Fantastical is my favorite calendar app for iPhone. From my review of the first version:

Fantastical for iPhone gets many things right without cluttering the interface or forcing me to learn a new set of rules and menus. Like Tweetbot’s tap & hold actions, Instapaper’s footnotes, or Launch Center’s presentation of shortcuts, Fantastical’s DayTicker and natural language support made me ask myself: Why hasn’t anyone else done this before?

Fantastical was already a part of my daily workflow on the Mac; with the iPhone app, I’ve found myself using the app even more thanks to its beautiful and easy to use interface that makes it super simple to get a quick overview of a day’s events. Combined with my OmniFocus-to-Calendar system, I wouldn’t be able to go back to Apple’s Calendar app after using Fantastical.

Fantastical 1.1, released today on the App Store, adds a series of improvements that make the app even better to use.

In terms of UI tweaks, there are new options in the Settings to highlight weekend days and dim past events for the current day. Both changes are welcome as they make it easier to quickly “read” the calendar; weekend days are dimmed both in DayTicker and calendar view. Another option that has been added in 1.1 – but which I don’t use – is the possibility to hide empty days from the DayTicker. The Dock icon can now show a badge indicating the current day of the month or remaining events for the current day (I prefer day of the month).

For calendar management and event creation, Fantastical 1.1 comes with new features that I really like. Events can be moved or duplicated by tapping & holding them and choosing Duplicate or Move from a popup menu; the same tap & hold gesture can be performed on the title bar (where the date is shown) to bring up a beautiful date picker that uses the same “loupe” effect of the DayTicker (shown above). If you don’t want to manually pick a date, you can now scroll the entire event list instead of being limited to the current month; scrolling will also automatically scroll the DayTicker or calendar views.

Alongside time zone support, pending invitations management, and multiple alerts (I managed to add 20 alerts to a single event, more than Week Calendar), Fantastical now has a smart clipboard detection tool that will look for date strings in your clipboard and offer you to quickly create a new event. For me, this has been particularly useful for dates of app releases or Skype calls that I frequently receive via email; I can copy the date, open Fantastical, and the app will parse it, letting me type the name of the event and save it.

Fantastical 1.1 is a solid update to my go-to calendar app for iPhone, and it’s available on the App Store.

I wouldn’t call myself a calendar power-user.

Ever since I started organizing the things I have to do with a system I can trust, I’ve faced a workflow conundrum: is this a task or a calendar event?

I know that there’s a difference between so-called “actionable items” and time-based events. Maybe I’m not hooked up right, but I’ve been looking for a way to immediately visualize, in a single interface, all the things that I have to do on a specific day. Independently from their actionable (“you need to do this”) or time-based (“you need to be here”) status, I want a software that, like a personal assistant, tells me exactly what I need to get done.

I have found such system in displaying my OmniFocus items inside my calendar. And now, the system has been enriched by the addition of Fantastical for iPhone.

I’ve been a fan of Fantastical for Mac since I first tried it in May 2011. Replacing iCal’s overly complicated interface with a simple menubar overview of your upcoming events, not only did Fantastical show that a simpler way to access your calendar was possible, it also profoundly changed the third-party OS X development scene with its use of natural language input. Futuristic as a concept, in practice Flexibits managed to bundle a powerful language parser within Fantastical that would recognize commands like “Coffee with Chris tomorrow from 6 to 7” and deconstruct them as specific values for a calendar event. It’s not a fancy gimmick: rather than clicking buttons and menus, I constantly find myself invoking Fantastical on a daily basis, typing away like I’d normally do in a blog post or note, saving events in just a few seconds.

Fantastical is one of my must-have apps for OS X. But how could Flexibits ensure its soul wouldn’t get lost in the transition to iOS? (more…)

Flexibits’ Fantastical, a menubar-based calendar application to quickly enter new events with natural language recognition, has today been updated to include native integration with Reminders, a feature that Apple rolled out with its own app in iOS 5 last year. I have been testing the new Fantastical (version 1.3) for the past weeks, and its integration with calendars, reminders, and natural language input is as solid as ever.

