Great app, my favorite calendar app by far, some bugs and features missing
Love the heat map monthly view soft widget! Wrote the following after previous updates/versions. Generally happy with the app for personal purposes, but I can see how it wouldnt work for a professional calendar due to certain bugs. But its being updated pretty much every month and they are squashing lots of bugs, so definitely still worth the 4 stars in my mind!
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Bumping my review to four stars since the latest update fixed some bugs and addressed some of whats written below (i.e., swiping between interfaces more intuitive). Im impressed with the frequency of updates and trust the developer will address the other issues mentioned below in due course!
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I wrote the review below last week, but had to downgrade my review to three stars because Ive discovered some problems, namely:
a) The app is slow or skips when theres no internet. Problematic for somebody who travels a lot and uses this when Im not able to go online.
b) As other users have observed, the location/directions are buggy. Ive often typed in a location that wasnt searchable in the map app (i.e., Near Charlies Kitchen, Suite 200) and the app didnt even save my location since it couldnt find it. I ended up having to use the default cal app just to add the location. Like another user put it, Id like the option to just turn off the location/directions function of this app since its so buggy.
Im not downgrading the score too much because I do believe the developers will fix these problems. Still a beautiful app as youll read more below!
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I switched from WeekCal to this when my schedule got less "busy". WeekCal was great when I had 4+ events a day, but when I started becoming a part-time dad, I had fewer scheduled appointments, and so I wanted a non-cluttered way to look at the big picture of my schedule. Timepage does just that, and very well. The heat sink month view is really handy to get a sense of my overall availability, and the way to check heat sink for different calendars is so fast and intuitive, its brilliant. The timeline view is great because I can see a week at a time, and each day is the same size (I cant stand other timelines where I cant move through days at the same visual pace!). I love that there are fewer presses than most calendar app; swiping and long/hard-presses are the way to go in my opinion. While I didnt buy this for the weather integration, I must admit its great to have it there without having to change apps, and the weather interface is really simple and elegant.
There are a few things that if changed would bump this review to 5 stars:
a) A long press in month view creates an event but not in timeline view. Why not? Seems silly to have to perform two actions in timeline view to create an event.
b) Get rid of the arrow on the right of timeline view. Not necessary and visually distracting.
c) Swipe from the left in any event page should bring you back to the days page, but it doesnt currently as far as I can tell. (FIXED IN LATEST UPDATE)
d) When creating an event, theres a cool sliding horizontal timeline to adjust the start and end time. Would be much more helpful if the other events of my day were shown on that timeline, along with their calendar color, so I could visually see my day and figure out what the best time would be.
e) The animations for days with more than 4 events are too slow. I have to wait a long time before I can see the rest of that days events. Maybe add a setting to adjust that animations speed?
f) I personally would love buttons in the add event page that were set at common duration intervals, like 30 min, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, all day, etc. I understand that could clutter interface, so maybe make that optional?
All in all, a beautiful interface with little clutter to let you focus on the events and not on the over-abundance of info or options. I invested in this knowing that the development team keeps updating and improving it in such a short time, so kudos to you all!
Adrian & Rebecca about Timepage by Moleskine Studio
