The new Fantastical

[Bmosbacker]

@khit

Fantastical/Flexibits branding is VERY prominent in the emails they send out on your behalf, which somewhat concerns me that my recipients may mistake it as spam, etc. instead of a scheduling request from me.)

As I think about it the group scheduling does have potential as my executive admin schedules a lot of complex group meetings with internal staff and outside individuals and/or voice/video conference calls. However, there is no way that I want app branding in emails that she sends out to my professional colleagues on my behalf. If Flexibits takes that off it might be something I would consider for my office given that we have in the past used doodle for this purpose but I would not spend $40 per year for personal calendar use.

[Bmosbacker]

BusyCal just updated:

There is a new update available. Please note that we update BusyCal as often as possible, to make it faster, more reliable and in order to introduce new and improved functionality to increase your overall productivity.

BusyCal 3.8.3 — February 1, 2020

• NEW: Extra presets added to the alarm drop-down menu
• NEW: Appearance setting to always show month separation in month view
• NEW: Month separation automatically gets highlighted as you scroll between months
• NEW: Dock badge count can be turned off from preferences
• NEW: Privacy setting for events can now be changed to “Confidential” to hide events on shared calendars, on supported CalDAV servers (NextCloud / ownCloud etc)
• Due time property is now hidden for to-dos syncing via Microsoft Exchange, as this isn’t officially supported
• Timezone property is now hidden for to-dos syncing via Reminders, as this isn’t officially supported
• Fixed a bug that would cause the cursor to jump to the last line in the notes section in case the event got updated during background sync
• Fixed a bug where the Todo list would filter out completed todos based on their completion dates when “In Calendar Range” filtering was set along with “Show completed to-dos on their due dates” in preferences
• Fixed a bug where certain emojis would get stripped out when syncing with Outlook / Exchange
• Improved handling of failures due to poor network connections
• Improved handling of duplicate events in WebDAV subscriptions
• Improved auto detection of Exchange web services when connecting to a self-hosted Microsoft Exchange account
• Ongoing stability and performance improvements

View the Release Notes to see what’s changed.

Contact us if you have questions.

[ryanjamurphy]

(This reply is tangential to the Fantastical subscription conversation that has the attention of the thread.)

@khit

I’d guess Doodle is the most apples to apples comparison to Fantastical in terms of the group scheduling function. Doodle is currently at $4USD/mo for the first tier.

To remove the Doodle branding it’s $6/mo. (Fantastical/Flexibits branding is VERY prominent in the emails they send out on your behalf, which somewhat concerns me that my recipients may mistake it as spam, etc. instead of a scheduling request from me.)

I was thinking about this today. Doodle-like features simply cannot compare with availability tools, like those present in Exchange. Booking meetings in an Exchange-enabled organization is lightyears away from asking dozens of people to open an email, open a link, compare the dates offered with their own calendar, select a bunch (sometimes a LOT), then save the dates and book out those potential dates in their own calendar. I get the impression that people hate these Doodle polls and as they proliferate, compliance might drop. (I guess it depends on how important the meeting is.)

The same thing goes for Acuity Scheduling-style “book a meeting with me” services (which is where I’m betting Fantastical will go soon).

(Oddly, these services depend on a power asymmetry—the people responding to the booking options typically need to respond to the people offering them, for whatever reason. I’ve always found this awkward. I would never, for instance, ask a variety of my superiors to use Acuity Scheduling or similar to book a call, and I’m barely comfortable with asking them to select when they’re available in a Doodle-like poll.)

That said, I agree on the branding point. Fantastical shouldn’t be using this feature as an opportunity to advertise to others when it’s the premium-est aspect of their subscription service. You should be able to customize how that email looks!

[Bmosbacker]

Odd, Fantastical on iOS does not show up in Settings/Notifications but Calendar and BusyCal do. Does anyone know why?

[cornchip]

I don’t know why it wouldn’t for you—all my devices show it there.

