Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Calendar (Apple)

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Developer(s)
  
Apple Inc.

Type
  
Electronic calendar

Operating system
  
macOS

License
  
Proprietary

Initial release
  
September 10, 2002; 14 years ago (2002-09-10)

Stable release
  
9.0 / August 19, 2016; 6 months ago (2016-08-19)

Calendar is a personal calendar application made by Apple Inc. that runs on both the macOS desktop operating system and iOS mobile operating system. It offers online cloud backup of calendars using Apple's iCloud service, or can synchronise with other calendar services, including Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange Server.

Contents

The macOS version was known as iCal before the release of OS X Mountain Lion in July 2012. Originally released as a free download for Mac OS X v10.2 on September 10, 2002, it was bundled with the operating system as iCal 1.5 with the release of Mac OS X v10.3. iCal was the first calendar application for Mac OS X to offer support for multiple calendars and the ability to intermittently publish/subscribe to calendars on WebDAV servers. Version 2 of iCal was released as part of Mac OS X v10.4, Version 3 as part of Mac OS X v10.5, Version 4 as part of Mac OS X v10.6, Version 5 as part of Mac OS X v10.7, Version 6 as part of OS X v10.8, Version 7 as part of OS X v10.9, Version 8 as part of OS X v10.10 and OS X v10.11, and version 9 as part of macOS v10.12.

Apple licensed the iCal name from Brown Bear Software, who have used it for their iCal application since 1997.

iCal's initial development was quite different from other Apple software: it was designed independently by a small French team working "secretly" in Paris, led by Jean-Marie Hullot, a friend of Steve Jobs. iCal's development has since been transferred to Apple US headquarters in Cupertino.

Features

  • It tracks events and appointments, allows multiple calendar views (such as calendars for "home", "work", and other calendars you create) to quickly identify conflicts and free time.
  • It is integrated with iCloud, so calendars can be shared and synced with other devices, such as PCs, iPhones, and iPod touch, over the internet. You can also share calendars via the WebDAV protocol. Google now supports WebDAV for Google Calendar making iCal easily configurable.
  • Users can subscribe to other calendars so they can keep up with friends and colleagues, and other things such as athletic schedules and television programs.
  • iCal allows notification of upcoming events either on screen, by email, SMS, or Pager.
  • iCal supports the use of the iCalendar format [VERSION:2.0]. It does not support the older vCalendar 1.0 format. [VERSION:1.0]

    • New in version 3

  • Setting to let iCal set auto-alarms for each event created.
  • Redesigned user interface
  • Inline event editing
  • Ability to turn off alarms for all events
  • Use a CalDAV(WebDAV) account to store and keep calendars in sync on a CalDAV server.
  • The date on the icon in the Dock displays the current date all the time. (Until version 3, iCal's icon displayed July 17—the date iCal premiered in 2002 at the Macworld Expo—by default until the program was run.)

    • New in version 4

  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 support
  • Refined user interface (particularly for multiple events management)
  • Automatic setup for Yahoo/Google Mail/Gmail calendars. Events are synced and downloaded from your account.

    • New

  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 support
  • New skeuomorphic skin similar to Calendar for iPad
  • Full-screen support
  • Agenda list and mini-month display added to Day view
  • Quick Add for adding events
  • Heat map to indicate the number of activities per day

    • Removed

  • Dedicated calendar pane (now just a pop-up menu under the "Calendars" button)
  • Details pane on the right hand side
  • Mini month display in non-Day views
  • Ability to select/highlight days in Month view

    • New

  • Application renamed Calendar (previously named iCal)
  • All calendars accessible in sidebar
  • Search suggestions when searching for events
  • Creates a search token displaying a list of events
  • New date picker
  • Event notifications in Notification Center
  • Add attachments to iCloud Calendar items

    • Removed

  • Ability to select variable snooze durations, only 15 minute snooze available

    • New in version 7

  • Re-added ability to select variable snooze durations

    • New in version 8

  • Added ability to see travel time and weather at the event's location, with the ability to set an alarm based on the travel time

    • New in iOS 10

  • Different timezones selectable when entering and editing start and end times. This allows long-distance airplane flight times, for example, to be entered accurately and for that "end" of a visualized time "box" to render accurately on either IOS or OS/X when timezone support is turned on in Calendar and the timezone set in Date/Time to the location in question. Thus now compliant with RFC 6868 iCalendar.

    • References

    Calendar (Apple) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA