In his Worldwide Developers Conference tonic , Steve Jobs virtually ignorediCal . He mentioned the app only to say that Mail ’s fresh to - do tools will coordinate with OS X ’s calendaring app : produce a to - do item in Mail , and it will automatically appear in iCal ’s labor leaning . But the next version iCal is , in fact , going to get a significant inspection and repair in Leopard . The bountiful change we bed of now : iCal is going to get a luck smarter about group scheduling .
How it works
Right now , if you utilise iCal and you desire to let other folk music know what you ’re up to , you publish a calendar on .Mac or a private host . But publish is a one - way thing : Other folks can look at your docket online , as if you were tacking your calendar to your office room access , but they ca n’t really interact with it .
The next version of iCal should fix that : You ’ll be able to make a calendar that other iCal users can edit out ( bully for sharing billet resources like fulfil rooms , for example ) . The syllabus will also be able to mechanically check other iCal calendar to get hold times when everyone ’s loose and schedule a get together when everyone can make it . And it ’ll let you create driblet boxes for event , where you may divvy up document that all the attendant require to see ahead of time .
When the current version of iCal gets updated for Leopard , it will add the power to create calendar that other iCal users can edit .
The Francis Scott Key to iCal ’s newfound social acquisition : iCal Server , which will be built into the next version of Mac OS X Server and will carry off communication and coordination among the copies of iCal running on a connection . The young iCal and iCal Server both comply with theCalDAV calendaring banner , which means that iCal could , in hypothesis , interoperate with other calendaring apps .
Why it was added
Other calendaring applications ( such as Microsoft Entourage or Now Up To Date ) have always been much savvier about chemical group scheduling than iCal . This puts iCal on more adequate footing with them .
Who’s it for
Group scheduling is a must - have feature film at work , so its improver should make iCal much more attractive to business buyer . And even if you ’re just trying to set up a dinner with protagonist or a phratry outing , being able-bodied to see everyone ’s calendar at once will be a gravy .
What’s missing
It ’s still unclear how much of the next iCal ’s new skills will count on iCal Server and how much will be available in the app on its own . And , right on now , only a few open - source program ( let in the Mozilla Foundation’sLightningandSunbird , both still in development ) are CalDAV - compliant ; Entourage , Now Up to Date , and other popular commercial calendaring apps have n’t yet signed on , and they may never do so .
What it means
The Mail to - do tools that Jobs swash in his tonic , and the improvement to iCal that he did n’t , could , in fact , be linked . The next version of Mail will work better with iCal . The next version of iCal will permit you work well with others . The more Apple ’s apps integrate with each other , and the more they allow you to collaborate with other Mac exploiter , the more attractive those apps ( along with iWork ) will be as an alternative to Microsoft Office . In the meantime , the next iCal should make life-time well-fixed for anyone who has to organize meetings — which means almost all of us .
[ Dan Miller is the executive editor in chief ofMacworldmagazine . ]
