CalZones

David Smith‘s latest app, a calendar app named CalZones that is putting the focus on facilitating the handling of events across multiple timezones, is making quite a splash these days.

The app is mentioned and/or reviewed on many tech blogs and seems to receive universal praise, as far as I can see. And the praise is not unjustified. CalZones comes with some really fresh design and animation ideas, and – as mentioned before – the ability to take the friction out of handling multiple time zones in calendar events is certainly a compelling selling proposition.

The MacStories review mentions some „strategic“ shortcomings Federico identified during the beta period. My personal list of features that I would like to see added to CalZones is more about the practical aspects of working with a calendar app:

  1. It does not seem as if there is a touch gesture for navigating to the current date. However, when using a hardware keyboard, the app supports the shortcut ⌘ T for this purpose.
  2. No search. This is big, a calendar app that does not support search is not going to make it on my devices.
  3. I haven‘t found any way to create a calendar entry boundary with a finer granularity than 15 Minutes. For example, you can start an event at 9:15, but 9:12 is apparently not foreseen. Such a limitation, if confirmed, is not exactly compatible with calendar entries for train or flight connections1.

Despite all the complaints, I still think that Smith delivered a 1.0 that should be a solid basis for further iterations.

  1. At least for flight connections, I personally see a relevance for the ability to work with different timezones.

Five Years of Monument Valley

Remember Monument Valley? The game, developed by the studio ustwo games, was originally released in early 2014. In the fall of that year, I got my first iPad and (if I remember correctly) Monument Valley was the first game I‘ve downloaded onto my new device.

Monument Valley is a masterful play with geometry and perspective, and the game keeps giving. This week, ustwo shipped the „fifth anniversary edition“ of Monument Valley, accompanied by the slightly cryptical release note:

Don‘t miss out – the party‘s over on May 1st.

Whatever that means, I am already done with the ten additional levels. It was fun.

Mastodon