I am currently in a mode to not only organize my life better, but make the most of my mobile experience. I love and am jealous for Android users with their Google Now and Google Calendar integration, longing for the predictive searches, keeping the calendar organized, and manage schedules better. To translate this to iOS, I am testing out several iOS calendar apps including the Apple native app, Sunrise, and tempo to be able to do scheduling better.
What I Look For In An iOS Calendar App
When using a calendar app, there are some basic expectations that I have to weed out any worthless apps. Here are the criteria:
- Integrates to Google Calendar I do not want to have to renter everything I have done to this point.
- Push Notification Customization If I cannot change when I get notified, then I won’t be using it.
- Ease of Use This is to find the apps that are great amongst the good ones.
I currently have three apps that I am testing out right now on my iPhone that each have their unique parts.
iCal
Apple’s native calendar app has the advantage over everyone else. You get the icon with the day of the month in it for quick reference, easy integration with Google Calendar, simple push notifications, and multiple calendar labels. Unfortunately, I have come to expect functional but not wowing from Apple as they put enough effort to get it to work and then ignore it for five years. I am using this app solely as the baseline for the experiment and do not plan to use it afterwards.
Sunrise Calendar
This is the app that led to wanting to do calendars on iOS better. It has incorporation of Facebook events and birthdays, location-based weather built into the day’s calendar, Google Maps direction integration, quick add event, Foursquare integration, and reminders. It seems like it has taken the challenge and up’ed the anty for all competitors.
Tempo Smart Calendar
Then I found Tempo, the perfect smart app for a business person. It has pre-established passcode/conference call handles, pre-opopulated “running late” email or texting, Foursquare and Yelp integration, Facebook birthday integration, meeting contacts integration with quick call, text, or email functions, flight status, and Siri integration.
So I plan to use these apps and others that you might recommend in the comments and the one I enjoy and use the most will be my default calendar app for the future. One great recommendation made on our Church Tech community about calendar apps was by Chris Sehorn:
I use Pocket Informant like several others in this post. The platform did syncing among many different calendars before that was a common feature. I like the interface and if you use tasks heavily it does that too. Catch it on sale if you can. They have an entire suite of apps to help you with just about anything.
What do you use for your mobile calendar?
seventy8Productions says
How did you get your hands on that? It’s not out yet.