BusyCal 2.5
When it comes to calendaring, the two major technologies are CalDAV, which BusyCal has long supported, and Microsoft Exchange, which makes it debut in the just-released BusyCal 2.5. This is a big deal, since it means that BusyCal can now be used to interact with corporate Exchange calendars as a full-fledged calendaring citizen, surpassing Apple’s Calendar app in numerous ways and providing an alternative to Outlook itself. Notably, BusyCal 2.5 offers more-granular calendar sharing privileges, public calendars, push syncing, Outlook categories, shared tasks, repeating tasks, shared-calendar
notifications, rich text, and graphics. Other new features include an Availability panel for scheduling meetings using either Exchange or CalDAV, and “regenerating” To Do items that return to your calendar automatically some time after completion. We’ve updated Joe Kissell’s free “Take Control of Calendar Syncing and Sharing with BusyCal” to discuss BusyCal’s new Exchange support — click Check for Updates on the cover to download the new ebook. BusyCal 2.5 is available as a free 30-day trial from the BusyMac site, but the only way to purchase the app is through the Mac App Store. ($29.99 new,
free update, 9.7 MB, release notes)
Exchange support is good to have, but I find that BusyCal has a delay of about three seconds when re-dislaying my calendar. I have a mix of Google calendars and an Exchange calendar. The delay goes away if I don't display my Exchange calendar.
That delay makes BusyCal unusable for me: even though it has some nice additional features, they're not must have features.
Hmm, it seems that I'm OK to view other Exchange calendars. And, when I hide repeating events, I'm OK, too. There must be a rogue entry in my diary that's causing this problem. The trouble is, I can't seem to find it to delete it!
BusyCal support might be able to help, if the rogue entry is causing any log entries...
Yes, they were very helpful. It turned out that BusyCal 2 doesn't like events that repeat more than 500 times. This particular event was a weekly repeating event starting in 1BC (I have no idea how) and ending in 2013. It proved impossible to delete the event, since neither BusyCal nor iCal will display the first occurrence of the event. However, it was possible to turn it into a non-repeating event.
BusyCal will display Feb 0001, but hangs if you then move to the previous month. iCal will allow you to move directly to the year 999, but for earlier years you have to page back a view at a time: for some reason I've never learned, I can't get a "year view" in iCal.
That's one for the books. Imagine having to do something every week for 2000+ years. :-)