Sure, your iOS device comes with a calendar built in and on the iPad it's phenomenally gorgeous, but Apple's helpful app is a little less than helpful. For instance, syncing. If we had something entered on the desktop iCal, it would be great if it would sync to our iPhones or iPads without us having to dig out our cords, plug them into our devices and our computers, fire up iTunes, click on Sync, and sit around twiddling our thumbs -- or if we didn't have to shell out a hundred bucks a year for a MobileMe subscription. Wireless syncing would be an awesome way to resolve some of this, but maximum flexibility and syncability is what we're after. Enter Google Calendars and the apps that supersize it.

By itself, Google Calendar accessed by browser on your iOS device is even weaker than Apple's options. Stripped down to its essence, the interface is not attractive and is pretty limited in what you can do. Sure, you can move from mobile view to desktop view and gain more functionality -- but this works best on an iPad. We want the world and we want it now.

The first thing we should say about CalenGoo and Calendars is that we stuck to ones that were universal. Some apps only work on the iPad, while some iPhone apps can be doubled up for the iPad if you like to pixelize things. But what we wanted was a good seamless experience across our devices and our platforms. 

CalenGoo ($6.99)

At seven dollars for a universal app, we had high hopes for Dominique Andr Gunia's CalenGoo. Set up was quick and painless. We signed in to our Google Calendar account and syncing moved briskly, even on accounts that held lots of specific calendars and dates. We even loaded up our Google Calendar with a variety of recommended calendars like weather, US holidays, phases of the moon, stardates, sunrise and sunset, just to see how it handled the work. Like a boss.

CalenGoo gives you multiple viewing options including a one day view, week view, month view, and syncing with your tasks. If you have a Google Apps account, CalenGoo even works with that. Double tap on the screen and you're taken to an add event screen to set up a new item. Tapping the + button in the upper right hand side provides the same effect. Set yourself reminder alerts to arrive either via email, SMS, or by screen pop up. Tap the loupe to search for things.

We were of the opinion that CalenGoo might have gone a bit overboard in its Settings. Sometimes less is more, and CalenGoo went with the outlook that more is more. Every single thing is customizable. If you are a serious power user, then stop reading right here and go no further. This is the calendar app for you.

Wow! That's Some Granularity!

Customizable alert sounds for each calendar? CalenGoo's got it. Only want badges to show for certain calendars? Can do. Want Tasks integrated into your weekly view but not your monthly? Not a problem. Import Google icons, change font size for headers or the notes on your tasks but not your tasks themselves, change color for today or the weekend or past days, set your day's start and end times, turn off vertical scrolling in monthly view, set number of days in landscape view, number your weeks, and on and on and on. From the 19 main options in the Settings panel, we selected Display and Use and found at least 170 more setting possibilities, some which had multiple options themselves.

That's a lot of power. Where we wish CalenGoo had put some of that power was on aesthetics. We can appreciate how difficult it is on the iPhone's small screen to make something that isn't merely a copy of Apple's Calendar app. But CalenGoo opts to pack in visuals the same way they've packed in settings. There's too much clutter no matter which screen you use. The single day view is one long column packed with gridlines and a ton of text on the left hand side, while the month view is impossible to make out unless you pinch and zoom. If you turn the month view to landscape, you are treated to fortnight which could be helpful but seems odd. In fact, on the iPhone, the only view we were comfortable with viewing was the Agenda list view.

Two Views of Too Much

While it's a universal app, the iPad version didn't bring much in the way of prettied up use of the larger screen size. The weekly view is still just two columns of rectangles, the month view is frighteningly crowded, and the day view still has too much going on to make us want to look at what we have to do today.

It's Getting Crowded Up in Here, Y'all

While it's not teribly pretty, CalenGoo wins hands down on the functionality scale. There is simply nothing like it in terms of features. Take some of our seven dollars, put it toward a graphic designer with some panache and we're yours forever, Dominique.

Calendars ($6.99)

App Store stalwart, Readdle, has been around forever as document managers and providers of free Shakespeare. It's been some time since they introduced their Calendars app, and it definitely shows the polish they've put into their work. On the iPhone, as with many calendar apps, a lot of work has gone into figuring out how to best use the space, but on the iPad this app is a worthy competitor to the default calendar.

Log in to your Google account and Readdle's app shows it's only real flaw. Syncing for the first time takes longer than CalenGoo, but that's a small quibble. When you next open the app, the syncing starts up automatically and it's gracefully hidden away in the bar across the top of your screen. You're treated to viewing options in either list, day, week, or month-sized bites, though again, on the smaller screen of the iPhone, we much prefer the list view.

No One Does iPhone Week View Pretty. No One.

Tasks are integrated and whichever calendar is being referenced has a discrete square of color bulleting the item on your list. Tap the plus button to add an item while in list mode, tap and hold inside the calendar for all the others. Calendars gives you the quick add pop up by default, though you can select "Edit details" to add all the specifics. While Calendars allows you to add reminder alerts just as CalenGoo did, you are limited to picking one specific sound for all of your calendars. Luckily in both, you are given a whole list of sounds that aren't the Apple defaults.

A Valiant Effort at Week View in Landscape

Calendars comes nowhere near the configurability of CalenGoo, and frankly we're not sure we've ever seen an app with that puts that much customizability into users' hands. However, for our day to day usage we don't typically need or want that many features. In fact, we only counted 33 total for Calendars. Part of that comes down to aesthetics. Quite a few of CalenGoo's options for settings are about making the calendar look the way you want. Calendars doesn't give you that option, but that's okay because they've put a lot of time and effort into a good looking, intuitive app. As we said, the iPhone version isn't exactly something you'd ooh and ahh over, but the iPad is another story.

Cue Up the Romantic Music, Because You're Going to Want to Get Your Hands on This Looker

Here, Readdle's app really comes into its own. With a pleasing ringpunch top image that mimics an old-fashioned paper calendar, the app is a beauty to look at. Load up your list view of your calendars and you're given two panes, the left for your tasks, the right for your calendar. There's not much to differentiate from landscape or portrait here. Go to day view and you have one big pane to the left with the actual calendar and a full agenda list to the left. Month gives you the full look ahead (where it starts to get cluttery). Week view isn't great, but not many have successfully cracked that nut (which is likely why Apple only implements it in the iPad version). The year view isn't strictly speaking necessary, unless you want to look far ahead and either terrify yourself with how over-scheduled you are or how empty your life is.

Yes, We Have to Remind Ourselves to Clean the Litter Box

Calendars is the one third-party app that is a viable candidate to Apple's in terms of aesthetics.

 

Day of Reckoning

We hate how shallow this sounds, but on aesthetics alone, we give the palm to Readdle's Calendars. Yes, we're rewarding beauty over other considerations, but no matter how jam-packed with features CalenGoo might be, we don't anticipate most users needing or wanting that level of fine tuning. It's an amazingly rich app with a much smaller footprint than Calendars (3.6MB over 11.4MB), but we already cringe when we look at how much work and responsibility we have. At least Calendars' luxurious layout and design takes some of the sting out, and the smaller set of tweaks we can manage without losing ourselves in a blizzard of options.

Now if they could just make their icon show the date the way Apple's Calendar does, we'd move the default right off the home page.