Getting the Most from iCal

June 1, 2008

I was recently listening to a respected ICT consultant describing Apple’s iCal application as “‘too basic for business” I have come across this a few times with regards Apple products and every time it is meant as a criticism !
iCalendar is a standard for calendar data exchange. The standard is sometimes referred to as “iCal”, which also is the name of the leopard calendar program that provides one of the implementations of the standard.

iCalendar allows users to send meeting requests and tasks to other users through email. Recipients of the iCalendar email (with supported software) can respond to the sender easily or counter propose another meeting date/time.

If you have ever used iCal on a regular basis you will know that although the interface may appear simple the application is rather sophisticated. One of the best features in my opinion is the ability to easily subscribe and publish your own calendars. Better still Google Calendars can be also subscribed to directly from iCal !

The Apple website has published a large list of public .ICS calenders. Click here for the full list. There is even a website dedicated to listing public iCals. http://icalshare.com/

The great thing about subscribing to a calendar is that if the author changes an event your calendar is automatically updated the next time iCals checks it (most of my calendars I have set to refresh once per day).

Taking a relevant calendar from the Apple list, I have decided to subscribe to a Movie Release Calendar.

Clicking an .ics file from within Tiger or Leopard will automatically call iCal.

iCal will download the current version of the calendar, the following window is important if you want iCal to refresh the calendar regularly. Click the auto-refresh option to set the desired period for update checking.

In the same way you can subscribe you can also make your own calendar public. Simply create a new calendar, add events and click the ‘Calendar’ menu, then publish.

As you update the Calendar it will update the public .ics file. The down side is you need .Mac or a webdav capable server for the simple publish but it is possible to export the .ics and upload it to non webdav supporting web servers, just a little more work.

I would definitely recommend taking some time and looking at iCal if you are using an alternative system. There are also many third party applications that will auto sync your iCal to your Google account.

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