Jun
03
Download today’s show here! 
MC20110603.mp3 [42.3MB 01:27:45 64kbps]
A podcast about all things Macintosh. For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. Show 352. WWDC is almost here so we rundown some of the latest rumors. Interview with Michael Simmons from Flexibits on what it’s like to develop for the Mac and on their new product Fantastical (App Store).
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So Michael says the Mac community is friendly and not? And he actually sounds sincere. But how could he miss Quickcal, which clearly existed before 2010?
Brett Terpstra wrote about the widget on TUAW back in 2009.
The basic idea is the exact same idea.
And why didn’t the talk to its developer, who is a pretty nice guy? Just ask QuickCal users.
… other than that its a pretty nice interview.
Christian,
We didn’t know about the app you mentioned until a few months into our development. Once we found out about it, we felt strongly that our solution took a different approach.
Fantastical is not only about natural language input, it’s about being calendar/event solution. The quick access (using a hot key to quickly open and close it), a beautiful calendar and event list (to quickly manage all of your dates and events), and search (to instantly find all of your events).
Our goal was also to have a much more advanced and expressive engine, and not force the user to conform to specific syntax. From our user’s feedback, they tell us our engine is fantastic (pun intended!) :) and that even users who used the other app tell us our engine is much more expressive and flexible.
One other detail, the other app had been free (until a few months ago when they launched a non-Dashboard version) so when we had found out about it, it wasn’t like they had a top selling, well-known app. We only found out about it because one of our testers told us about it.
So just because you knew about this app a year+ ago doesn’t mean that we did, nor does it mean that we had any malice. We simply didn’t know about it when we started and once we found out about it the facts (them being free, our mission being different, etc.) didn’t seem to warrant any need to reach out to them or cancel our project.
Michael
Hi saw you on TWiT here is the reason why WSJ, wired charge more for non package deals. Anchor pricing http://paste2.org/p/1423972 Predictably Irrational book
@Michael
Thanks for your answer. Too bad you guys didn’t meet. I’m sure both sides would have profited.
Quickcal wasn’t as active developed at that time but has come a long ways since.
A little competition and greater choice for users isn’t bad though, I guess.