Mac 101: iCal alarms

Is there any way to get an Apple Script to pull the reference / notes areas of the appointment from iCal? I was thinking of taking the iCal Twitter script and having it tweet an update based on my schedule. Say Tweeting some static text "Scott" and then " is " and then appending the Location text. Now that would be trick!

i like ical, but another big problem it is has it there is no "conflict" detection. say, for example, you create a calendar entry for september 4 from 1p to 2p. then, a few weeks later (after you've forgotten the 9/4 event), you create a second event on the same day from 1:30p to 2:30p. there is no pop-up message telling you the new time conflicts with an existing time. i'm new to the mac world, so i called apple support to figure out what i was doing wrong. lotus notes and outlook have had this feature for at least the past ten years. the support person told me "wow! that's a good idea. i told our engineers about it."

are you kidding me? really? this hasn't occurred to anyone?

iCal sucks because it can't handle events with scripts like Windows can!
Here's why:
You've set the events and leave home for the day
Say you have an event with "Run Script" at 2pm.
Say you have an event with "Message with Sound" at 3pm.
Say you have another event with "Run Script" at 4pm
(And you're synching your iPod b/c you're at work all day)

Results:
At 3pm, iCal on your mac shows the message, as does your iPod.
At 4pm, you think your next script is working, but nope!

iCal FAILS miserably since the "Message" box needs to closed before the next event (4pm) is executed. While iCal keeps events queued, if you're away from your mac, you can't close the box and allow iCal to run the next event.

At 6pm, I arrive home and am able to close the message box furious that the 4pm script event never ran when scheduled, but it kicks off now. It's a real P.I.T.A. I hate iCal soo much that I only use Windows for any type of event scripts (oops, I should write, "Scheduled Tasks"). Sorry Apple, MS wins big here and I've been a Mac fan for over 20yrs.

I find that entering new appointments in iCal is a pain in the ass. You have to navigate to the appropriate day, double click to make a new item, tab through lots & lots of fields, and then set a reminder. I wish I could enter new items the way Google's Calendar app allows you to: type in "Lunch with Dave at 1 pm on Friday", and boom, that's it.

Also, for some reason, my iCal calendars have stopped syncing between home & work computers. (I use mobileme.).

iCal is the weakest of Apple's bundled applications, imo.

I use iCal alarms as an alam clock. Everyday it runs an applescript that launches VLC and tunes into my favorite radio sation then shuts off 90 minutes later, around the time I leave for the office. The script also refreshes all my podcasts and syncs my iPhone. So I'm all good to go while having nothing to remember to do in the morning.
I just wish iCal's UI was less buggy and more respectful of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.

What really bothers me is that you can't set alarms on ical on the MobileMe website. I work on a PC at work (Windows XP). If I want to put something in my calendar at work and set a reminder at home I can't do it. So I use Google calendar along with Busysync (Busysync syncs Google calendar and ical). Google calendar allows me to set up an alarm on my windows XP computer (via Google calendar). The reminders then show up on my Mac at home since they are synced to ical reminders (so the reminders are actually ical reminders). The system works great.

Correct me if I'm wrong but last time I looked I could not set alarms (reminders) on ical with MobileMe. Have they fixed this?

Dave

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i do everything with ical and have had no problems so far.

the only thing that really is sh***y is that i cannot set the default alarm for todos.

I'd love to see a solution where the todos have a default alarm (note/popup with sound same day at 10:00h)

setting default alarms is so far a real pain, manually all works well.

@momj47:

Your claim is too ridiculous to be believed. Even a child could use iCal without a problem.

But really, if iCal is so great, why can't it send me a reminder message pop up message of birthdays that are entered into my contacts? Is there an Apple script for this?