One of Fantastical’s biggest advantages over similar apps to quickly add items to synced calendars is its built-in CalDAV engine, which ensures the app can directly communicate with online calendars without having to leave iCal open in the background. As with events, Fantastical 1.3 lets you create reminders with a few keystrokes, using reminder lists already configured in your calendar app of choice, such as iCal or Outlook. Because Fantastical is capable of directly communicating with the syncing engine behind Reminders — not just the calendar application that displays them on the desktop — you’ll be able to add reminders in Fantastical and have them synced across devices without leaving iCal open. In my tests, Fantastical 1.3 indeed took reminders I added from the menubar, and synced them to iCloud.com and other iOS devices within seconds. If iCal opens, as Flexibits explains in the FAQ, it’s because of a Lion default setting related to push; switching iCal’s refresh rate to 30 minutes doesn’t compromise Fantastical’s ability to create events and reminders independently of iCal.

Fantastical can create, edit, and delete reminders with natural language recognition. In testing the app, I told Fantastical to “remind me to take out the trash”, and the app intelligently parsed the command as just “take out the trash”, interpreting the initial portion of the sentence as a reminder input. Similarly, commands like “remind” and “todo” will trigger reminder creation in Fantastical 1.3, which, generally speaking, tries to associate every new item without a date to a reminder list. This, however, can be reverted at any time, as the interface to switch between reminders and events includes a handy switch to jump through both options.

Reminders can be given a specific date or priority, assigned a note, but they don’t support location and time-based alerts, as those features are exclusive to iOS’s Reminders and Siri. In the app’s UI, reminders are displayed alongside calendar events, and they use the same floating popover windows for modifications.

In testing Fantastical 1.3 with my iCloud calendar and reminders, I found the app to be remarkably fast and reliable. As you would expect from Fantastical, adding new reminders takes seconds thanks to keyboard navigation and shortcuts, and the syncing engine didn’t miss a beat when communicating with iCloud and iOS. Unsurprisingly considering previous versions of the app, the parser doesn’t disappoint when it comes to automatically switching between event and reminder creation (try to add a date to a reminder, and check out the animation).

Fantastical 1.3 is a great update if you’ve been looking forward to Reminders integration, and another solid release for an app we’ve previously recommended. Fantastical is $19.99 on the App Store.

Flexibits’ calendar companion app for Mac OS X, Fantastical, has been updated today to version 1.2 adding support for various languages that will allow international users to quickly write down new events in Italian, German, Spanish, and French.

I have been able to test Fantastical’s natural language recognition (my original review) both in English and Italian, and the results are surprisingly well done. Whereas most apps that claim to feature “natural language input” fail miserably at parsing content from syntaxes other than plain English, Fantastical’s support for Italian has, indeed, turned out to be pretty fantastic. An event called “App Journal ogni Venerdì alle 6 del pomeriggio” (App Journal every Friday at 6 PM) was correctly recognized, processed and synced back to iCloud directly within the app thanks to Fantastical’s own calDAV engine. Without going into detail too much, I can say that Fantastical is able to recognize different variations of the same kind of input (such as “di mattina” and “di pomeriggio” for AM/PM switches) and definitely doesn’t stop at standard expressions for entering events but tries to understand common, real-life ways of telling an app to do something at a certain point in time. I can’t speak for French, German and Spanish support, but I assume it’s equally well done.

Version 1.2 comes with other bug fixes, performance and parsing improvements that make the app more stable and smoother in transitioning from text entry to event creation; the app can now automatically update subscribed calendars, and automatically hide calendars disabled in iCal. More importantly, Fantastical 1.2 brings better support for recurring events — such as my example above — and dims timed events that have already passed in “today” view. Those who often add URLs to events will appreciate the fact that Fantastical now correctly recognizes links and makes them clickable in event view.

