Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, Freeware
MagiCal: Menubar Calendar
MagiCal is a cool little calendar application from Charcoal Design. As you can see it just puts a drop-down calendar in your menubar for easy access. In addition, you can actually "tear off" a month and leave it on your desktop (handy for making reservations, I find). MagiCal can also add the date and time in a customized format to your menubar, if you want to use it instead of OS X's built-in clock.
While my favorite menubar calendar remains the more full-featured MenuCalendarClock, it is $20 and MagiCal is a free download (donations requested). One last cool thing about MagiCal is that the developer offers three versions for download: Universal Binary, PPC, and Intel. The single platform ones are indeed about half the size of the UB. Personally, I wish more developers would consider doing this.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
dylan said 6:43PM on 2-04-2007
"Universal Binary, PPC, and Intel. The single platform ones are indeed about half the size of the UB. Personally, I wish more developers would consider doing this."
I'd actually prefer they didn't as it is too confusing for the average user. If your concerned about the extra disk space usage Xslimmer does a wonderful job.
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Simon Arch said 8:18PM on 2-04-2007
Confusing? How is it confusing to offer separate PPC and Intel binaries? You either have a PPC or Intel. If you're not certain there's a universal binary. Nobody should have to rely on apps like XSlimmer. XSlimmer borked my system but good, so I avoid it like the plague.
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MarkMS said 9:21PM on 2-04-2007
Nice app. What are those other applications in the menubar? I see Adium, but have no idea what the others are.
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Sam said 11:37PM on 2-04-2007
I'd love to use this - I hate the way I can't display the day of the month in the menu bar - but as a "normal" menu bar status item, as opposed to the standard clock, I can't Command-drag it over to where the standard clock is. A slight problem for me as I have about 14 things in my menu bar!
As for the other icons in the screenshot, I only know what one is. The one of the Apple Remote coming out of the hat is an app called Remote Buddy by a company called IOSPIRIT - and I cannot sing its praises highly enough! It's one of those programs that augments the Front Row functionality of the Apple Remote - and this one does so by replacing it all with a sleek menu. I could go on and on - but I love it because I can control the iTunes (and therefore AirTunes) volume without having to close Front Row. Oh yeah - cos it's pre-1.0, it's only $9.99! Maybe it's important to point out that I have no connection with them - other than them having about two pints worth of my money.
Sam
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Mat Lu said 11:41PM on 2-04-2007
@3: left to right: Adium 1.0, Path Finder, Remote Buddy, JumpCut, Meteorologist
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niclet said 12:09AM on 2-05-2007
Don't we have widget for this? I mean, can a Menubar app like MagiCal be less Ram-o-vore than the Apple Calendar widget?? If yes, it really worth. I agree with the PPC-Intel separate version for HD space economy, but what about Ram space economy?
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Simon Arch said 1:37AM on 2-05-2007
Well niclet, by that sort of thinking, who needs a widget when we've already got iCal? Obviously not everyone wants to keep it open all the time JUST to have a calendar on hand. Oh, and it may come as a shock to you, but not everyone wants/likes/uses the dashboard. As far as I'm concerned, it's a memory hog and a waste of cycles. You like it? GREAT! I'm happy for you, really I am. Meanwhile, I'll stick with a nice, easily accessed menu item.
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Brian Sexton said 2:16AM on 2-05-2007
Do you feel better now, Simon? Take a few deep breaths; everything is going to be OK.
Surely you don't think launching iCal is a serious alternative for either Dashboard with its standard calendar or MagiCal, do you? Checking a calendar with Dashboard is as simple as clickity-clack, it's out then it's back: one button press shows it then a second hides it.
Worrying about the negligible amount of memory Dashboard uses in 2007 is a bit like judging one Web browser superior to another because its download package is a couple megabytes less. If either the physical memory use or the virtual memory use is a problem for you, your system probably needs to be upgraded, so you might want to spend the time that you would otherwise be using to write snarky comments working toward at least a memory upgrade.
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ljunnn said 9:33PM on 2-07-2007
IMO, one of the best features in MenuCalendar is the fact that you can have the program import all of your Address Book birthdays AND have alarms for them, into iCal. I just wish it did this on a sync schedule instead of manually having to do this. :)
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