MagiCal is a free menu-based clock and calendar

Originally downloaded 1/6/07. The standard in this category has long been MenuCalendarClock, with its iCal or Entourage flavors. And it’s a standard that’s pretty hard to beat… especially considering that you can use it for free if you don’t need some of its advanced features. Nevertheless, Magical has a couple of things I already like better: Its name (I can never remember the other software’s name, to save my soul), and its ability to let users tear calendars off the menubar. This latter trick is pretty nifty, and there doesn’t appear to be a limit in how many calendars you can tear off. Each tear-off has its own little menubar and access to preferences, etc. I think I’ll keep it around awhile to see how I like it. Already, there are a few things I’ll need from Magical… mainly, the ability to customize the font and color of the menubar text.

Update 3/15/07. Well, that didn’t take long, really. The developer of the cool new menubar calendar/clock application MagiCal has been churning out updates at least once a week since January. Some time in February, all of my requirements were met, and I’ve actually been using MagiCal instead of MenuCalendarClock (always hated that name… don’t you?). It’s still not as powerful or flexible, but actually its signature trick—being able to tear a calendar off the menubar and drag it wherever—beats MCC in some ways. In fact, you can drag as many copies of MagiCal off the menubar as you need to, each set to a different month!

p:After I had pointed out MagiCal’s early problem with CPU usage, the developer promptly attended to it, and now MagiCal’s a very well-behaved member of my menubar. Its CPU usage is comparable to MCC and to the now-abandoned freeware wClock, which had similar functionality. After all that, I don’t absolutely need MagiCal, since I get my time and date from QuartzClocks, but I have found it convenient to grab a monthly calendar from the menubar, making it the fastest way to get there outside of keeping iCal on the desktop all the time (not really PractiCal, I don’t guess).

Beware the recent entrant to this space, however… at least for now. MyMenuDate is just bad, weak software at this point, though it does have a nice icon. It costs $5.00 on sale, but isn’t nearly as nice and flexible as MagiCal, which costs $0.00.

Version as tested: 1.0.8r2