iCal is a personal calendar application made by Apple Inc. that runs on the Mac OS X operating system. iCal was the first calendar application to offer support for multiple calendars and the ability to publish/subscribe calendars to WebDAV server.

Originally released as a free download for Mac OS X v10.2 on September 10, 2002, with the release of Mac OS X v10.3 it was bundled with the operating system as iCal 1.5. Version 2 of iCal was released as part of Mac OS X v10.4 and Version 3 with of Mac OS X v10.5.

Apple licensed the iCal name from Brown Bear Software, who used it for their iCal application.

iCal development is quite different from other Apple software since it was designed independently by a small French team working "secretly" in Paris, led by Jean-Marie Hullot, a friend of Steve Jobs. iCal's development has since been transferred to Apple US Headquarters in Cupertino.

Features

It keeps track of events and appointments, allows multiple calendar views (such as calendars for "home", "work", and "kids") to quickly identify conflicts and free time.

It is integrated with .Mac, so calendars can be shared over the Internet. It's possible to also share calendars via the WebDAV protocol.

Users can subscribe to other calendars so they can keep up with friends and colleagues, and other things such as athletic schedules and television programs.

iCal allows notification of upcoming events either on screen, by e-mail, SMS, or Pager. There is also a third-party Dashboard widget called iCal Events that allows notification of upcoming events using Dashboard.

iCal integrates Apple Sync Services to sync its data with .Mac, devices such as PDA, iPod, iPhone or other mobile phones via iSync and third party software.

New in Version 3

Setting to let iCal set auto-alarms for each event created.

Redesigned user interface

Inline event editing

Ability to turn off alarms for all events

The date on the icon in the Dock displays the current date all the time. (Until version 3, iCal's icon displayed July 17 - the date iCal premiered in 2002 at the Macworld Expo - by default until the program was run.)