Fantastical has been a perennially popular app here at TNW Towers. Kicking off as a Mac app initially, developers Flexibits launched a version of its slick calendar application for iPhone way back in 2012, before giving it a slew of new features last March and then basically overhauling it for iOS 7 six months later.
Today Flexibits has finally launched a version of Fantastical for iPad, news which is sure to warm the cockles of its users’ hearts around the world.
Fantastical 2 for iPad
Those wishing to use Fantastical 2 on the move from their iPhone will likely have different needs to those sitting down on the train with an iPad. “What’s really important to us, is the iPad version has to be designed for iPad,” explains Flexibits co-founder Michael Simmons. “We’re really big believers that an iPad app has to be an iPad app.”
Indeed, you’ll notice the new Fantastical dashboard is a fresh interface for iPad that displays calendar, day ticker, and list in a single display. It uses the larger screen real estate of the iPad well here, letting you toggle between the day ticker, half-screen week view, and full-screen week view.
You can swipe down on the day ticker to switch to the week calendar, and swipe down or tap the arrow to go full screen. You can return to the day ticker by swiping up on the bottom of the week calendar.
You’ll also see a little ‘tick’ button on the top-right of the screen, which takes you to a fresh pane where you can add new reminders. At its most basic level, this is essentially a glorified to-do list that can remain as such if you so desire, or you can turn it into more of a calendar item by scheduling reminders on specific days, or when you’re at a particular location.
It also supports natural language input, meaning you can create reminders and calendar events by beginning a sentence with keywords such as ‘todo’, ‘reminder’, or ‘task’. Similarly, it will understand language such as ‘second Tuesday of every month’ or ‘every weekend’, with Fantastical automatically reminding you at the specified intervals.
Similar to the iPhone app, you hit the little ‘+’ icon at the top right to include a new calendar entry, which starts to populate the calendar as soon as you begin typing.
Within ‘Settings’, you can configure the calendars, alerts, time-zone support, themes, reminders and more.
Based on our initial dabblings with Fantastical for iPad, users won’t be disappointed. It’s slick, very easy to use, and although it more than makes full use of the available screen real estate, it doesn’t feel cluttered.
Fantastical 2 is designed for all iPads with iOS 7, and comes localized for English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. And it’s also worth noting that the special launch price today of $9.99 will eventually rise to $14.99. While nobody can dispute that developers and businesses should be pushing to make money off the back of all their hard work, for those who have already paid $4.99 for the iPhone app there could be an issue with being asked to pay three times that again to procure the iPad incarnation. However, Simmons believes it’s a fair price .
“The iPhone is a mobile device, so users are more quick to find a solution and either buy or not based on price,” he says. “There seems to be a more impulsive behavior and price sensitivity when it comes to buying on iPhone versus buying on iPad.
“Basically, if you’re looking for the best calendar and reminders app for your iPad – one that will truly save you time and make you more productive, we feel $14.99 is a very fair price for the level of quality of app we’re providing.”
As things stand, Flexibits’ focus remains within the Apple ecosystem, though Simmons confirms they are “considering other platforms”.
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