mac.iLounge

Calendars apps generally aren’t remarkably different from one another—fill in a bunch of different boxes, hit “Done,” and the event pops up on your calendar. With Fantastical ($15), Flexibits has used Apple’s iCal as the basis for something a whole lot more natural.

Fantastical hangs out on the right side of your menu bar and works with your iCal, Entourage, or Outlook calendar. Click on the icon and it’ll drop down a window with a few different fields, as well as a calendar and if you choose, a list of your upcoming events. What is awesome is how you add new listings. Simply start typing in the box at the top left in natural language. Fantastical pulls out the information and automatically populates the fields, with everything from location to time to invitees. Type “Breakfast with Mike” and Fantastical will pull out the title “Breakfast,” automatically choose 8:00 AM tomorrow, and even allow you to send any of the Mike’s in your Address Book an invite. Then just hit the return key and you’re done. Of course you can manually adjust any of the information. A free trial is available from Flexibits’ website, or you can purchase the full version from the Mac App Store. Do hurry, as the price will be going up on June 1.