[ttepasse]

My pet theory is that it is the data model: everyone must support ical/Exchange and those only support events with a textual description.

Events may be a part, but not the only part of a good calender. There is a lot of stuff which could be part of a calender but doesn't necessary fit into the event paradigm: Fuzzy events like the car inspection you are putting of. Transit times - not just the fixed time span you get today, but integration of public transport or current car traffic, so that you can plan. If you're menstruating a period tracker. Your health and sleep data. The weather, the day-night-cycle for your location. All background data with time and date, which we have, but not just in our calendars.

And even traditional events are limited: I'd like to have a general repeating workday event but also like events in that workday as extra events. With a normal digital calendar they are clashing. Hierarchical events would be a solution.

Or multi-layered events, some years back there was this blog post on HN which made me rather unhappy with iCal:

https://julian.digital/2023/07/06/multi-layered-calendars/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617504

[TeMPOraL]

My pet peeve: buffer time. Or, rather, lack of it. Almost every calendar event requires some extra buffer time before and after, for things like getting to event location and back, and/or preparing, etc. No calendar app I've ever used even supports the concept, much less does anything to help. Right now, I resort to having a separate calendar for "buffer time" events, which I currently fill manually; I'm working on automating this, as almost all events also have fixed buffer time, that's known to me, but again there's no way to record that fact in existing calendar software.

[godelski]

This is a great point! And in the class of problems I was trying to illustrate. There's a lot of low hanging fruit here. We're programmers, we should be able to take our frustrations and turn them into solutions! If we're not, then we're doing something wrong lol.

FWIW, in Apple Calendar there is an option for "Travel Time". This will prepend the event with some buffer value. When looking at the event on my calendar, in my iPhone, and ONLY in my iPhone there is a little : (vertical dots + car) symbol and saying (e.g.) "15 minutes travel time", while the event has a vertical continuous bar next to it. On my Macbook, the whole event is just expanded.[0]

My pet peeve: dramatically differing interfaces between devices. I do understand that at times this must happen. But there's no reason for it to in this case. But worse than that, when CREATING a new event on my Macbook it is just so much clunker. I don't see "Starts" and "Ends" until I click on the time, where it instead expands. Then I can see the "travel time" option (in iPhone it is "Travel Time") and if I click the end time I can only select from a pre-determined time of 30min to 3hrs with 30 minute intervals. If I select "starts" I don't get this. In both cases I can __type__ the actual numbers in.

[0] Update: while writing this comment, my macbook's calendar updated to show the vertical dots but does not include the little car nor the text (again with continuous vertical bar under actual event). Why did this take so long? "Just works" my ass. Arch linux has been more stable than trying to live by the Apple way.