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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Google Calendar isn’t the only game in town.
• There are a handful of options that blow Google’s away.
• These calendars offer more features and better UIs.

My calendar is an important tool to help keep me organized, and the busier I get, the more I depend on it. For as long as I can remember, Google Calendar has been my go-to for this function, but over the past year, I’ve been looking for an alternative to help wean me off Google apps.

That goes for the Calendar.

Also: How to quickly search Google Calendar for past or future events

It’s not that I have anything against Google’s Calendar app; it’s just that Google has such a crush on AI that I’m afraid any piece of data I enter into any Google app will be used to help train their LLMs (or create profiles of me).

Because of that alone, alternatives are slowly becoming a necessity. Ergo, this list. Let’s find out what calendar apps I believe can serve as not just a drop-in replacement for Google Calendar, but a superior alternative.

1. Business Calendar 2

Don’t let the name fool you, Business Calendar 2 is not just for business. Anyone can use this alternative and will quickly find that the feature set blows Google Calendar out of the water. Business Calendar 2 has been around for over a decade and has a special weekly layout that will immediately win you over. 

What’s so special about the weekly layout? Simple: once you switch to the weekly layout (the default is monthly), you can use a slider to determine how many days make up a week. You might only want to see three days at a time, so you can move the slider to the left until you only see three days. Or maybe you want a weekly view that is two weeks. The reason why I like this feature is that I can shrink the number of days, which allows me to see more information for each entry. It’s genius. 

Also: This wall-mounted smart calendar has been a game changer in my home (and it’s $50 off)

Other features include the ability to quickly select between your various Google Calendars, built-in tasks, a daily agenda view, a Birthdays view, and more. There’s also one more game-changing feature that I’ve not seen in any other calendar app: natural language input for event creation. With this feature, you can tap the mic button and say something like, “Meeting this Tuesday at 10 am,” and the app will automatically add the event.

Business Calendar 2 is free to use, but you might see a random ad when adding events. From what I’ve experienced, the ads are limited to two per day, so it’s not like you’ll be inundated.

2. DigiCal

There are two reasons why I really like DigiCal. First, the layout is reminiscent of Google Calendar, so it’s very easy to transition to this app. Second, it includes the weather for your location that is always (subtly) present. 

Another reason I prefer DigiCal over Google Calendar is that with the Month view, you’ll see the calendar at the top and your daily agenda below, so you can not only see an entire month’s worth of events but also see what you’ve got going on that day. It’s brilliant and lifts that app above Google Calendar. There’s one other feature that I much prefer in DigiCal (over Google Calendar). 

This feature is subtle and may not be of use to everyone. When you go to create a new event and you want to choose a specific color for that event, you’re not limited to a small collection of colors like you are in Google’s app. You not only get Google’s 11 colors to choose from, but you also get 31 other colors. For me, that’s an important feature because I have several clients, and I like to associate different colors with each client so I know exactly who I’m dealing with at a glance. 

Also: Google Calendar’s bookable appointment scheduling is pretty sweet

Other than those features, DigiCal will remind you very much of Google Calendar, so if you’re afraid of change, this app should ease those fears.

DigiCal is free to use, but there is a premium version that gives you more features, like a 10-day weather forecast (as opposed to the 3-day forecast in the free version).

3. Proton Calendar

If it has the name Proton in it, you know it’s secure, and that’s reason enough to consider this calendar app. If privacy and security are important to you, I would say this should be your top choice. Proton Calendar is fully encrypted, so even the company behind the app cannot read your data. In this day of too much intrusiveness, that’s a big deal. 

Beyond the extra layers of security Proton offers, the calendar app is fairly basic, but it gets the job done. You’ll find the typical views (agenda, day, week, month) and the ability to import two of your Google Calendars. Yes, that’s about the limit of the Proton Calendar features, and you have to import your Google Calendars after installation and initial setup. 

Also: How to change the task overdue sound on Google Calendar so you never miss a deadline

Don’t let that minimal feature set fool you, Proton Calendar is still a good option on features alone, but the addition of extra security makes it a great option.

Proton Calendar can be used for free, but you do have to have a Proton Account to do so.

