

Google Calendar for iPhone - harveynick
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/google-calendar-for-iphone-its-about.html

======
joezydeco
Someday, maybe someday, we'll have a calendar app smart enough to show a month
view and NOT anchor it to the first day of the month.

Look at the calendar in the App Store screen shot. It's February 27th and 4/5
of the month view is showing days that have already passed. The week ahead is
totally lost because the next week is in March.

UX-wise is there something disorienting, taboo, or just plain illegal about
centering the current week in the middle or top 1/3 of the view? Because this
just sucks. And it never changes. It happens in _every_ calendar app that has
a "month" view, and it's the most unusable the last week of the month (which
is, oh, _25% of the time you use it_ ).

Apple is just as guilty (looking at you, OSX Calendar).

~~~
r00fus
People think in months. Financials and billing cycles are per-month. Some
people get paid monthly. I know in some european countries, this is less the
case (current week#/year was almost as important).

Personally I really like how Fantastical does it - portrait view is daily
forecast (-1 to +5 days) listing up top with the list of events going down
equally spaced, but if you rotate, it becomes the month view (which is also
shown in the lockscreen widget).

The Google Calendar app assumes I have pictures for my events. Unless it
happens to be a birthday evite, I don't. They're mostly business, and don't
even have a location (other than dial-in and webex). Does it just fill in some
image if none is there?

~~~
on_and_off
The app does its best to generate one picture based on the event data and if
it can't it will just use a smaller header. In my experience, it works fairly
well for non work events. It is a great way to add some personalization magic
very simply.

~~~
r00fus
Not sure about the decision to vary size based on whether it has an image to
show for the event.

To me, size is an indicator, and I'd prefer it the size of the event was based
on importance (either directly or based on my contacts) or meeting length. By
varying the size just to include an image, Google is promoting one event over
another. A small but important event sandwiched between two larger events can
be easily ignored.

Maybe this app is good for purely social uses, but doesn't seem to fit my use
case well.

~~~
on_and_off
I meant the size of the header in the event page, not in the planning /
calendar views (where the length of the event drives the size).

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neals
I can't work with a 'list' view like they introduce here. It sure is pretty,
but my brain needs a visual week with 7 columns to process the information of
'how busy am I on ... ' efficiently.

Maybe some of you would like to share what calendar app you are using on
either Android or iOS?

~~~
heimidal
You can tap the blue text on the left that reads "10 Tue" (date, day) and it
will switch from List view to Day view. Then you can swipe left and right to
move between days. You can also hit the vertical "..." in the top right to get
a 3-day view.

~~~
neals
I tried it on Android, but I have to scroll up-and-down to see all the 24
hours. I would love an overview where I see the full 24/7 in a glance.

~~~
sp332
If I pinch-to-zoom, I can get 23 hours on the screen at once. Not sure why it
won't go for that last hour, but it should help.

~~~
bearhandsly
That's Google's way of demanding you sleep at least one hour per day.

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opticalfiber
Looks pretty but it's going to take a lot to pull me away from Sunrise.

~~~
badusername
I love the design of Sunrise, but the slowness of the app and network refresh
infuriates me. Been using the Google Calendar app this morning, and love the
instantaneous sync.

Sunrise was relegated to the fourth screen on my iPhone immediately.

~~~
bearhandsly
Yeah. Calendars are something I only look at when I need to immediately do
something. Any lag kills the uX.

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qzervaas
I wonder what the rationale is to have the springboard display name as "Google
Calendar" instead of "Calendar". It displays as "Google Cal...", also known as
a rookie error.

Surely even "G Cal" would be better.

My other complaint is the app icon doesn't dynamically update to today's date.
Through no fault of their own of course, but I'll keep Apple's Calendar on my
first screen for this feature alone.

~~~
harveynick
There's actually more to it than that. There are some accessibility benefits
to allowing the OS to foreshorten it, rather than doing it manually.

Rest assured that if the option to dynamically update the app icon becomes
available, we'll be all over it.

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dkrich
I tried it and to me the main problem with going whole-hog to a Google
Calendar app is that I don't think a platform-specific calendar app can ever
be as effective as a platform-agnostic one like Sunrise.

All things social belong to Facebook, so using a calendar that isn't linked to
Facebook events is a non-starter for me. Similarly, travel plans tend to
belong to Google since I use Gmail, so one that isn't tied to Google accounts
would never work for me either. Execution and visual design is fine, but I
think to most people it's secondary to functionality. If the app is causing a
large portion of my events to be disregarded, I'm not going to use it no
matter how pretty it is to look at.

~~~
jvm
> All things social belong to Facebook, so using a calendar that isn't linked
> to Facebook events is a non-starter for me.

