Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Mac 101
Mac 101: iCal alarms
iCal is the calendar software that ships with every Mac. When combined with a MobileMe account, it's quite handy. In fact, iCal is the only calendar I use.New users are often unaware of how much iCal can do. In this post, I'll focus on the types of alarms you can create. With a few simple steps, you can go beyond a simple beeping message.
First, create a new event. Simply double-click the proper time on the proper day and an hour-long event appears. Double-click the event, and the edit window appears. From here you can name your event, identify the location and duration (all day vs. timed), set repeat options and the target calendar if you maintain more than one (I don't).
Now for the fun part. Below the calendar option you'll see "Alarm." Clicking it reveals several options:
- None (kind of self-explanatory)
- Message (presents a dialog box on your Mac and iPhone/iPod touch if synced via MobileMe)
- Message with sound (same as above with plus a system sound)
- Email (send an email message to a given address)
- Open file (Open a file on your Mac)
- Run Script (My favorite. See below)
The email option is nice as well. For instance, once the mini at my day job has completed its daily task, I have it send me an email as a confirmation. As long as I see that message, I know that everything's A-OK.
The option to open a file is handy, too. I'm using it to open a Keynote file right now, but you can have it launch a kiosk application, perhaps a broadcast app like Nicecast, etc.
Finally is run script. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not Applescript pro, but even I see the powerful potential here: Have iCal run any script you can write up at any time. Awesome! Finally, you can set more than one alarm to an event. For example, display a message and send me an email, just to be sure I make that meeting.
As you see, iCal can do much more than store your appointments. Now go be productive and have fun!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
momj47 said 3:38PM on 6-29-2009
I find iCal to be worthless, I've never been able to get it to notify me of anything. I've googled the problem, tried all the suggestions and nothing works. I much prefer Outlook Calendar, it at least works.
Reply
Joseph said 5:03PM on 6-30-2009
i use ical in correlation with google calendar for both me, my wife and work calendar.
lagunaman said 3:48PM on 6-29-2009
I have been UNABLE to get iCal NOT to work.
We sync our lives between 2 macs and an iphone via iCal. NO excuses to miss an anniversary! LOL
Reply
grant said 3:50PM on 6-29-2009
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?
Reply
Dave said 3:59PM on 6-29-2009
I have the same problem with birthdays. I have been wanting a way to have an alarm for them. I guess the only option would to set up an event for the birthday in iCal and not link it to the contact. Although that would be a bit of work.
Jorge said 11:51AM on 6-30-2009
Yes thats completely right. I've wanting this for a long time, but I guess it's not possible at all to have an alarm on your birthdays that come from the contacts! Shame
mastermeatleg said 11:56AM on 7-04-2009
I have an automator event that checks for birthdays every day at 12:05am, and generates an email to that person with preformatted text. I just have to make sure to change the text once a year...
http://lifehacker.com/356609/never-forget-to-send-another-birthday-email
alansky said 4:26PM on 6-29-2009
@momj47:
Your claim is too ridiculous to be believed. Even a child could use iCal without a problem.
Reply
stooky said 5:17PM on 6-29-2009
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.
Reply
Frank said 9:44PM on 6-29-2009
-
Reply
Dave Rock said 10:11PM on 6-29-2009
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
Reply
pierre said 9:34AM on 6-30-2009
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.
Reply
Nirgal said 10:57AM on 7-01-2009
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.
Reply
Nirgal said 10:56AM on 7-02-2009
I just found a Dashboard widget that gives the plain-language feature I was talking about above. It's very cool, actually. It's called QuickCal, and is available at http://is.gd/1lwZa (link to download at apple.com).
danpat said 9:49PM on 7-03-2009
I use QuickCal as well. Its an excellent way to bypass all the fields required by iCal and being a widget its always there ready to use.
Combined with MobileMe sync, and my jailbroken iPhone running Intelliscreen I have all my appointments at my fingertips. The alerts pop up on my iPhone like a polite personal assistant.
Now, if i could add iCal events just as easily on my iPhone.....
beardanthonyj said 1:17AM on 7-02-2009
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.
Reply
sylvaticus said 11:51AM on 7-04-2009
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?
Reply
STSanford said 11:05AM on 8-04-2009
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!
Reply