[X4U] Is anyone else excited about iCal Server?

[Stroller]

Is anyone else excited about iCal Server?

This was part of my reply to Michael Prevost's question, "what are  
people thoughts on Leopard's upcoming features?" but of course my  
message was so verbose & wordy (see? I had no need to use both those  
adjectives) that it got bounced for size.

I've decided to change the subject of this message as an attempt to  
look less like a sad loser who has nothing better to do than post on  
the internet all day, but also to solicit others' thoughts.

For me the most important announcement of the keynote was iCal  
Server. I've been wanting an open-source Exchange-replacement for a  
couple of years now, so iCal Server is just like all my Christmases.  
On a server is how diary synchronisation SHOULD be done, and even if  
I'm the only person using my server it's going to save me the money I  
presently spend on dot-Mac - money I hate spending because dot-Mac is  
so damn shoddy.

The kind of features that businesses need in a calendaring app are  
things like delegation and "pencilling in" of appointments, and  
appointment proposals by email. Execs want their secretaries, but no- 
one else, to be able to manage their diary for them. I want a  
telephonist to be able to take bookings for my diary but not to be  
able to delete them accidentally after they've been finalised.

Salesmen want to be able to open their laptop whilst they stop for a  
break from driving, drink their coffee and glance at their inbox;  
Exchange informs them of a proposed meeting and gives them the  
facility to confirm it, refuse their attendance or even make a  
request that it is held an hour later (this is very useful if you  
finish an appointment in Aberdeen at 11am - your time might show as  
"free" in the calendar after that, but you won't be able to make a  
meeting in Edinboro before 1pm, or before 3pm in London if you fly.)

Finally. I want my customers to see what times I'm busy, but not  
whether my appointments are business or personal, or any other  
information about them. Ideally, I'd like members of my family to be  
able to view my personal calendar and have full read access to it,  
but any changes should be on a request system that I approve or deny.  
I guess she should be able to see when I have work appointments, but  
not any details of them. The current "subscriptions" of diaries on  
iCal & dotMac are very feature-sparse if you want these facilities,  
and if iCal Server implements a fraction of what I've outlined here  
then I'll be very pleased with it.

I thought it was very telling that at one point during (or at the end  
of) his presentation of Mail's new "stationary" feature Steve paused  
as if to allow applause or cheers; there was no response, so maybe  
this hesitation was my imagination. But it seems to me that the  
attendees are developers - they want to send text in emails, and  
maybe attachments, but they don't want HTML doubling the message size  
for no benefit. Heck, there were probably guys in that audience who  
use Mutt & pine.

When Steve announced iCal Server a cheer went up. I read a commentary  
today that said "he didn't do his `one more thing` trick" but to me,  
that was it. We knew Mac Pros were coming, we've seen Apple do new  
stuff with filesystems before (Time Machine? That's as innovative as  
Spotlight) and with the GUI (virtual desktops? well, Expose was gonna  
be hard to beat) but really a proper & mature calendaring app will  
affect all these guys who are living a wired life between their  
laptop and desktop Macs.

For guys like this it's no good someone in your office sending you an  
email saying "are you free for lunch on Friday?" because by the time  
you get that email you could have already made plans, and heck even  
if you are free you're gonna have to create a calendar event manually  
and type stuff in (unless you're able to drag & drop that email into  
your calendar and have it automatically created as an event). What  
you want is to open your laptop and sync with the server and and have  
the email already say "oh, I see you can't make lunch on Friday -  
would you like to suggest another time?". I don't want to spend time  
organising my life, and so iCal Server could do a great job of doing  
that for me.

Stroller.