When you make productivity apps for a living, you should be testing those apps in every day use, and what better way than to plan the building of a new app with itself. I love the idea of that.

I did it once before with Extreme Agenda, by setting up a Getting Things Done like reminder list for Extreme Agenda 5.0 in the early builds of EA5, which I covered in another blog post. This same system could be done in Ulti-Planner even better now, our reminder lists have grown to be crazy powerful.

But I wanted to take advantage of the new Project views inside the app and see just how great that would work on the desktop. Yes, Kanban also lends itself to a GTD like idea, with items draggable between columns to easily change status.

We had started with Ulti-Planner 2.0 and had some basic ideas what the big pieces would be. The Mac version was not a part of that, and was scheduled more for this summer. But on a whim after reading some Tweet and checking out a competitor’s pretty bad Mac app that they push heavily, I decided to compile the app in Catalyst and see how close ours was. The iPad app did lend itself to a pretty nice start in this regard.

I had always knew I wanted to not just release an iPad copy, the quality needed to be there, which is why it hasn’t materialized until now. But after seeing where Apple has catalyst now(a system to re-use iOS code for Mac), I knew I could get it to where I’d be comfortable in a short period of time.

So Mac was added to the 2.0 plan.

I setup a UP project with a custom ‘status’ system that is a hybrid I often use, with an ‘Inbox’ for new tasks, a ‘Next’ up status for things on deck, an ‘Active’ status that I’m actively working on now, and then a ‘Maybe’ section for stuff if I have time. I also have a ‘Push’ section for ideas that have to wait for another version, or feature creep wins, which it did for a few years for the 1.0 of Ulti-Planner 😅. And then if you scroll over the final column is ‘Completed’. You like that one getting very full.

I tend to like the ‘Cards’ for this view, as it mimics online project management boards I have used on other projects. Setting the priority of each task allows it to stay sorted with the most important on top. Clicking on items shows it’s card view with easy access to notes or embedded lists attached to each reminder.

Having the real estate of the desktop with the dragging of cards and the quick right click for context menus makes using this a breeze, I stayed extremely focused and got the app to Beta in a very quick turnaround. Using it frequently, it made me see where a few shortcuts could be added to make the Mac experience even more smooth.

And then our projects can also keep track of events associated with the project. To stay on task and get 2.0 out the door before a major vacation, I had some milestone events saved that show up in the main screen of my project, as well as right on the calendar.

Marketing plans of Ulti-Planner 2.0 is covered in its own project, and is heavily dated reminder orientated, to hit those milestones right from my daily calendar checkins and complete them.

And just like that the big new version of our popular calendar app has been planned out and completed, using itself!

Hopefully having a Project system built right into your calendar can help you be more productive too. Whether it be Mac, iPad, or iPhone, it helps get things done.

Your calendar evolved.

So what is your idea of the ultimate calendar app? Obviously there is some personal preference and liking the way some features are handled in different ways, but we wanted to show you just what you are getting from each of the apps. Obviously they are both great, but maybe this will help you decide which app is more fantastic?

Here is a breakdown of what we see as benefits of each:

Mac Version

Ulti-Planner 2.0 features the all new Mac version of the app. Designed around the “Mac Hub” sidebar to resemble the common design paradigm of Mac desktop, it allows the quick view of today’s weather, day bar, and current month, and has quick access to all of the screens available in UP. The quick entry system of event creation is also integrated directly into this screen for always there availability.

The Mac version works great with our existing drag-n-drop interfaces and we have added built in zoom choices in the toolbars. So the Kanban project board can show multiple columns in multiple sizes with dragging for status planning, and the timeline view can easily be switched between 1 day, 3 day and 7 day usage for easy rescheduling options.

Goals and Habit Tracking

We have added a complete Goal/Habit Tracking system into the app as another module for premium subscribers. Conceived as a type of event, users will easily be able to track their daily goals right in their calendar, and do thing like filter them and interact with them to keep track of their stats on how well they are doing to keep those streaks going.

Focus Sessions

 We have added Focus Sessions into the app with both timer based and Pomodoro based sessions available to help the user stay focused on a particular task right from their calendar. When completed the app can record the session as an event to keep track of all your weekly sessions.

Design Refresh

 The app is already one of the most customizable on the App Store with a ton of theme choices and calendar settings to allow you to see what you want to see the way you want to see it.

We have now gone over the app with a fine tooth comb to clean up some clutter and adopt a couple of new things like a number based “today button” and standardized view menu system. We’ve also added the option to use a tab bar based approach in the entire iPhone app, and this has become the standard interface on iPad. 

And we were inspired by the new Apple Sports app to offer some very cool new Gradient based color choices for the background on iPad and iPhone. 

