iCal and Address Book

God knows, I wish I knew. This "Leather" metaphoned GUI really bites. It doesn't even follow Apple's own Interface Guidelines.

Matthias Eckardt's free, "LionBleacher" helps some. At least it eliminates the horrible "Leather" metaphor.

Seriously how hideous are the new Address Book and iCal? Which is a surprise given that the rest of Lion is actually quite elegant IMHO. As kurosawa99 rightfully notes, the new GUIs don't even make sense from the Apple branding point of view. They seem to be steaduly going towards a stripped down, non-3D feel (new scroll bar look being one example), but the new AB and iCal are throwbacks to...emulated leather??? Huh? Really dumb, Apple. Please give us back the old look, or at least a more minimal look that fits with the rest of Lion.

iCal and Address Book look like Windows circa 1999... hideous, cutesy, grotesquely ugly. What's got into Apple when the rest of Lion is so clean-looking. Will run Lionbleacher today, thanks for the tip.

Before I get told to send feedback - I did:

I schedule 15 people in my business with iCal. I find that iCal in Lion is unusable

The font is very, very hard to read, on a small screen if you have a lot of events because it is BOLD. It looks just like (and just as bad) as the MobileMe on-line version which is also unusable with many events...

Secondly, Even a large (real) paper desk calendar made with real paper that you really tear off HAS MINI MONTHS ALONG THE BOTTOM... How in the world could you have possible stripped this feature from SL calendar???

Third, I won't even say anything about the very un-apple looking ugly leather digital calendar trying to imitate a real calendar (without mini months...)

I use 3-macs for personal and have purchased over 225 macs for my business. Ical has been in steady decline at every major release. You have really let me down here with something I use very heavily.

I now need to waste my time and find something that WILL work like busycal or GOOGLE CALENDAR. Cmon Apple - fix this...

I miss having the month at the left bottom and I can't seem to find a way to set a default calendar. I have several that display on iCal. I agree, this upgrade feels more like a downgrade. Any good way to roll it back??

thnx

You can choose the default calendar in iCal prefs - but it is broke and will default to the top most calendar in your list... This is of course after you now have to make the extra click to make the calendars even show up... Who ever designed it doesn't know what day it is...

If the loss of the sidebar from iCal is troublesome, please see:

sidebar missing from iCal in Lion — seeking a third party product to restore lost functionality

Expect that Apple will make greatest sense of feedback if each item of feedback addresses a specific feature, or the loss of a specific feature.

Macsterguy wrote:

You can choose the default calendar in iCal prefs - but it is broke and will default to the top most calendar in your list...

Macsterguy:

I tried to change my default calender in the perfs and it worked fine... Don't get me wrong I HATE the new interface as much if not more then most, but I think if you are having a problem with the prefs I think you might need to look there.

Open your user Library folder (yes I know that Apple decided for some bizarr reason to "hide" it) and trash your com.apple.iCal.plist. Then restart iCal and try changing the "Default Calendar" again. I think that will make it stick.

BTW... to make the 'User" Library folder show up again... Open the Terminal and type (or copy/paste) this line: "chflags nohidden ~/Library/" (just the stuff between the quotes please) that will make your library folder show up again.

Read more about that here:http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/04/show-library-directory-in-mac-os-x-lion/

I am also hating the new iCal and Address book.

One thing I loved about the old iCal is the different colored fonts for all the different calendars. It made it easy to read. Now all the fonts are black there are only colored dots. This *****.

Way to take a step back Apple.

black and BOLD in week view which is unreadable if you have a lot of events on a small screen... The MobileMe online calendar looked better....

The issue, troubling me with iCal & Mail is the fact that, if I clicked on the iCal icon in an emailed invitation in 10.6, iCal would open at the day/date/time of the invitation.

This no longer occurs.

And the UI is gimmicy and **** near unreadable!

No way of adding the mini calendar back I am afraid. This is a major step backwards in functionality and makes it very difficult to plan - so much so that I am looking for a 3rd party app to replace ical now. Even considering Entourage...which I hate....

Entourage is neo longer an option. No longer available. A paper desk calendar is better then iCal at this point. Busycal is the only good option on the Mac in my opion. Apple is not serious about business....... period