Helvetica and minimalism go hand in hand, they’re both crisp, clean, and fancy-free. So it came as a pleasant surprise when Thomas Wong recommend it to me over Twitter. It should be a match made in heaven for minimalists, a simple calendar that’s snappy is at the top of most lists these days.
Out with fancy, and in with functional.
What’s Macgasmic
It’s faster than any other applications I’ve used, and it’s certainly faster than iCal. This scores huge points for me. I’m stuck on a crappy 3G phone still, and any time a developer takes the time to make sure that their application is still fast I can’t complain. Calvetica is fast, intuitive, and painfully simple.
I’d easily recommend this application to anyone over iCal. You’re able to set an appointment, change months and years, and input details all within two clicks. I rarely use iCal to make appointments. It seems like Apple’s application takes longer than I can wait while out meeting with clients. I jot the information down on paper, then put it into iCal when I get home, Calvetica can change that. You get in, you get out, you get on with your life.
It doesn’t end there, Calvetica also integrates with iCal, so any information you have in iCal you can have in Calvetica. This makes jumping between applications on your desktop, and your phone a breeze. I personally have a problem with my gCal information with Calvetica, but that’s nothing new, Google Calendar has given my iCal problems for over a year.
What Needs to be Improved
When your app is this simple, it’s hard to find anything wrong. Usually with minimal apps I find myself questioning whether or not the application overlooked key features in their quest for simplicity, but Calvetica isn’t like that. They’ve got everything you need in a calendar, with one glaring exception—being able to create an event that spans time. As it stands, you can’t have an event span across more than a hour block. So an all day event will only show up as one entry in your calendar. It’s not a big deal, but if you’re the type of person who likes to see when their free time is during a day it might take some getting used to.
What’s it cost? 2.99 on the AppStore, an excellent price for a minimalist calendar that provides functionality over beauty.
