Advertisement Fantastical combined a convenient menubar app with an awesome natural language processing engine that made populating a busy schedule ridiculously intuitive. Is a paid upgrade to the Manage your calendar, completely, from your Mac's menu bar. Fantastical isn't just a way to quickly see your upcoming events: it's a way to never look at Apple's default Calendar again. calendar and organiser, but it comes at quite a price. The original wasn’t cheap at $15, and now developer will be charging $50 for the updated version — so is it worth it? Working in their favor is the fact that Fantastical 2 is undoubtedly the best calendar app available on OS X, so here are 5 reasons Fantastical 2 is worth the $50 price tag.

Bringing It, Yosemite Style The original Fantastical was released back in 2011 and, while it wasn’t 'Skeuomorphic' design – software that resembles the physical objects it replaces – went from being the hot design principle to an insult in an amazingly short period of time., it definitely had a few skeumorphic touches. In line with OS X’s new design, Fantastical 2 throws away the fake paper effects and embraces OS X is evolving both in terms of looks and features, and just like last year's Mavericks update, Yosemite will be another free download. If you’re the kind of person who can’t abide an app that looks out of place, the upgrade is a must. A Better Way To Add Events One of Fantastical’s greatest strengths has always been that you could describe an event in natural language and the app would parse what you said and add it to your calendar. For example, if you entered “Meet Brian at 1400 for 2 hours” Fantastical would create an event called “Meet Brian” from 2 till 4pm today. This is a far nicer way to create events than working your way through what amounts to a survey. In Fantastical 2, the parser has been greatly improved.

While the basic function remains the same, it’s better at teasing out slightly ambiguous phrasing. It’s also now far easier to create repeating events and add alerts. How Fantastical handles timezones has also been improved. While the original would just convert any timezone information into your local time, Fantastical 2 keeps track of the original time and shows you both. You can also add timezone information based on location. If you’re a big Fantastical user, like me, these improvements add up and make the upgrade well worth the $50. It’s Now A Full Mac App The original Fantastical’s menubar app was great.

It made it really easy to see, at a glance, what was coming up on your schedule. While you could look further ahead, it was difficult to get a broad overview of what was coming up. I also found it awkward, because the calendar was so small, to add multiple or repeating events quickly in the original app. To overcome these shortcomings, you needed to occasionally use a another full calendar app like Apple’s own. Fantastical 2 isn’t just a menubar app any longer — with the new version, it’s a full Mac app as well.

Finally, Fantastical 2 is the only calendar app you’ll ever need. The full app combines all the menubar features with a much larger and easier to browse calendar. You can glance ahead a few days by launching Fantastical’s menubar component or, using the full calendar, explore what’s coming up this week, month or year with ease. Now that you can see everything more clearly, you can add multiple and repeating events much more easily. Just double-click on the date you want to add an event for, or copy an event to another date by option-dragging it. If you like to keep a streamlined workflow, two calendar apps is a no-go, making the upgrade a no-brainer.

Is It Worth Coming Back Yet For Mac

Only See What You Need To One of the most interesting new features in Fantastical 2 is Calendar Sets. With a Calendar Set, you group different calendars together and have only events from that group display.

For example, if there are a few work calendars you are subscribed to as well as your own work calendar, you can group them together. Then, when you’re in your office you can easily show all your work information while hiding extraneous events from your other calendars (like Facebook). If your calendar looks like you’re about to run a presidential campaign, being able to split it up so you only see the events that are most relevant to you in any given moment, is easily worth $50. Continuity With iOS Since the original Fantastical was launched, OS X has undergone some big changes. The shift in design philosophy is only the most noticeable; Yosemite has also brought OS X and iOS much closer together on a deeper level. Features like OS X 10.10, better know as Yosemite, is a major Mac update that offers numerous features never seen before in an operating system. One of the most important is Continuity.

Mean that what you’re doing on one Apple device is kept in sync with all the others you own. Fantastical 2 makes use of these great new features.

Is It Worth Coming Back Yet For Macbook Pro

Its sister Flexibits has redesigned, remade and relaunched their popular calendar app for iOS 7, packing new features and a sleeker look. But it comes at a cost, whether you bought v1 or not! Is my favourite iPhone calendar and, with Handoff, it is completely tied to the new OS X app.

If you’re viewing an event on your Mac you can open Fantastical on your iPhone and it will show the same information. This is great if, for example, you have a phone number in the event description and want to call the person. If you’re invested in Apple’s ecosystem, having everything work seamlessly is a big plus, and another solid reason to upgrade.

Pricey But Worth It The original Fantastical was the best calendar you could get for OS X until last week. Fantastical 2 has now replaced it. But while the new features are great, Fantastical 2 is not a cheap upgrade.

If you’re The calendar is not always the ideal solution. If 'I don't have enough time' is your constant refrain, you need to change tack and adopt a new, more efficient approach to time management., let alone Fantastical regularly, it’s understandable if you can’t justify the price. For the rest of us though, it’s unmissable. If you’re looking for something else, Sunrise Calendar, an iOS favorite, recently released new Android and desktop versions, making it a serious contender for the title of best cross-platform calendar.

But does it take the crown? Is a great cross platform calendar. OS X’s built in calendar is also worth noting. While it’s not as fully featured as Fantastical 2 or Sunrise, it’s already installed and ready for you to use, and it syncs perfectly with your iPhone’s calendar. If the simplicity of a menubar calendar app is what you’re after, give Itsycal a look.

It’s certainly a less expensive way to get a calendar in your menubar. Will you spend $50 on Fantastical 2? Explore more about:,.