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Smartpad X Pocket Informant X miCal HD

vegaswallacy

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May 12, 2011
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Hello All,

I'm new here. I've got my ipad2 and I'm looking for an application that join Todo and Calendar.
I saw some posts here about the Smartpad and pocket informant. I like PI but I've seen this miCal Hd.

I can't find any information if the app deals with todo as well or just with events.

Does anyone use miCal hd?

Many thanks

Vegas
 
Hello Tim, thank you for the reply.
Yes, that was the one I saw and it doesn't get into much detail about the task management. By the image I guess it is just a simple task list with no option for folders, tags and more important, if the task was completed or not.

Im think I'm going with one of the other two PI or SP.
 
I looked at several apps for this and, in the end, chose Pocket Informant HD.

I read that Pocket Informant was buggy but, in my (admittedly) limited experience, I’ve found no problems at all. It has a very nice user interface that's almost infinitely configurable - a complaint that many Forum members make about the iPad’s native ‘Calendar’ app. So you can choose how tasks, events, projects, appointments are colour coded and there is a wide choice of notifications and alarms - so, for example, you can have different alarm sounds for different categories of notifications.

Pocket Informant ‘sits on top’ of the iPad's native ‘Calendar’ app and (optionally) imports all entries that it finds there. They can be colour coded so they can be distinguished from entries made in Pocket Informant itself.

This is important because many other iPad apps use the native ‘Calendar’ app as the default place to put events, invitations etc. So, for example, if you are invited to a meeting by email and you receive that invitation in the iPad’s native ‘Mail’ app, that app can automatically (and quite cleverly) insert that invitation into the default calendar app. Without that integration between the native app and Pocket Informant, you'd have to enter those invitations all over again.

Pocket Informant has lots of ‘hidden’ features too. One of the reviewers remarked that part of the ‘fun’ of using Pocket Informant was discovering them!! The display is infinitely configurable - day, week, month, year at a time. Tasks, events, overdue tasks, projects, projects in progress etc etc all can be optionally displayed on the main calendar. Projects and tasks can have infinitely nested sub-tasks and projects - these can cleverly be integrated with GPS - so, say you needed to purchase some goods from the hardware store. Put that in a To-Do list and link it to the location of the hardware store using the iPad’s native ‘Maps’ app. Next time you’re driving past the hardware store, up pops the notification (‘Remember to purchase some 2â€x4†timber’).

Repeating events are very flexible too, with the ‘custom’ mode being infinitely (I keep using that word!) configurable. So, meetings that occur on the last Thursday and first Monday of every other month - no problem.

It can sync with external calendars - Google for example - and back-up is cool, it creates a backup file that you can email to yourself for safe keeping. If you lose your iPad or all your data is corrupted, that backup can be imported back into Pocket Informant with a single click.

You can create multiple diaries within Pocket Informant - say ‘Work’, ‘Family’, ‘Golf Club’ etc and have their entries optionally displayed on the main screen or restricted to the display of the individual diary. So it’s easy to check if there’s a clash between the golf tournament and your wife's birthday - and hide it if there is......

If you surf to the developer’s web-site, you can download for free a very comprehensive User Manual that will show you in detail what Pocket Informant can do.

The developers are constantly updating the program - always a good sign in my view.

As I said at the beginning, perhaps I'm not a particularly demanding user, but I’ve had no stability problems at all. I should add the usual disclaimer that I have no contact or other relationship with the developers of Pocket Informant other than being a very satisfied customer.

Tim
Scotland
 
Thanks Tim that's very useful information. You convinced me to have a look more closely. I will do it now. And then next step is find a nice app for office docs.

Funny thing is that I cant find a should the uses the miCal. So maybe it's a sign that it's not very popular.

Anyways, thank you for you time answering my post.
 
Save your money and pass on SmartPad. It's description and images look really promising, but the app was a complete waste and I ended up purchasing PI afterwards. SmartPad allows much less customization of events, compared to PI. It is not easy to understand, when setting an event to thursday, the 12th, it would actually be listed on my calendar the day before. The app is supposed to be smart, so it rearranges your event's automatically to fill up any free space, some GTO (getting things done) thing. But really annoying, if you set a fixed event and SP moves it to an earlier time. There may be a way to turn this off, I haven't found out how to do it, yet.

Also, there is no weekly overview. Nope; Someone must have blanked out while coding this app. Just daily and a monthly overview.

SmartPad does have promise, but it urgently needs an update. I am tired of having it move fixed events, such as meetings to an earlier date.

Just follow Tim's advice and get PI, it's a lot less frustrating ;)
 
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