Randomize

I love Apple, but I hate iCal.

Google Calendar is actually, for me, much more usable than the iCal application itself. Adding events is SO much easier, as is resizing the stupid window.

But, until now, iCal was my only choice if I wanted to sync to my iPhone (and I do). Or, at least it was my only choice when I checked into it about six months ago.

Today, I was able to get three Big Calendar Issues resolved:

• Syncing my work calendar (Outlook) with Google Calendar, using Google’s own tool. Works great. It only syncs the first (“main”) Google Calendar, so I renamed it “Work” so I don’t clutter it with my personal stuff.
• Getting Google Calendar events on my iPhone. Google Calendar is now very iPhone-friendly, so I’ve moved it to my home screen and moved the iPhone’s own calendar app to the next page. And since Google Calendars can send SMS, I can still get notified if I so desire. (Combined with the above, I now have my Outlook calendar on my iPhone).
• Syncing my calendar with Delanea. I’m always out of the loop on family things, church events, etc. I created a household calendar in Google and gave her read/write access. So, now she can use Google Calendar as well, including on her iPhone, and we’ll finally be on the same page.

Next step: figuring out how to get the “Family” and “Friends” groups in Delanea’s Address Book and mine on our Macs and phones all synced. We each have half of our friend’s numbers, addresses, birthdays, etc., it’s flipping annoying. Here, I really want to stick with the Address Book app, not Google Contacts. Address Book works great and is tightly integrated with OS X and the iPhone, and I don’t want to lose that.