I have more than 25 business calendars in iCal, divided into five calendar groups. I use MobileMe to keep them in sync between all of my Macs, but I just upgraded to the new MobileMe Calendar and now all of my calendar groups are gone!
We highly recommend that all MobileMe users upgrade to the new MobileMe calendar (me.com/calendar) because it finally provides reliable calendar syncing. All of your calendar data now resides on MobileMe’s new CalDAV server, and your client devices (Macs, iPhones, and iPads) simply sync with the CalDAV server.
BusyCal can bring back your calendar groups to MobileMe-hosted calendars or any other CalDAV-hosted calendars.
However, the downside to this is that CalDAV does not provide support for calendar groups, so all of your calendars are placed into one “flat list.” This makes it difficult for someone like yourself to quickly switch between viewing different subsets of calendars.
iCal can’t solve this problem, but Mac|Life Editors’ Choice winner BusyCal ($49, busymac.com) can. BusyCal lets you create calendar groups for any calendars hosted on a CalDAV server. There are a few minor caveats since you’re dealing with limitations of the CalDAV protocol. Your calendar groups will stay local to each Mac, so you’ll have to create and manage your calendar groups locally on each Mac. Plus, your calendar groups will not sync to the MobileMe website or your iOS devices.
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Sarasota Joe
September 24, 2011 at 7:42pm
BusyCal rocks. It seems to solve all the problems of the new iCal and adds some great features I hadn't even thought of.
I downloaded the 30-day trial, and I'm fairly sure I'll cough up the $50 at the end of the month. SInce all the calendars remain on their original servers (MobilMe, GoogleMail, OnMyMac), if I don't like it, I can return to iCal at any time and my calendars will all be current.
I had already downloaded a hack to get rid of the faux leather skin, but that was far less a problem than the loss of groups. @brookwarmer, if you've got a better solution for this let me know. The loss of groups was a nightmare for me, since I have an enormous number of calendars. With BusyCal I can even group other people's shared Google Calendars into groups. This is absolutely great! And I am thrilled to have a non-modal info panel and calendar list back.
Since I have phone conferences with folks in other time zones, I find the time zone feature a nice touch, and the rtf notes are nice too. As a matter of fact, I've been playing with this for a few hours now, and I keep finding great new features. Monthly scrolling by week, so that the current week is always on top, and weekly scrolling by day are nice touches. The sharing features are simple and powerful, and it seems as though they put a lot of thought and care into this app.
Now all I need is an iPhone version, so I can have groups on my phone.
@chrisirwindavis, neither Google nor MobilMe support groups, so there is no way to synch them between devices. Setting up groups is a one time deal; every time you create a new calendar, all you have to do is remember to move it into the appropriate group on each device. Then for the rest of your life, it is all perfectly synched. Compared to iCal's complete lack of groups for synched calendars, it seems to me that if I would attribute the hyperbole "completely worthless" to anything, it would be better applied to iCal.
chrisirwindavis
August 21, 2011 at 11:37am
"Your calendar groups will stay local to each Mac, so you’ll have to create and manage your calendar groups locally on each Mac. Plus, your calendar groups will not sync to the MobileMe website or your iOS devices."
...which basically means it's worthless. I might as well go back to a paper-based system if I can't sync with MobileMe or any of my mobile devices.
ghokie
March 29, 2011 at 10:19am
I have several devices that won't support the new online iCal (e.g., a first version iPhone and older equipment that doesn't support Snow Leopard). Now I'm being forced to "upgrade", which will break syncing and defeat the purpose. Bad Apple. 8^(
tanker10a
March 25, 2011 at 5:13am
What is so new about this Calendar? I have MobileMe since dotmac, I do not see what the Big Deal is...
brookwarner
March 24, 2011 at 6:15pm
I followed this link from twitter. was hoping for more than - "Buy BusyCal!"