Fantastical remains an amazingly lightweight yet powerful calendar companion that’s gradually getting more functionalities without becoming cluttered and confusing. You can get the app at $19.99 on the Mac App Store.

Fantastical takes what we know about calendar apps and makes it quicker and easier to create and edit events without having to open iCal, Entourage or Outlook. Fantastical is intelligent and innovative by using natural language for entering events. It is easy and fun to use, resides in your menubar, uses a system-wide hot key, and has CalDAV sync support. The UI is one of the best for OS X, it has a natural look and feel to it and it really is fun to use. From our coverage of Fantastical 1.1, released on the Mac App Store last week:

Fantastical was already a great app, and now that it’s gained editing, deleting and notes it really can be used as a calendar replacement, which thanks to natural language input will also act as your personal calendar assistant.

What more is there to love about Fantastical? How about a giveaway?

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With the release of the iPhone 4S and Siri, Apple is putting much focus on natural language input and the concept of “personal assistant”, a technology the company first explored almost two decades ago, which was impossible to implement until today. With faster processing power, persistent Internet connections and better voice recognition, Siri is perhaps the most impressive feature of the iPhone 4S and one that Apple will undoubtedly promote heavily in the next months.

On the Mac, of course, the situation is quite different. Whilst one of the new functionalities of Siri on the iPhone is being able to create and schedule calendar events, on OS X we’ve had calendar apps with natural language support for quite some time, such as Fantastical and QuickCal. And today Fantastical, which I first reviewed here, has received a major update that adds two of the most requested features: event editing and deleting.

With Fantastical 1.1, you can edit and delete events without jumping to your main calendar app, like iCal. Now, instead of having to launch iCal to make edits to something you entered through Fantastical, you can simply double-click on an event to start modifying it in a separate popup window. The interface is the same you already know for calendar events; you can also delete an event and add notes, which will be synced across all your devices and, if configured, iCloud. Option-double-clicking an event still opens it in your favorite calendar app — remember, Fantastical supports BusyCal as well — and anchor mode can now be toggled with a keyboard shortcut.

Another big improvement in Fantastical 1.1 is full iCloud support. The app already supported iCloud calendars, but now that Apple’s service is public the app has been specifically optimized to take advantage of its new push technology for calendars and events. And because Fantastical features direct CalDAV integration, everything you enter in the app will be immediately synced back to the cloud, without having to open iCal (or letting it run open in the background). In my tests, iCloud integration has been extremely reliable, allowing me to enter an event (or make edits) in Fantastical and see the results appear in real-time on iCloud.com and all my iOS devices.

Fantastical was already a great app, and now that it’s gained editing, deleting and notes it really can be used as a calendar replacement, which thanks to natural language input will also act as your personal “calendar assistant”. Fantastical is available at $19.99 on the Mac App Store.

Following Monday’s Bundlehunt package of 11 great Mac apps and various ‘design goodies’, today there is a new MacUpdate Bundle which also comes with a selection of top-notch Mac apps and utilities for just $49.99. The bundle includes some of MacStories’ favourite Mac apps including the excellent Fantastical (review here), the informative iStat Menus and the useful Printopia (review here). If you tried purchasing the included apps individually you’d be paying nearly $500, so if you’re looking to beef up your collection of Mac apps this is a terrific deal at just $49.99.

