BusyCal 1.0 Released!

Seattle, WA - Sept. 28, 2009 - BusyMac today released BusyCal 1.0, a Mac OS X desktop calendar that provides seamless calendar sharing and enhanced productivity tools for workgroups and individuals. BusyCal combines the calendar sharing and synchronization technology from the award winning BusySync with a beautiful desktop calendar interface that is instantly recognizable to iCal users — all in one easy to use integrated application.

BusyCal allows families and small workgroups to easily and cost-effectively share calendars on a local area network and over the internet without the need for a dedicated server. Shared calendars can be viewed and edited by multiple users and changes are instantly synchronized between users. BusyCal also syncs with Google Calendar offering online access and sharing cross platform. 

In addition to calendar sharing, BusyCal provides many great productivity enhancements including the ability to:

• Enter and view event details in a non-modal floating window or an embedded info pane.
• Create To Dos, including recurring To Dos, that display in the calendar and auto-forward until completed.
• Display events in several customizable views including a List View and scrolling Month and Week Views.
• Display graphics, sticky notes, live weather feeds and moon phases in your calendar.
• Apply custom font styles to events and notes.
• Display alarms in a floating window and on the menu bar.

BusyCal syncs with iCal, MobileMe, the iPhone, and other applications and devices that support Sync Services. And it's compatible with BusySync, so you can share calendars with both BusyCal and BusySync users on your network.

Pricing and Availability

• BusyCal is available now.
• BusyCal costs $49 per user, or $79 for a Family Pack (for up to 5 users in a household). 
• A 20% discount is available for businesses when purchasing 5 or more copies.
• Registered users of BusySync can upgrade to BusyCal for $20.

System Requirements

• BusyCal requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, or Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
• BusyCal is compatible with BusySync, allowing calendar sharing between BusyCal users and BusySync users.

For more info or to download a 30-day trial, go to http://www.busymac.com.

Comments

[Derek]

Are tasks synced with Google Tasks? Or is the option available?

[claimid.com/eugenechan]

John, congrats to you and the entire team for this launch. Wishing you continued success!

[Egil Helland]

What a fantastic product. Instantly bought, iCal bye-bye!

[Jim]

All of a sudden my calendar invites are going out showing GMT in the body of the invite. Is this part of the 1.0 release? The invitations post correctly to the addressees calendar, but the message text confuses everyone by showing the meeting as several hours ahead of when it actually will occur. I'd like the invites to go out the way they did before - with the meeting time shown in local time.

[Paul J. Lang]

Absolutely great calendar!!! As a former Now Up to Date and Contact (NUDC) user, I find you have really simplified things. Thanks for the hard work.

A few requests:

1 - Calendar Groups. iCal has this wonderful feature that allows me to create Calendar groups, thereby allowing me to turn on/off all my personal calendars (or work calendars) with 1 click.

2 - The mini-calendar. I mostly use the week view, because I have so many events. It would be great to see a little month calendar at the bottom left that I can advance forward and backward and click on a date and go directly there instead having to use the menus.

3 - Shared Address Book. Please, Please, Please apply your advanced expertise to creating a shared Address Book program. And please include the "Tags" functionality, so we can create Smart Groups or lists based on tags. When we left NUDC, that was one feature that we really miss. We are using the Notes field to input keywords and Smart Groups to find them, but it is really limited (i.e. can't assign Keywords to several selected contacts at once). Also please include an export to txt file so we can use AB with Word. Pages has too many limitations, and all our documents are in Word.

Thanks again for your great work. The market really needs the same, easy to use shared Address Book.

[Tom]

seconding the mini calendar request above !!

[Benzopf]

Non-modal info windows literally kept me from upgrading to Leopard. Now, just two things more:

1) the ability to mark a appointment as confirmed (a checkmark, like the original iCal?), that freezes the appointment so you don't ACCIDENTALLY MOVE THE D*MN APPOINTMENT!!!!

okay.

2) Well, actually that's pretty much it. But I do want to know I can import all my past iCal events. I need 'em all together in one app. And then if I'm forced to go back (God forbid), that I can re-import them to iCal.

[Thomas Jahl]

Printing seems to have gone backwards in the non-beta release 1.0

Now can't select a size and the columns in week view between all day and scheduled events do not line up making paper and pdf output less pretty than it was beore.

[Mike OKane]

Before I launch into buying BusyCal and BusySinc, I need to learn if your handling of repeated dates is any better than iCal. E.G., I cannot specify second Monday of the month, because it hangs onto date. Secondly, every other week or twice a month are both impossible in iCal, I believe. OTOH, it does look like my wife and I can both look at and add to a common calendar using BusyCal, como no?

[Khürt KW Williams]

When will BusyCal get Exchange 2007 support? This is one thing keeping me from buying it. Until then I will keep using iCal to sync with Google Calendar and my employers Exchange server.

[Kevin]

Ditto on the Exchange support. I love BusyCal, but I'm forced to go to iCal to create/edit appointments in Exchange.

[Shane]

I just got busycal but don't think I will be able to use it as it does not have a mini-calendar which, when using week view, makes jumping around too hard. Back to iCal until the mini-calendar is added!

[Gary]

Some wonderful features but will have to stick with iCal until Calendar Groups are implemented.