Can't you just sync your Facebook events to your Google Calendar?

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otterley
First impression: Good Heavens, this is ugly.

Second impression: What? You can't even rotate the screen to get a wider view?
Are you kidding?

Sayonara, Google Calendar App.

~~~
toomuchtodo
One opinion of course. Already blew away Sunrise, absolutely love the new
Google Cal app.

~~~
harveynick
Thanks from the team. Google Calendar loves you too ;-)

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mhomde
Uhh, does it have neither a month nor a week view or am I missing something?
You have to scroll, no way to get an overview?

~~~
heimidal
There is a month (not really a month "view" of your appointments). Tap the
month name at the top.

No week view as far as I can tell.

Edit: There is a three-day view accessible by clicking the vertical "..." in
the top right. From there, you can scroll right to see the rest of the week.

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sp332
Oh man, this is what Mitch Kapor was trying to do with Chandler! _" No Silos"
was supposed to mean that instead of having your email in one silo, and your
calendar in another silo, and your reminder notes in a third, there would just
be a single unified silo holding everything._
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/01/21.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/01/21.html)

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eibrahim
The outlook all is a killer productivity all. It's email, calendar and access
to my google drive, Dropbox, and sky drive all in one place. Sending meeting
availability is my favorite feature. It's my primary email and calendar app on
the iPhone and loving it. I am using it to access my gmail and Google calendar
and works flawlessly.

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juliendorra
The month views where you need to click every single day to get more infos
drive me crazy.

I use the WeekViewPro app[1] on iPhone to view and read a full week, and even
better a full month of events. It helps a lot for scheduling and rescheduling
professional and personal events.

WeekViewPro is not pretty and it's not configurable enough… but it does one
thing very well: It gives you one single screen with a full month (or a full
week) of information, like in desktop calendars.

It's particularly useful to see full month _with name of events_ when you need
to give people a free slot in your planning.

I have tried Fantastical, Sunrise, etc. and the only one I keep opening every
single day is this little app.

(but I'd love if it integrated with Fantastical for event entry, as it is much
better. )

[1] [https://appsto.re/fr/NQIYH.i](https://appsto.re/fr/NQIYH.i)

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hobarrera
It does stuff "automagically" according to the ad. When did "automagically"
stop being a derrogative term to automatic stuff that nobody understands?

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goeric
Direct link to it in the app store for those who can't see it yet:
[https://appsto.re/us/8XXm2.i](https://appsto.re/us/8XXm2.i)

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brohoolio
ugh. why no week view when you tilt the phone sideways? do you hate me being
able to see my week?

------
X-combinator
TheVerge's take :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179934)

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raingrove
I just wish they fixed their Gmail app for iOS.

~~~
zippergz
Fixed in what way? I prefer Apple's Mail app, but I use the Gmail app when I
want to look at a label or something, and it seems to work fine.

~~~
spike021
I have an issue where at least half the time I need to force-close the app,
otherwise it hangs trying to load new mail. Happened on my iPhone 5 and
happens on my newer 6.

~~~
deanclatworthy
I also have this issue. Also, on three separate occasions one of my accounts
has just disappeared and I've needed to re-add it.

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shockzzz
Could we get a mac app too. I'm tired of Sunrise.

~~~
meej
I got so sick of Sunrise on Mac, I went back to Calendar.app. It required a
lot of up-front configuration (I had to set every calendar I follow to "ignore
alerts") but once I got past that I've found it works pretty well. Better than
I expected it to, and better than Sunrise does.

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bluthru
White text on intensely saturated blocks just isn't very legible to me. Same
goes for Windows 8.

~~~
harveynick
Hi, Google Calendar developer here. Do all of the colour options not work for
you? What could we do to make it better?

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77ko
> Google Calendar for iPhone works with all the calendars you've already set
> up on your phone.

False advertising: It doesn't work with the FaceBook calendar on my phone -
other calendar apps like Fantastical and Apple's own Cal show the FB calendar.

~~~
nighthawk454
It works on my iPhone - it's letting me pull in any calendar I have on my
device, incl. Exchange, Facebook, and iCloud.

Try under Settings-->Manage Accounts, and throw the toggle switches for the
device calendars you want

~~~
77ko
thanks, found it. Not sure how i missed this before.

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inesta
still doesnt show up in my phones itunes. does it support creating events on
subscribed calendars?

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abort
Where are the TASKS?

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tabtabtab
Finally!

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free2rhyme214
FINALLY!

~~~
nashashmi
Doesn't it seem like they realized they also have another product to maintain?
This version seems more of a 1.0 with just extra eye candy.

i am still waiting for the version that has innovation baked in ... e.g.
something new and profound.

