AppleInsider Staff
Following the footsteps of Address Book 6.0, iCal 4.0 adopts an appearance similar to the iPad Calendar, with a leather bound top and pages that appear to be ripped off from the top edge.
Apart from the novelty "leather" menu bar, the overall look and feel of the app is nearly identical to the previous iCal, apart from a new Year view, which is both new to iCal and also to both the iPad and MobileMe versions of Apple's Calendar apps.
The iPad version of Calendar uses the same brown leather look as Lion's new iCal, but more closely matches the layout and design of the MobileMe Calendar, with a quick date selector at the bottom and a List view missing from Mac OS X's iCal.
Both the iPad and MobileMe calendars present a Day view as an open book, Week and Month views as a tear off calendar pad, and a List view that depicts upcoming event in a spiral bound section next to a torn-page Day view.
Lion's iCal presents the same torn page look for every view. Also different between the MobileMe and Lion version is the To Do list, which is represented as a tear off pad next to the calendar; in Lion's iCal, the To Do list is a conventional list that doesn't quite fit into the "torn page" appearance.
Other minor changes in iCal include the renaming of calendar sharing to "publishing," to better harmonize with the "subscribe" command to access a shared calendar.
Bon Adamson
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
77 Comments
Fake leather? On a computer screen? Um, no.
Am I the only one that thinks the leather-bound metaphor is wrong on a desktop OS? Brushed metal looks great compared to this :|
Trying too hard to make digital objects represent their real life counterparts.
Btw, I noticed the favicon on Safari - have they got them working on DP2?
What do the event windows look like? Come on AI, that was the most complained about part of every version of iCal. First the silly drawer. Then the same limited UI, but in an even sillier bubble. Then finally in a barely functional mini-window. Why no description/screen shot of this part of iCal?
If Apple didn't fix the event/invite window, then I'd suggest they need to spend far less time on fake leather title bars and other iOS candy and focus on making the product more functional. I see a lot of resources being used on non-functional eye candy that could have been used on something useful like a better event window, better snoozing, or, dare I mention it, keeping Rosestta.
Fake leather? On a computer screen? Um, no.
I’m not a fan of mimicking real world items when it’s not necessary, but tan leather on a black and silver, or white Mac looks tacky.
At least with iCal and Addressbook this is purely aesthetic, and doesn’t affect its usability. I keep wishing Apple would dumb their Calculator app for something more useful like Soulver.
Soulver is a great example bringing the usability to a virtual tool without feeling a need for making it work like its real-world counterpart.
That said, I understand the decision to bring iOS-like features that have been proven to work with users to the Mac to help pull more ‘PC’ users to the Mac platform. Let’s hope this is only a trial and that they will at lear have an option for a different design by the GM release.