Other Features

We didn’t stop there. Other features our users will appreciate are the new reminder tag filtering built into reminder lists, the travel time display for events on the map card, tag coloring, birthday notifications, and we’ve completely reworked calendar handling with easy editing and icon assignments.  

The Ultimate in Organization. Your Calendar Evolved.

Well we made it to one full year of Ulti-Planner. And we couldn’t be more proud with just how much it has advanced in just one year. Contacts, Projects, Notifications, Widgets, the new Modern UI…

We really feel like as far as iOS goes, we are hovering at the top of the “Best iPhone Calendar App” pile.

And we aren’t resting. We have big plans for a Mac version this year that will be included in the same subscription. And work is already underway on VERSION 2.0 of the app, which has some very big new pieces already designed out. We can’t wait.

So help us spread the word however you can, we just need more eyeballs finding the app and passionate users continuing to help us evolve. The sky is the limit.

And we hope you have a productive 2024!

In the months leading up to the release of Ulti-Planner, I’ve been studying other apps and the value proposition of subscriptions and upselling in apps in general.

I have always been quite conservative in this area, but realize the market has gotten to a point where you need to get back to charging what’s “fair” and it’s necessary to do some kinds of pressure on the customers to help support the project.

Pricing

For Ulti-Planner, we really believe we have what is basically the top of the contenders for iOS calendar planner apps. I can make a great argument it is better than Fantastical, Readdle, Informant, WeekCal, and any of several other similar competitors.

So what did we decide to do for pricing?

We still went with giving you what we think is the “fair” price. We are about half what they try to charge for what are essentially very similarly featured apps.

Let’s compare yearly subscription prices:

Ulti-Planner is $12.49/yr US.

Compare our price to Readdle at $19.99/yr, WeekCal at $19.99/yr(unless you want weather too), Informant is $25.99/yr, and finally Fantastical, which is fantastically priced at $57/yr. Now we get that Fantastical and others might get you the Mac version as well(and some charge more), which we plan to offer a Mac app too, but for Fantastical that’s $45/year more for that honor. If you love it it might be worth it. But we are looking at iOS here.

And yes, there are a few features here or there that one app might have that is actually worth it for very specific users, we have some of those too. But then most of those features in other apps require you to have yet another user account, this time with your calendar app provider? And then data security and other questions come into play.

But now start adding in our other big features. We have contacts, which is the basis for other subscription apps. We have weather, which we know feature wise doesn’t quite reach the level of the big subscription weather apps, but it is great now for your quick forecast or a peak at your current weather. It’s pretty good. And we have projects, which similar apps to just our project module can run $29.99/yr or more.

In us setting this price, will some people wonder if the perceived value is greater for the more expensive app, just because they are willing to charge more. Yes, probably. But is it true when you actually take the time to compare. Not even close.

Starting Over

We realize it is probably somewhat a mistake to have started over to try to create what is essentially a new brand. The AppStore algorithm’s may have worked a lot more favorably with our established apps with tens or hundreds of thousands of downloads and sales. But our apps had fallen down the ASO AppStore hole after losing track of just what Apple deemed important for the moment. Being customer focused, we didn’t shove rating requests down your throats for years, and kept prices fairly consistent as to not rock the boat.

But the ratings thing has turned out to have hurt us dramatically in how apps are ranked now. With us playing the “fair” game of not buying reviews, while so many others have bought them buy the thousands with no repercussions from Apple, it seems we were wrong. So our older apps didn’t have the rating counts that competes with the people who weren’t as worried about the customer’s user experience all these years or are willing to break the rules.

I know it’s the norm, we’ve begrudgingly adapted to ask for them more. So please hit that five star when asked…

Upselling in the app

Again we approached this from a customer experience point of view. We tried to make the basic version of Ulti-Planner very usable without much friction, to really give a quality product that people can use all the time regardless of subscription status. We point out premium exists right away in onboarding, and then let you use the basic version without too many interuptions.

We do have the one button in the top toolbar to have a very out of your way, yet front and center reminder that there is more to the app. Other than that there are very few places that you will hit the paywall, with most being in Settings, when you start to explore and become that more advanced user. Most of our features also display a diamond to designate what is in “Premium” to make it is as transparent as possible. And we think we struck a good balance of value in what is and isn’t included.

Now contrast that to the heavy handed experiences you get from some of the more expensive competition.

I couldn’t believe the maze of funneling splash screens that appear on Calendars. There were 4 ads or mailing list requests before you can even see your calendar. And then you are presented with paywalls for features that appear to be there in the main app, until you tap on them to find out differently. Along with that you are presented with ads for their Mac version several times.

Informant also shows you all the features, so they are front in center, but shows you they’re locked, so in the first few minutes of that download you will likely see their carousel upsell screen several times. Essentially there are 5 buttons on the main screen that all only function to show the upsell.

