasing my productivity.

Dated events/appointments obviously are best managed in a calendar environment. But organizing tasks can best be done in a multi-column app which allows features like start/end date, tags, the hierarchical place in a work breakdown structure etc. And this one of the points where BusyCal excels over iCal, by allowing listviews with a wide choice of activating/deactivating columns for extra info per entry.

Until now I use OmniOutliner for my projects and tasks, but any spreadsheet could do the trick too. But the main drawback of these apps is the lack of a calendar, alarms, syncing possibilities and a bit 'raw' working procedures.

BusyCal is indeed -as the developer says- like an iCal Pro version, and an 'iCal' which appears to be developing quickly. The developer is open to suggestions and very responsive. Even in beta it is already very stable and reliable. Also his site is top-noch, well structured and feature-rich. It all feels very trustworthy.

I'm now using BusyCal for a couple of weeks as replacement for iCal, and I expect it to become my future tasklist-manager too. Just a few refinements and some extra features more and this is one of the all-time killer-apps for the Mac. My suggestions in these:

* Small pop-up calendar for entering a date (like the due date)

* View option for tasks only, with editable columns (name, functionality) and sorting functionality.

* Larger graphic field in the todo's. Double clicking should lead to a search for a graphic on your Mac.

* Editable tags-lists (which is now semi-featured)

* Editable lists for info-prefs like 'location' and 'alarms'.

* Customisable Toolbar (fonts, colors, accessing address-book and Apple Mail etc.)

Thank you for your intelligent work. Look forward to the developments!  
(Version 1.0b14)

STRYKERACE  Review of BusyMacs' BusyCal

The Background:

My family switched to Apple in Feb 2008 leaving "blue screens" of death on two year old Vista machines. The two were a well known brand and should have been very fast, not with Vista. XP was not available or we probably wouldn't have two 24" iMacs in our home office network; thanks Vista.

Since our office was networked, the move using OSX 10.5 was very easy. All of our hardware worked except for 2 pieces which I quickly determined was not needed since there were better options when using Macs. The learning curve was seamless and so easy I was amazed. The only thing hard with learning the new OS was that it was so easy; it should have been harder. lol

Now, BusyMac:

Immediately we needed to sync our iCals and found the solution to be with BusyMac's BusySync. It worked flawlessly with ease. Now this year, 2009, when we became aware of BusyCal we were excited and immediately signed up for notification of the beta release. I installed it on my iMac initially without problems. I then found a problem with BusyCal and iCal not syncing. I sent an email to BusyMac. They answered in short order and showed me how to send in trouble reports (the LOG files). After some very helpful emails back and forth, it was determined I was using different sounds than the default one supplied with Apple's OS. At the same time I started to use a program called "Dates to iCal" by a UK Company called Bits and Bobs. It basically syncs the dates that are in Address Book with iCal (BusyCal) (birthday's, anniversaries, etc.) allowing you to set alarms.

Thanks John, at BusyMac for his patience with me.

Just Like Synchronized Gears:

Once realizing the settings had to be the same between the two Apps including iCal everything worked correctly. Things synced instantly on our home network, to Mobile Me, and to our iPhones. Yes, we have iPhones, a Macbook, and a MacMini for our Media server to our Apple TV. I have been known for jumping in with both feet. We love our Apple products and don't miss the MS world.

The Many Calendars of BusyCal:

The reason iCal and now BusyCal are so handy is the different calendars we have set up. We have the usual His and Hers, Birthday, and Anniversary Calendars. In addition, we also have a Medical, Prescription, Money, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Sports Calendar. Oh, I forgot the ToDo List Calendars. The menu calendars are handy since we have been on a diet since 1 January 2009. My wife has put together many different meals that can be moved easily around the calendar. One look and she knows what to shop for as well as what to pull out of the freezer ( this is another story by itself).

BusyCal's many attributes will now make it much easier to manage our many calendars.

Pros:

1) Great customer support 6 out of 5 stars.

2) Beautiful looking Calendar having the ability to show the weather, moon phases, and sunrise and sunset.

3) Easy to use interface with features not in iCal such as the handy "Info" window for the event parameters.

4) Versatile with the ability to have all day events called Banners, ToDos dated and non-dated, Sticky Notes, Journals, and much more.

5) Flexible with the ability to use WebDAV calendars

6) Works with iCal

7) More features to come in future releases.

Cons:

I couldn't really think of any.

Rating:

6 of 5 ******

Written using "ShoveBox" by Wonder Warp Software  
(Version 1.0b10)

STEVEN GOODHEART  This program totally blew me away. It's just about everything iCal should have been, and more. I hardly know where to begin in terms of features I love.

It sync instantly and effortless with both of my PIMs - The Hit List and OmniFocus. It links to and syncs with the the calendars I choose in Google Calendar. It does To Dos and Recurring To Dos, the way I always wanted iCal to work, and I can *finally* see the notes and info of a To Do I select in the To Do list *without having to double-click and open a To Do* as one has to in iCal. (Or you can double-click and get a floating palette.) I can add my own BusyCal notes (in addition to the standard iCal type notes) and I can add my own *TAGS*!! The banners are beautiful, and I love the built-in weather subscription, which gives a 5 day forecast, and the lovely weather icons it creates.

Most of all, I love the interface....everything's so intuitive and easy to use. (Every day that I use it, I say to myself, "Why in the world didn't they make iCal work this way?"

In over a week of intensive testing and experimenting, I haven't had a single crash or loss of data. The synching with The Hit List and OmniFocus have been flawless.

Looking at some of the other comments here, I can see that a few people have some bugs and problems with the beta, and apparently there are some 'synch loop" issues to be worked out, but for me, this beta has been 100% golden. If this were available today, I'd buy it today. I can hardly wait to make the purchase, and I never want to go back to the restrictions and limitations of the present incarnation of iCal.

This is a brilliant piece of software...Apple should buy this and toss out iCal. It's that good.  
(Version 1.0b6)

CHIEFTED  Not as happy with this as I thought I would be.

If you are syncing to MobileMe and to Google beware of

the "sync loop" that is discussed in the documentation.

I have a google calendar that I sync only to google and sync a calendar only to

MobileMe, and I do this on multiple computers I did wind up with that

sync loop. So if I did want to use BusyCal I could only do it on one computer.

No mater which setting I tried I couldn't get out of that loop. (See

the documentation).

When setting this up the program will pull a google calendar as a subscribed

calendar, which you can not edit (you have to log into a google calendar, manually

after set up to get read and edit permissions).

I know this was a beta but it was a bit of a buggy beta (I did wind up with

several crashes)

There are a couple of nice features, and the upgrade price will be nice but for

me this just wasn't the solution I hoped it would be.  
(Version 1.0b6)