Initial iPhone Reactions from a Calendar Guy

There are already plenty of iPhone reviews littering the web so the basics are by now well-trod ground. But here are some of the things I as someone who thinks about calendars a lot have noticed:

• No To-Do Items
  Like Google Calendar, iPhone has no to-do list. Strange but true.

  I myself don't use iCal's to-do list, preferring instead to create calendar events that begin on the task's due date, but many people do. (Support for iCal to-do's is one of the most requested features for Spanning Sync.)

• No Support for Multiple Calendars
  The iPhone calendar application doesn't have the notion of multiple calendars like iCal does. When you configure iTunes to sync your Mac with your iPhone, you specify into which iCal calendar new events created on the iPhone should be inserted.

  So if you have multiple iCal calendars—say, for Work and Personal events—you won't be able to create events on your iPhone for those specific calendars. Instead, all events will go into the iCal calendar you selected in iTunes. Which leads me to...

• iTunes Calendar Selection Bug
  If you choose to sync all of your iCal calendars with your iPhone, you aren't able to choose into which calendar new events should be inserted. Instead, the last calendar in your list is always selected. To work around this bug, choose "Selected calendars" and select all of your calendars individually.

The iPhone calendar application feels a bit rushed; I fully expect to see it updated in the near future. Regardless, my iPhone is happily syncing with Google Calendar using Spanning Sync.

Comments

[Mark Patterson]

If you've got a Google Calendar and an iPhone then mobilegcal.com is your best bet.

Service is hosted on a Mac Server, real-time access to all calendars and dates (true wireless) with add, update and delete functionality.

[Charlie Wood]

Thanks Mark, but as one of the developers of Spanning Sync I'm partial to our solution. :-)

-Charlie

[Jonathan Brown]

Thanks for the "new events" workaround in iTunes. I noticed the bug but didn't think to try selecting all of the calendars individually.

[Justin]

I'd also like to thank you for figuring out a workaround to the annoying calendar selection bug! I found you when I Googled the problem and your solution worked perfectly.

My situation was really messed up -- my last calendar is a shared calendar I've subscribed to, so my events were getting "added" to the shared calendar...and then DELETED the next time the subscription was refreshed!! :(

[.nil]

i noticed that when making a recurring event, i was unable to select which individual days the event repeated on as in ical. this is a HUGE problem... for example, i add 'weights and cycling' and try to repeat it M-F. no dice, right?

i'm imagine all these issues will be addressed in the next release, but i need this ability NOW....i still love my phone, but without the cal being fixed, i'm misssing a big part of the reason i bought iphone in the first place.

.nil

.nil

[Charlie Wood]

Yep, you're right. To create a recurring event with anything but the most basic recurrence rule (e.g., "Every week"), you need to create it in iCal and then sync. I can only imagine that iPhone Calendar will get a big upgrade soon.

-c

[Leslie]

Thanks for the information. It was concise and really helpful.