Week Calendar you are presented with their upsell right away, seemingly with the X to close initially hidden. And then you get a Weather Widget ad that basically leads you right to their same upsell. This won’t be the last you will see of ads for the weather additions. And for only $10-20/yr extra over their Pro version. Yeah, weather is at least included in Premium in every other app its offered in. And there are way better full featured weather apps that are much less than that price…

Fantastical is a bit more subtle. With them you find out that they want you to make an account first, and don’t share easily the high pricing until you are in. I assume they also are trying to avoid the Apple Tax with how they work and requiring an account. So why does Apple so heavily favor them?

The Algorithm

So yeah, climbing back up the AppStore is going to be a tough ride, with what appears to be a bigger need to rely on Ads, at least initially. And being the “fair” guy makes it even tougher. But we hope we can get some traction and get to where the AppStore starts feeding us some love. It’s a tough task, but we decided to swim up stream one more time…

So you are looking for a replacement to Apple’s own calendar app on your iPhone. Want to see and update your schedule quickly with more information available in more straightforward ways. Or are you looking for more powerful features that may help you keep organized in all new ways?

Here’s a biased look at our new app from someone that has been in and studied this market for over 12 years. A lot of what gets hyped out there has been around for a while, and might not have as many features or be as solid as you might think. And might not be worth the cost.

Ulti-Planner Calendar

New for 2023, Ulti-Planner is a culmination of over 5 years and 1200 new development hours to produce what we think is the new standard in iOS scheduling. Based on our well established calendar code that has powered our other very popular and best selling calendar apps, Extreme Agenda and The Grid, this new app has been completely redone from the ground up to keep the core, but clean up everything to be more intuitive, fast, lightweight and reliable. This new codebase allows us to add great new features and iterate much faster, as should be evident by our adding so much including Contacts only 2 months after initial release.

App Customization

Ulti-Planner prides itself on being one of the most customizable calendars out there. We want you to feel at home with the look so have both light and dark themes in a variety of colors, or you can change to any of a bunch of solid background colors to change the look entirely. We even help you change some of the options in a handy onboarding screen when you first run the app.

Month Display Customization

The month view also can be displayed in a large variety of formats. Are you an icon person? Set your events or calendars to be represented by an icon and show those on the calendar with premium. How about seeing text? We have 3 different formats for that in 4 text sizes. Are Birthdays Important? We can show you pictures of your closest friends and family. Something simpler? How about time bars or just colored dots.

This month view is the workhorse of the application, and is FREE to use by everyone. And you can pull up or down on it to see your month in full screen, or a week strip with room for much more daily information.

Custom Filters

And what’s even more cool is you can set up custom filters to instantly show just specific information in any of the different view types mentioned above. Want icons for your kid’s calendar, but a time bar and text for your 3 work calendars? No problem.

The Staples of a Modern Calendar

And thats just for starters. Once you upgrade to Premium you can add staples of the modern calendar like 3 more powerful calendars views, Natural Language event creation, a full Reminders screen and integrated reminders in your calendar, a full featured Contacts screen, #hashtags for icons and filtering, and even weather.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We have so many more customizations and features baked in that you will feel right at home, even with the basic version, which was designed to be fully usable without nagging you to upgrade. The card based UI, global search, templates, drag-n-drop, widgets, meeting support, and handy event and reminder sub-lists are just some of the other features you will find and fall in love with right away.

But don’t take our word for it. Please give it a try, and see if it has what it takes to become your new goto calendar .

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1476479361

Thank you.

We have been running a fun daily “Tip of the day” feature on our Twitter account for @ultiplanner, and we thought it would be good idea to bring them over here as well for easy access. Make sure you check out both places as more will be added.

Tip of the day: Slide up on the main month calendar to turn it into a week strip view, slide down to make the month full screen.

Tip of the day: Find the “custom filter” button at the end of the tab list of filters (shown with main filter button in bottom toolbar). Now create a powerful filter to easily access another set of data, filtered by tags, calendars, participants and with its own look.

Tip of the day: Try out the embedded list feature to quickly add and update lists in your schedule items. On the card view of an event or reminder hit the “List” button to make shopping, todo, or other checklists that will get saved right in the notes.

Tip of the day: Use an app like @launchcenterpro with the “ultiplanner:” app url to quickly open our app. “ultiplanner://newevent” and “ultiplanner://newreminder” will try to jump to item creation. We’d love requests for what else you’d like added!

Tip of the day: Cut-Copy-Paste functionality is built right in. Sliding left (or holding) will expose menus with “more” that have copy and move choices for that item. Select it and the item will be remembered, and then tap-n-hold on headers or month days to expose “paste”.

