Ok, Mac OS X is brilliant. That’s a given but then there is always room for improvement. The Menubar is a wonderful space for putting vital or often accessed information and although Mac OS X comes with the built-in ability to display the day and time in the Menubar, there’s no quick access to a calendar.
Enter a brilliant piece of freeware from Charcoal Design – MagiCal. God bless the Brits for coming up with something great and sharing it with the world for free.
What it is, is an application that sits in your Menubar that displays the date and time. When you click on it, a drop down calendar appears, with the option to not only display the date but also calendar week numbers. There’s also an option to ‘rip off’ the calendar to place it on your Desktop.
As an added bonus, MagiCal ships in three versions: PPC only, Intel only or Universal. Giving us an option to save hard disk space, instead of just a single Universal version.
Although MagiCal is a great freeware Menubar application, that displays the date, time and a drop down calendar; that’s where its functionality stops. If you’re really keen on complete iCal integration in a Menubar calendar application, then you may want to consider getting MenuCalendarClock from Objectpark Software for USD$19.95.
Surprisingly, although MenuCalendarClock features complete iCal integration it has a smaller memory footprint than MagiCal. Then again, MagiCal is still pretty new and constant improvements are expected. For now, one of the most important factors is that, its free!
So, the choice is yours, sleek simplicity with MagiCal for free or spend a little to get complete iCal integration with MenuCalendarClock.