Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Week Cal for iPhone

For many iPhone users the default Calendar app is OK, but for others it's perceived as one of the weaker areas on the device. For a generation brought up on Palm's calendars, or third party offering like Datebook, the standard iPhone app just didn't cut the mustard.

Many pretenders to the crown have come and gone, often stymied by Apple's reluctance or stubbornness to let developers get right at the heart of the functionality they need to produce a decent competitor.

But then along came Week Cal by Wasabi Apps, http://www.wasabi-apps.com/weekcalendar/.

All of a sudden, here was an app that looked like it could offer a decent alternative including that fabled week view missing from Apple's native app. It got some pretty decent reviews, and I decided a few months back to stop using the default Calendar app in favour of the new pretender. And I liked it. It wasn't particularly barnstorming for me, but it was efficient, and that week view certainly made it better.

It's just gone to v3.0, and there are some great new additions to it's functionality. It's got a new year view - OK, not much detail here on an iPhone screen, but very easy to quickly navigate to a month/day.

More tellingly, and something that will possibly swing it for ex Palm users is a terrific Agenda/week view that you can customise with up to 8 different layouts. It almost looks like a Palm! (Note to self....move on...Palm's gone).

Additionally you can rotate views and have a different view depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape mode. For those that want it, there.s a global birthday alert (I have a wife for that). There are a myriad of other features including various full screen options, the ability to auto-hide bars, have different badge alerts according
to your preference, show or hide week numbers and change font sizes.

The neat ability to tap and hold to start data entry makes it feel much more useable than the native app, and generally this whole app gives a feeling of being very polished. I highly recommend this app for anyone who's serious about using a calendar on an iPhone. It's miles ahead of the native app, and Apple really should take a long hard look at this.

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