CalCube Takes Calendar Navigation To A New Dimension

CalCube – Quick, Slick & Easy Calendar ($1.99) by Appsuperb, the minds behind WeatherCube, is a gestural calendar app that presents data on a manipulatable cube. This allows users to swipe between different faces of the 3-D shape, as well as pinch in and out to open or close it like a piece of origami. After this type of interactivity made a hit out of WeatherCube, it seems like Appsuperb hopes to have the same impact on calendars.

If you have ever used WeatherCube, CalCube should instantly feel familiar. In the app, your calendar is laid out with a year view on top of the cube, a search function on the bottom, and a weekly view on all of the lateral faces. You can swipe up and down to change between the year, week, and search views, and swiping left or right in the week view will give the impression of rotating the cube to switch between weeks. Finally, one can also spread two fingers vertically to reveal the settings, and horizontally to create a new event. Pinching two fingers together will back out of these views.

The animations in CalCube will make you feel in control of the app, and they also provide a good sense of position in your calendar. Just like with WeatherCube, CalCube also has some charming Clear-like sound effects that accompany every gesture, and these can be disabled in the settings if sounds are not your thing.

In order to make CalCube even closer to perfect, Appsuperb has paid a lot of attention to detail. Based on your location, the app can display the predicted weather for any given day during the week, and you can also enable an icon badge that will display the date. Additionally, if you would like to make the app more personal, there are seven colored themes to choose from.

Although CalCube was great for me at first, I was disappointed to discover that event creation is lacking. It seems to be the norm for calendar apps to display a simpler event creation screen by default – which is great for reducing clutter – but CalCube's implementation is too limited. Not only are alert times, notes, and location out of the question, but you can’t even set the end time for an event. You can hit “More options” while creating an event to configure these if need be, but all it does it pull up iOS' native event creation sheet – and no one wants to see that.

CalCube is great in so many ways, and this is mainly because its characteristic user interface and aesthetics are unrivaled by other calendar apps. However, despite event creation being a small factor in any calendar app, CalCube's mediocre implementation of this is a deal-breaker for me. On the other had, if you're a sucker for gestures who hates getting lost in your calendar, CalCube may be perfect for you.

CalCube is available as a universal app for $1.99 in the App Store.