iPhone's iCal icon displays correct date, Mac OS X's still doesn't
While the iPhone signifies a massive leap ahead in mobile phone technology, it also has apparently leapt ahead of its big brother Mac OS X in a few key areas. Since iCal's debut in Apple's darling desktop OS, it has (to my knowledge) never displayed the correct date in the Dock; it's always been set on July 17th until you actually start iCal which causes it to reflect the proper date. The iPhone, on the other hand, must have received some spit and polish from the OS X engineers, because its iCal (or is it officially called Calendar?) displays the proper date every day, even if you don't start the app. In a way this makes sense, because virtually every mobile phone's home screen provides easy access to the time and date, so Apple had to get this right. Still, it would be nice if iCal in Mac OS X could catch up to its baby brother and do something as advanced as display the proper date in a Dock icon.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
dwylie said 12:50PM on 7-02-2007
the whole home screen on the iphone should be more flexible. We should be able to remove stocks and replace it with a shortcut to make a call or send an sms etc. More like OSX. less like saying its OSX without really backing it up!! the whole iphone needs major work in the constancy department.
d
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Joe said 12:52PM on 7-02-2007
I think that the iCal icon will start displaying the correct date in just over two weeks. However, I doubt that will last for more than a day.
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Fraser Drew said 12:56PM on 7-02-2007
I think that everyone needs to remember one thing
1.0
This is a 1st gen product... think 1st gen iPod. However, as so many people have bought these, and they have a near definitive life of 2 years, expect at least some form of updates within that timeframe. iPhone is an amazing product, it does need work, therefore Apple have built a great mechanism to update it. I think this is one of the areas where the '5 years ahead' claim can be made. Very few phones offer this kind of upgradability to the core of the system. iPhone does.
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Brice said 1:21PM on 7-02-2007
Don't ask me how I know, but iCal in Leopard does show the correct date.
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Ruud said 10:16AM on 7-15-2007
I'm surprised nobody has yet entered a comment about the fact that a company called Blocksoft has recently created a very nice little application called iConiCal. This does exactly what you're missing, plus a bit more. Go and see for yourself: http://www.blocksoft.net/iconical.html
Cheers,
Ruud
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James Donevan said 1:38PM on 7-02-2007
"Don't ask me how I know, but iCal in Leopard does show the correct date."
That's interesting Brice. In all the Leopard screenshots of Build 9A466, iCal shows the date July 17 - unless iCal is open.
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macxprt said 1:59PM on 7-02-2007
In response to: #10 - macxprt, doesn't ical still hang around in memory or virtual memory, when you do that? Seems like a big load just to get an icon to switch. But I don't use the program much.
Yes, the program is running in the foreground (or background, if you choose to "Hide" the app) using this technique. You could also create an Applescript that autoruns and quits the app if you do not want to use iCal but want to have the icon show the correct date.
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Drupa said 2:14PM on 7-02-2007
Let it go, pal! I'm just fine with July 17th - it's my birthday!!!
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Sumsa said 3:17PM on 7-02-2007
Wait - you guys are using your Dock to open applications like iCal? *chuckles*
Don´t you use Quicksilver or anything like that?
Honestly: As milosh said: "a launch-icon is not a widget that should act on its own"
If you point your mouse to the dock, you´re expected to launch an application, not to check the date!
So if you don´t use Dashboard, at least get something like MenuCalendarClock ;)
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Luke Vink said 2:42PM on 7-02-2007
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/iconical.html
A recently released program called iconiCal. Quite nice. It has the ability to change your icon and stuff, and even display it as a different colour (the blue goes nice in the dock). - and its free.
Hopefully leopard will see fixes to these obviously small yet equally annoying problems in tiger - hopefully.
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Vijay said 5:38PM on 7-03-2007
"While the iPhone signifies a massive leap ahead in mobile phone technology..."
Really? Please tell me that this is an ironic comment. The iPhone may be a great integration of existing technologies, and it has a sleek interface, but "massive leap"? Please leave hyperbole at the door. There is nothing new about the iPhone except the package and UI (which is already getting some criticism). Neither of these are "massive leaps", especially if you look at any recent Samsung phone and PalmOS.
I also happen to have a phone which does all the things the iPhone does, in admittedly a less-sleek interface - the Nokia e61. It's not as pretty, but it comes with 3G, SD card slot, removable battery, and is carrier-agnostic. It also comes with FlashPlayer installed, so you can YouTube right through the website. I also like the keys.
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GadgetGav said 3:56PM on 7-02-2007
OS X's iCal can and does show the correct date, the same way the iPhone's does. As others have pointed out, there is no 'quit' for applications on the phone, so how do you know that the ones that can run without needing live updates are not always on..? I have iCal in my startup items on my main computer, so I always have the date in the dock.
Maybe the reason weather and stocks don't show the 'real' data is that they would need wifi or cellphone signal to update and therefor be more resource intensive. The clock could be the live time, but that shows in the top bar anyway, so you don't need it.
Seems logical to me... maybe not really a big story or a shortcoming of desktop OS X...
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Tom said 8:28PM on 7-02-2007
Funny, my iCal icon is right once a year.
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matt said 10:30PM on 7-02-2007
On my OS X machine I have the iCal Dock icon modified, so that when it is not running it shows a blank calendar... then once it starts up it shows the correct date like it should.
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matt said 10:33PM on 7-02-2007
of course that's not perfect, but it is LESS annoying...
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Ed said 11:35PM on 7-02-2007
The iCal date is a bit of a tradition in the OS X world, I was told.
The reason it displays July 17 every day until you physically open the application is an homage to the application itself - it was released on July 17 at Macworld Expo in 2002.
I can't believe in this day and age of the Apple cult nobody has mentioned that.
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Joseph said 11:40PM on 7-02-2007
I agree with #8. iPhone is running Leopard..so the desktop version will also reflect this change.
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Josh said 3:01AM on 7-03-2007
For a very short time (was it only 10.2?) you could open iCal, it would display the correct date, and when you closed it, the date would stay.
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MSF said 10:38AM on 7-03-2007
I'm sure they could make it so it always displayed the proper date.... if you didn't have a problem with iCal constantly consuming your RAM no matter what. The calendar on the phone is always running most likely. iCal is not.
If you really want the proper date displayed that badly, have iCal started at login.
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Klink said 2:30PM on 7-03-2007
[)amien's right, there doesn't need to be Daemon running all the time, only at startup when the OS checks the date. If it sees that the icon hasn't been updated today, it changes it once.
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