[Bmosbacker]

I should have been clearer, I was referring to the upgraded version. I discovered that the notification setting is within Fantastical but does not show up in Settings/Notifications. For me it doesn’t matter much. I only upgraded to check out the features given this thread. I’m even more certain I will not use it—though I like the UI I can’t justify the $40/year for several features that I consider basic for a calendar app. Too bad really as it think it is a powerful and great looking app.

[rob]

@khit

I’d guess Doodle is the most apples to apples comparison to Fantastical in terms of the group scheduling function.

Thank you for mentioning this; if Event Proposals work well they might make me consider going Premium after all (even though I use the free Doodle plan right now).

I tested this feature by sending some proposals to some aliases on my own email account and I must admit that I’m pretty impressed by how Flexibits implemented this!

There are two things that make Doodle better for now, unless I’m missing something:

1. There’s no way to immediately see the best fit?
2. There’s no way to use a secondary email address for mail communication?

EDIT: Flexibits replied to a tweet with the same questions that both are on the roadmap.

[anon41602260]

@Bmosbacker

BusyCal just updated:

I installed BusyCal from SetApp just to check out the latest. I’m satisfied with Fantastical 3 for now, but if I didn’t have the free upgrade from v2 to v3 (I mentioned above) I think BusyCal would do everything I need.

[stumccly]

Agree totally with your post and I am doing the same- how did you get all your data out of fantastical and put it into apple calendar, as I too am going back to the baked-in, Apple calendar app, I use things for everything else , thanks

[stumccly]

Agree totally with your post and I am doing the same- how did you get all your data out of fantastical and put it into apple calendar, as I too am going back to the baked-in, Apple calendar app, I use things for everything else , thanks

[rob]

@stumccly

how did you get all your data out of fantastical and put it into apple calendar

Fantastical is only a (very nice) wrapper around a calendar back-end, like Google Calendar, Exchange, Office 365, iCloud, or Fastmail.

Most likely you don’t have get data out of Fantastical since they already are stored somewhere else.

[stumccly]

ok thanks rob, do you know where the file is stored on a Mac?, I sync everything through iCloud , thanks

[anon41602260]

All you need to do is configure some other calendar app (or Calendar) to open whatever calendars you have in your iCloud account. You do not need to mess around with files.

[stumccly]

Oh , I have just opened the Apple Calendar app on my Mac and everything seems to have populated as it was in Fantastical. It would still be handy to know where the file is stored.

[stumccly]

Thanks quorm , good to know

[anon41602260]

Are those your portraits? They are wonderful.

[DharmaJay]

I’ve installed and subscribed, but the Fantastical Apple Watch app won’t connect with the iPhone app any longer after upgrade. I deleted the watch app and reinstalled it to no avail. Anyone figure out how to resolve this issue?

[ryanjamurphy]

Dumb question: are you signed into your account in Fantastical on the iPhone? Settings → Flexibits Account

[beck]

I haven’t had a chance to read the 240 prior posts, but I wanted to jump in and say that I was a Fantastical 2 user for years, moved to Apple Calendar in the last several months in an attempt to use Apple apps and give my aging MBP CPU a break, and moved back to Fantastical earlier this week because of an idea I had about color-coding events. I’m finding the new version to be a remarkable improvement over Apple Calendar, which I was perfectly happy with before the switch. The ability to color code events and see reminders in an unobtrusive way is greater than the sum of its parts. I trust my system more and didn’t realize I lacked that trust until I experienced the relief of everything in one view. I’m not anti-subscription, so a move to this model does not put me in a bind. Thus, IMO, a strong showing from Flexibits.

[Jjm]

I use Week Cal and color code all my events, I love it, been doing it for years. But I’m on the fence about using the free version of Fantastical . I download Fantastical then delete it, then download it again. I’m trying to figure out what it’s advantages are over weekcal.

Also interested if anyone puts the reminders in there calendar or they leave them separate.