Mozilla Sunbird 0.8 for Mac OS X

You hate Entourage, and you're not particularly fond of iCal. You've waited endlessly for Nighthawk, Contactizer Pro is too complicated, and you want a native app instead of using Google Calendar or another web calendar. And, since you're saving money for an iPhone 3G, you don't want to spend any money on a calendar app.

Maybe it's time to look at Mozilla Sunbird 0.8 for Mac OS X. It's developed by the same people who brought us Firefox and Thunderbird. It's almost identical to the Lightning calendar plugin for Thunderbird, but doesn't require that email app to run. Upon first startup, Sunbird will import events and tasks from your existing calendar application.

The UI is plain and simple, probably because this is a multi-platform application (Windows, Linux, and Solaris in addition to Mac OS X) that shares a lot of code between the different flavors. Sunbird can tie into CalDAV servers such as the one in Mac OS X Server 10.5, and can subscribe to any .ics format shared calendars. In limited testing, Sunbird felt responsive in searches and was quite stable for betaware.

Sunbird, of course, is free. If you are searching for a new calendar app, give it a try.

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Source: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

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You hate Entourage, and you're not particularly fond of iCal. You've waited endlessly for Nighthawk, Contactizer Pro is too complicated,...

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Steph Hancock

Contactizer Pro, too complicated?? Are you kidding?
This is probably the most Mac Like of all the apps your mentioned! It is not "a simple" app that's true, it is a very powerful PIM that I'm enjoying daily. But honestly the guys behind contactizer are really following the good workflows and the mac way of doing things.

July 10 2008 at 3:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ben Darlow

Interface-wise, Sunbird has been like this forever, both on OS X and Windows. Don't assume it'll improve any time soon.

Quite how anybody could hate iCal and find this easier to understand or in any way better is beyond me. Once there is proper Exchange integration in 10.6, even Entourage's days will be numbered.

July 07 2008 at 5:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Virduk

Well I certainly like lightning, its the one calendar app I do use. I might have tried iCal if it synced with Google Calendar. Sadly it does, and won't anytime soon as Apple wants to pimp .me instead.

July 07 2008 at 2:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

JC Helary

I am not a geek, but I've found that my needs were fully covered by emacs and its diary mode... And that also works (of course) within Aquamacs emacs...

July 07 2008 at 1:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I tried out Sunbird a few weeks back and was pretty dissapointed. I use thunderbird and firefox a lot, so I expected better I guess. I managed to get syncing with google calender to work, which was nice, but the whole UI seems designed to frustrate people. I can't remember the specific problem I was having, but I gave up and decided to use Google Calender, which is much better!

Oh, and Google Calender can print calenders really well (using PDF) unlike Sunbird which fails miserably at producing a calender thats remotely useful on paper... Perhaps it'll get there, and it's probably ok for basic functions, but iCal or Google Calender are much better options.

July 06 2008 at 8:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

comctrl6

There's nothing "native" about any of Mozilla's apps. They try to emulate the GUI elements in XUL and they fail miserably.

I'll take GCal or with BusySync and iCal, thank you very much.

July 06 2008 at 8:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Nic

I use plaxo to sync ical with google, outlook, entourage etc

July 06 2008 at 6:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

justin

look at those dumb tabs that are Mac OS X 10.0 style... firefox devs just dont get it.

July 06 2008 at 3:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

rjesslavolette

If I could sync Sunbird with both my Google Calendar and with the iPhone I plan to purchase in the near future, I would download it in a heartbeat.

July 06 2008 at 2:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

freshyill

No mistaking the clusterf*ck UI of an open-source cross-platform app!