Our secret developer blogs allow mobile games industry figures to air their views anonymously. You can find more secret developer blogs here.

Below, a King veteran who has worked across multiple studios at the Candy Crush maker outlines the five things they think have gone wrong at the company, in response to our report on the working culture at the Candy Crush maker. 

It’s too focused on Candy Crush

When I worked there, the company had a massive imbalance in its priorities, heavily favouring the original Candy Crush over anything else. Pretty much every staffing question would come back to the same question: “Yes – but if those resources were put onto Candy we would make more money”.

There was a narrow-minded belief that just putting more resources on Candy would always make more money… and unfortunately the data did, to some extent, back this up – it’s a monster of a franchise and a license to print money for them.

The problem is this built an air of entitlement in the Candy team and to a large extent laziness in the team. They would become very defensive if anything about efficiency was raised. We had hard data showing that the team was slower at producing new levels than any other team in the company – worse than Soda, Jelly, Farm Heroes and the others.

Candy was slow to adopt new technology, always wanting to protect the golden goose. This caused lots of problems with the central engine team, who struggled to have meaningful impact on the team when I was there. How much this has changed since I left, I don’t know – not much would be my guess.

Other games would be charged with delivering innovations to game modes and monetisation models, and if they were successful, Candy would then copy them. That was essentially the model that formed in the company over time.

It’s driven by short term thinking

Leadership is fully incentivised to deliver against quite strict profit goals, and share bonuses are linked to continued achievement of KPIs over multiple years. So it is very much in leadership’s mind to achieve these targets at the expense of longer-term thinking.

If an element of work won’t deliver an increase in player numbers or monetisation now, it was de-prioritised. So people played it safe and things stagnated in tried and tested workflows.

Many of the mid and junior staff are graduates who haven’t worked across many other companies, or at least not in larger game development studios. So they lack the experience to see the bigger picture and problems within the team.

And many of the long-term staff, who have only ever worked at King since it was a small company, lack experience in how other companies operate. They view the success of King as meaning that they are great at their job, but this isn’t always the case. They are on very substantial salaries, as King pays employees very well.

The inevitability of Machine Learning/AI

When King purchased the AI/Machine Learning company Peltarion it was obvious what would happen. You have a large in-house dataset of levels and player data which is perfect for Machine Learning. It was only a matter of time before level designers and artists were let go.

‘Pampered’ work culture

When people talk about a toxic culture, I find that very hard to recognise at King, certainly in my time there. I know of a few people let go for inappropriate behaviour and language at parties, and it was one of the safest work environments I have ever known.

People were treated with respect and support was always there for people. So, unless this has drastically changed since I left, I don’t buy into the ‘toxic’ comments from staff. If anything, there might have been a problem the other way, where people felt so pampered that they thought it was correct to try and take offence at anything and everything.

The issue I had with the culture was the tolerance for bad management. There were a number of people who, whilst being nice, didn’t really do anything. They just passed information around, never followed up and were just there to have nice chats with people. These people were well-liked but added nothing to the company, so when you reported that middle management were being targeted with layoffs I could see why.

American influence

American companies like Microsoft and Activision don’t really ‘get’ European culture. Company emails are so focused on US issues and views that it is quite insulting at times. If they see an issue in an American studio, they’d sometimes implement sweeping changes everywhere.

The fallout from the Blizzard stories meant alcohol was banned from all studios. You couldn’t even take in an unopened bottle of alcohol for a friend’s birthday at King, even if it was not to be consumed on-site; this would be deemed a workplace violation and could lead to dismissal. They also wanted to ban the company Swedish tradition of the Helan Går drinking song at the King company conference, Kingfomarket.

Conclusion

The layoffs and reports about King’s workplace culture have been a long time coming. Sadly, there were some people who felt entitled and lacked true perspective on the situation around Candy Crush and other projects.

There were a large number of middle managers who were lovely people, but ultimately ineffective in their roles. The company had problems, as does anywhere, but I don’t believe it was a toxic environment, just ill-managed.

These changes have been years in the making and come from a lack of people driving change because the money was pouring in and people were focused on the here and now, rather than longer-term vision – with the exception of introducing Machine Learning and AI, which they were on point with…