The MacUpdate Bundle includes:

• Toast 11 Titanium - if you need to do more than the basic disc burning that the iLife software provides, Toast is an excellent option. It also has a solid set of video conversion tools as well as supporting the ability to burn copies of recorded video from EyeTV and copying CDs and DVDs with no fuss.
• Printopia - only available to the first 10,000 purchasers of the MacUpdate Bundle, Printopia allows you to share your printers connected to a Mac (physically or over a network) with an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch – allowing you to print from an iOS device to virtually any printer (as opposed to the limited selection of HP printers that are natively supported).
• Data Rescue - this is an advanced piece of digital data recovery software for the Mac, allowing you to safely recover previously deleted files.
• FX Photo Studio Pro - this Mac post-processing image editor comes loaded with over 150 image effects and comes with some substantial customizations options, allowing you to mix and match effects to perfect an image.
• Fantastical - this is a powerful Calendar application that sits in your menu bar, working with existing calendars and comes with a powerful natural language engine that can create an event from a simple phrase (e.g. Lunch with Matt on Wednesday 1pm).
• iStat Menus - monitor all of your Mac’s vital statistics with just one glance to the menubar, it supports monitoring everything from CPU usage to component temperatures to network usage and more.
• Phoneview - access and export various pieces of data from your iPhone or other iOS device from call history, text messages, photos, voice memos and more.
• Concealer - conceal important snippets of data in an encrypted archive – everything from license keys to diary entries can be concealed.
• EarthDesk - replace a boring desktop background with a live-updating image of the Earth with real time movement of the sun and even cloud coverage.
• Mellel - a powerful word processor that is appreciated by scholars, students and those writing technical documentation.
• Bookends - for professionals and students this is an extremely powerful reference management application (and it integrates perfectly with Mellel)

Fantastical is a calendar assistant that works with Apple’s iCal and the popular third-party BusyCal software, allowing you to quickly creates event in your default system calendar with plain English. Thanks to a built-in natural language parser, Fantastical lets you write down something like “Get a new MacBook Air tomorrow at Apple Store at 5 PM”, and see the sentence becoming a new event with all the necessary fields already filled in your calendar. And because Fantastical directly plugs into calendar accounts configured on your Mac, you won’t need to enter your information again.

Fantastical 1.0.3, released today, adds full Lion compatibility and a new Lion-only feature that allows you to swipe with two fingers to move between months in the calendar. The animation is really nice, and reminds me of Safari’s new feature for navigating webpages with a two-finger swipe on Lion. Among various bug fixes, Fantastical also adds a new color menubar icon preference, a last-selected calendar option, and several parsing engine fixes.

You can read our initial review of Fantastical here, and buy the app from the Mac App Store. However, the Flexibits developers have been kind enough to offer 10 promo codes to celebrate the next major release of OS X with MacStories readers, so if you’re interested in the giveaway jump after the break for the full details of how to enter. (more…)

Fantastical is a calendar utility by Flexibits which we’ve reviewed back in May and have been using since then as a companion to Apple’s built-in calendar application for the Mac. Fantastical, in fact, isn’t a full-featured calendar app — rather, it’s a “calendar assistant” that enables users to quickly add a new entry to all kinds of supported calendar protocols (including Google Calendar and Entourage) with a natural language input system. Instead of interacting with menus and checkboxes to set up a new meeting at a specific location, Fantastical lets you write down things like “Lunch with Cody tomorrow at Cafeteria from 1 PM to 3 PM” and have a new event created in your default calendar. And because Fantastical has direct access to these calendars, you can forget about leaving iCal open and just use Fantastical’s (beautiful) window from the menubar.

A new version of Fantastical was released today and, alongside improvements to event creation, parsing engine and date handling, it sports brand new BusyCal integration to create events directly into the popular third-party calendar for OS X. BusyCal is a calendar and to-do list manager for Mac geared towards power users with features such as Bonjour and LAN sync, multi-user editing, list view and various security features. With Fantastical 1.0.2, events can do directly into BusyCal without going through iCal first (though the devs note calendars still must be added to iCal). Version 1.0.2 also brings a new shortcut to bring an invitee pop-up for contacts recognized in your Address Book, and arrow keys integration to switch between calendar weeks.

Fantastical is simple and powerful at the same time, with a gorgeous user interface design that makes it very intuitive to add events to your calendars (and calendar apps) with a few keystrokes. You can download Fantastical at $19.99 on the App Store.