Mysterious Trousers Goes Back To Their Roots In Tempus
Event Calendar (Tempus) ($2.99) by Mysterious Trousers, LLC s a quick and minimalistic calendar for your iPhone and iPad.
Earlier in the year, everyone’s favorite (or possibly former favorite) calendar, Calvetica, underwent a major design change that strayed away from the simplistic interface that the users had come to know and love. Instead, the design went from simple to a bit complex and convoluted, especially on the iPhone’s small screen. The developers then rereleased the old Calvetica as Calvetica Classic and gave it away for free, but promised no feature updates. But now they have released Tempus Event Calendar, which is what they call the “successor to Calvetica Classic.”
From my initial first impressions, Tempus is basically a watered-down version of another calendar app that I reviewed: Agenda. Tempus is different enough though, that it’s not an exact copy.
Also, Tempus pulls data from your native Calendar.app. The first thing you will see when you launch the app is a month view. You can navigate between the months by swiping left or right. The design is simple and very minimal, which is what users loved about the old Calvetica. Dots on the days of the month represent days with events, so you can easily view how busy (or not) your month is.
Tapping on a day will take you to the agenda view. This allows you to view days and dates of the week, along with any events that you have. This view provides an easy glance at your days and weeks ahead of you, thanks to the endless scrolling. With the endless scrolling, you may get lost in the future (or past). Simply tap on any header to jump back to Today, and slide left-to-right to get back to the month.
Adding events couldn’t be easier as well. To do this, simply tap on the + button on the month or agenda view. Simply type in the name of the event, pick the time it starts (by default, events last an hour), and if needed, the duration. Then tap Add Event, or if you need more details, tap “More.” In the More option, you’ll find stuff like calendar (if you have multiple calendars like I do), notes, repeat options, attendees, location, sharing (email or SMS), and alarms. If you don’t need the extra stuff, adding events is at most a two-step process.
Repeating events have even more flexibility in Tempus. If you have an event that has an odd repeating schedule (e.g., every third, fourth, or seventh day of the month, etc.), Tempus will allow you to have these. This gives the app an advantage over other calendars that may not have such customizable recurring event options.
If you find yourself not using some of the default event detail options, then you can even customize what appears from the app settings. For users that are looking for even more customization with the app, just take a look into the settings – there is a wealth of options found here.
Unfortunately, in the 1.0 version, there isn’t a way to customize the colors for calendars, like in Calvetica. This isn’t a huge issue, but the developers should be working on it so that it is included in future updates. For now, you will have to deal with whatever the calendar colors are in Calendar.app.
In the end, Tempus does well for what it’s worth, but I still prefer Agenda over this. Agenda gives me what I want right away – today’s events, rather than having to view the month every time I open it. There also isn’t an easy way to jump to a date in Tempus, as there is in Agenda. And a search function? Forget about it in Tempus.
Tempus definitely has potential though. I look forward to seeing how Mysterious Trousers improve it, but until then, I don’t find it to be worth the $2.99 asking price (even though it’s a universal binary), nor will it be replacing Agenda any time soon on my home screen.
