mbjones

introduction

As I’ve mentioned in the past couple of reviews, I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect calendaring solution for the iPad. It just seems like the iPad was made for personal organization style apps, with its ability to richly input and process data. Unfortunately those last couple of apps didn’t meet my admittedly lofty expectations; perhaps though perfection is too high of a goal, and not something within our grasp if we aren’t willing to develop it ourselves. But then there is today’s review: Calvetica. It’s as close to my idea of “perfect” as I’ve found and has (mostly) stopped my search for anything else.

I first heard about Calvetica when it was released for the iPhone. I saw it then and, not having an iPhone, thought it looked interesting but not worth picking up. Then when I found myself with an iPad, I revisited it, only to find it was iPhone only (unless you wanted to use the ugly scaling capabilities). And then not too long ago, I discovered they made an universal version, thereby enabling it on the iPad. You probably care less about it’s history (and my history with it) and more about how it works though. Look no further then.

likes

I love that Calvetica has gestures! I can easily scroll between months, select days and pinch for different views. Long taps bring up options like “add an event”. Everything I need to do can be done within a few taps, pinches or strokes.

I love that event input by and large is quick and easy. Tapping and holding brings up an entry form, and the basics can be done there. Another tap will get you into more advanced options as well. It’s all quite natural and easy.

I love that it integrates my Google Calendar (through the built-in app). I can be in sync on my computer, ipad and blackberry all at the same time with little hassle. There is some hassle though; why won’t these apps sync directly rather than using the built in calendar as a proxy?

I love the Agenda View & Week View from the main calendar screen. I love seeing about 6 weeks, alongside having the option of zooming to a day (particularly Agenda View as a list of events) or Week View, a list of all of my events for the week.

I love the ability to make a quick reminder. With a tap I can set a generic reminder for 15 minutes. This is great if I want to focus on something, zone out of the rest of the world, and then come back to things after the given time period.

Finally, i’ll mention that i love its built in Search ability (and how it isn’t cumbersome). It actually works quite well, and is self contained in a popover.

dislikes

I mentioned Google Calendar integration as a like; it’s one of those two-sided coin features though as its also a detriment in that it syncs through the built-in Calendar and not on its own. The one problem I’ve had with Calvetica has been Google Calendar sync issues. They’ve been rare though, and are in no ways a dealbreaker. It seems like it’d function much more smoothly if it directly synced.

Slow load times is my other major dislike. I think because it loads so much data from the get go, loading can be rough. I’ve seen a full calendar make it crawl (on my friend’s iPhone), and on my iPad it still takes a few seconds to load. It seems that things aren’t as optimized as they could be (but perhaps this is caused by sync issues that aren’t that easily fixed?). It’s also not a dealbreaker for me, but is definitely something that could be looked at by the developer.

what I’d like to see

The only thing that comes to mind is natural language input, as in a quick entry bar always on-screen, in which I could type something like, “Lunch with Jim Tomorrow” and have it automatically add that event to my calendar. That’d be a killer feature.

conclusion

Overall, Calvetica is an incredible app. It suits my needs perfectly. It’s quick and easy to use and feels natural, particularly when you get the gestures down. Outside of some load time and sync issues, I haven’t had any issues, and really, can’t recommend it strongly enough. And it actually does more than I’ve gone into. Also built in is task management (separated from the calendar) that syncs with Mysterious Trousers own cloud solution. Personally, I’m not using this feature; as a task management solution it didn’t suit my needs, but it might suit yours. And Calvetica seems to be actively developed which hopefully means more great features and support in the pipeline. 5 out of 5 stars