Apple Calendar Change for the Worse

--SJR-- wrote:

I've never complained about any calendar issues, similar as noted before. I was able to just live with the old Apple calendar as it displays on iCloud. Apple - you broke it. Step back - give us the option to use the old calendar. At least on next try release a beta from which we can back up. The current iCloud version is awful, poorly thought out, just plain stupid, I haven't even had a chance to look at it on my laptop or ipad yet - someone has to say it :-o My front-end calendar I use constantly is WeekCal app on iphone, ipad...if any one interested. Very well thought out with more functionality for which I have needs.

As I said in a previous post, Pretty much everything is better than the Apple calendar app. In general, Apple’s built in apps are very basic, probably so they don’t appear to compete with 3rd party developers, which would discourage developers for creating great apps.

I agree about WeekCal, I’ve been using it for about 20 years (starting with a Palm Pilot). I’ve never used Apple’s calendar.

Hi Conspiracygirl,

Here's a guide that will show you how to customize the view of your Calendar app: Change how you view events in Calendar on iPhone - Apple Support

If you're unable to adjust things to your preference you can leave feedback regarding this here: Product Feedback - Apple

Take care.

The built in calendar is very primitive; fortunately, there are several excellent calendar apps that have many more features and a much better user experience. I use Week Calendar, and I’ve heard good things about Fantastical.

I've never complained about any calendar issues, similar as noted before. I was able to just live with the old Apple calendar as it displays on iCloud. Apple - you broke it. Step back - give us the option to use the old calendar. At least on next try release a beta from which we can back up. The current iCloud version is awful, poorly thought out, just plain stupid, I haven't even had a chance to look at it on my laptop or ipad yet - someone has to say it :-o My front-end calendar I use constantly is WeekCal app on iphone, ipad...if any one interested. Very well thought out with more functionality for which I have needs.

tabatha55 wrote:

It simply baffles me that I don’t have a choice of what calendar view I would like to use. Clearly they have both templates, why isn’t there a choice Apple?

Because there are a dozen or calendar apps in the app store, all better than the built in calendar. That’s intentional; Apple built in apps are very basic, so developers don’t feel that Apple is trying to compete with them. There is no way that Apple could create a calendar that everyone would love and that met everyone’s needs, so they encourage independent developers to be creative, and so that users have a wide choice.

There is a REALLY SIMPLE ANSWER: DON’T USE THE APPLE CALENDAR. If I used the word I want to use to describe it my post would be removed; it S____. There are MANY really great calendar apps in the app store; ALL of them are an order of magnitude or more better than Apple’s.

After reading yours and other's comments--I had to jump in and at least express my dissatisfaction.

I just got through working on 2 months of a detailed schedule for 3 people. All of it has to be on one page to help us coordinate our schedules. The printout or display on the monitor is nearly impossible to read (unless you have 12 year old eye sight). Mostly you can include the same amount of information as before, but the display or printout doesn't provide the same amount of info as the old app with you print it out.

Yes I know I could print it out with more detail using a different option--but I don't want to kill a tree providing that to three people when we could get it all on one page before.

Please DUMP this version and go back to the old one.  Y'all have not spent any time working on this thing for YEARS...why would you fix it now?  Did you just throw some teenagers into a room and have them redesign this?  They truly have no design sense and seem to miss the whole point of a useable calendar.

Go back to the old one.  Did you layoff all the good designers or did they all just quit? Is that why it is so bad? If you are going to redo it (I'm not opposed to that), get some better designers in to do it.  Just an FYI, I didn't love the old one either--but it was way more useful than this version.

By the way, I rarely write into complain about something.  That is how awful I think the calendar is. 

MMS

D_Tony wrote:

I use google calendar. It’s so much better than iCal

Pretty much everything is better than the Apple calendar app. In general, Apple’s built in apps are very basic, probably so they don’t appear to compete with 3rd party developers, which would discourage developers for creating great apps.

I use google calendar. It’s so much better than iCal

I recently updated to the latest Mac OS (Ventura 13.3.1) from a much older OS and now the apple calendar is far worse! When more than one alert pops up the one in front hides the ones in the back and there is NO WAY TO SEE THE ONES IN THE BACK. The only option is to 'close all' making the ones in the back vanish without knowing what they were!!!

There is also no longer the option to 'snooze' the alert like there used to be.

There is also a tantalizing 'options' button that appears in the lower right of the alert (sometimes) but oddly is only visible when the cursor is not near it! Once I move my cursor to the alert, this button vanishes.

WHY remove and/or change functional features and replace them with non-functional features???

I changed my Samsung for iPhone and it proves. Disaster and if I am honest, so too is the MacBook. The OS promises to remember passwords etc…but it doesn’t so I have been FORCED to create new login details. Unfortunately create too many and it assumes your hardware has been compromised and auto locks so you can’t access your device unless you prove you are the owner and without the receipt you have a very expensive paperweight . Calendar updates are ridiculously giddily and utterly useless. It seems that Apple geeks don’t bother testing and with an astonishingly arrogant wave of their sloppy fingers completely ignore what competitors offer! I will NEVER invest in APPLE again. Steve Jobs is dead…and unless coders and developers put down their Diet Coke and Pizza’s…so too are all things Apple…give me back my Samsung…so I can use it without worrying if I am going to lose my files…or at least download them without trying to find out where the folder actually is

I just got a new IPad Air 5th gen and noticing that the calendar monthly view is only dots under numbers. WHERE is the old grid that was so easy to see my month in a glance? I am disappointed in this view and have tried to get it back. I restored to an older back up but it went away again. Please think about changing this back.

One more complaint: When scheduling an event over several days or a week, in the past the event was a continuous bar through the days until the end. Now there is a separate entry for each day. If there is an event within an event then I would typically see two bars to cover each event time span. Now the same there are separate entries for each event. If I add another reminder for one day, one of the multiday event disappears. What a mess. Not at all intuitive. The purple background item is continuous on all days as is Festival Days, but when more items are added the entire flow gets chopped up visually just not intuitive at all. I still vote for can this one back to the drawing board. Like many say, the former version wasn't super slick, but it was way better to work with that this one. Give it back to the developers and keep the previous functionality and add what you want but don't destroy what worked for so many. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

As someone on the spectrum who also struggles with ADHD I absolutely hate the way they changed the calendar. I don't do well with surprises, especially when someone else messes up a critical part of my daily life and springs it on me without warning. My life is hard enough and now you make it harder.

What really ****** me off is that this was done without warning and without consent. Further, they could have made it easy to change back to the old version. It wasn't an insurmountable technology hurdle that drove this decision, it was the oversized hubris of the people in charge.

Apple you can do better.

I don’t get this either. This change makes the calendar interface feel counterintuitive and redundant.