Tip of the day: If you hold on the app icon when outside the app, it has shortcuts to add an event or a reminder built in to the menu that pops up.

Tip of the day: On the month and week and timeline views, if you tap and hold on an event or reminder you can drag it to another day to move it. Drag-n-Drop!!!

Tip of the day: Hashtags can be added to any event or reminder from the Card View, and will be stored in the notes of that item. The interface remembers already used tags for quick re-entry. You can then assign icons to hashtags in Settings, and use them in custom filters!

Tip of the day: To delete your completed reminders, in a list or view hit the edit button , and it will appear at bottom of the screen.

Tip of the day: You can use the jump (arrow in box) button to jump to a new date on the view. Holding “Today” will have same effect, especially on month view where room is limited.

Tip of the day: Tap-n-hold is powerful in a lot of places. Month days, Agenda List headers and items, Block Week headers, Timeline Day time slots all will show you helpful popup menus.

Tip of the day: When using the quick entry screen, if you start typing something that matches a saved template, a type ahead list will show allowing you to select it.

Tip of the day: You can click on the weather icon in upper right of days to see more weather information.

Tip of the day: It is easy to convert an event to a reminder and vice versa, you can pull up on a card view to expose more options and the button in lower right will do this. It also is available in some sub menus of each type.

Tip of the day: Keywords are added under ‘Icons’ in Settings with the +. They can be used to assign an Icon to any item who’s title contains that keyword. They can then be further used in custom filters the same as how a #hashtag works.

Tip of the day: You can tap-n-hold on a custom filter in the filter bar to edit it.

Tip of the day: Create an event or reminder template from an existing item(create one temporarily?). Then choose ‘Save as Template’ from the More menu of the item. Main fields will be remembered. And add ** to the title to be prompted to fill in the blank when using it from +.

So what features can not be ignored in the all new Ulti-Planner. Well, where do I start.

Note that some of these advanced features may only be available in the Premium version. So give that free trial a try to give all this power a test drive.

Card Interface

By now we’ve all gotten used to the awesome interfaces built around cards that pop up from the bottom to show you the information you need quickly and clearly. Well, we have brought this to the calendar as well. A card will pop up to show you information on your item, with popular options of what you can do with them, including tying an icon directly to that event. If you swipe the card up further more information and options will be shown including a way to get to Apple’s details.

Hashtags

Everybody is familiar with the advantages of having #hashtags available. Well we have built an engine that can detect and add hashtags to the notes fields of your events and reminders. You can then use them to do advanced filtering, sorting, and adding of Icons.

And specialty keywords can also be added in Settings that work much in the same way. Icons can be assigned and they can be used for filtering later. So if you have a bunch of generated events in your calendar that all happen to have one keyword( like ‘scrum’ or ‘volleyball’), you can setup a filter in order to only view these items.

Custom Filters

Don’t miss this amazing feature. On every calendar view is a filter button that you can toggle on and off. By default it will show all of the individual calendars you are using, as well as a special Birthday filter. But the real power of this comes in if you scroll the filter tabs to the end to find where you can add custom filters.

A custom filter allows you to basically create a specific view of your calendar, with filters by calendars, lists, hashtags and keywords, and participants. A calendar type can be specified for this filter, so if you normally like calendar text, but for this you would rather see an Icon and Time Bar view, you can do that. This is a game changer for how you use your calendar.

The filter toggling has been specifically designed so it will remember the last filter you have selected. So if you usually switch between two sets of information, the toggle will jump right into your regular or custom filter with one press.

Reminders

We have spent a bunch of time making Reminders a lot more flexible so they can be organized in a lot of ways, including custom views, and can continue to be molded into the way you want to use them, whether it be setting up a custom system like GTD or your own.

Embedded Lists

Embedded lists have been brought over from Extreme Agenda to allow you to essentially make any event or reminder into a list that is managed more simply and noted in the notes of your item. Try it out using the button in the card view and see just how powerful adding a todo or shopping list to an event can really be.

Widgets

A good calendar app needs to be able to show your data at a glance with all the right information. So we decided that we needed to ship Ulti-Planner with some really nice clean widgets that can show you your data with icons and colors just like you’d see in the app. It even uses the theming of the app for title coloring.

Accessibility

The new code in Ulti-Planner meant I was handling the UI much better, and allowed me to start to give a much better experience with accessibility features. So it allows for better voiceover and touch options, and we hope to continue to improve on this as we go along.

Welcome

These are just some of the advancements we have made in Ulti-Planner. If you haven’t been using our innovative products in the past, we hope you are in for a few surprises and increased productivity. If you have you should expect to find a great set of powerful features as you’d expect, and know we will continue to add more power and flexibility.

We’d like to introduce you to Ulti-Planner, our new flagship product at Birdsoft. It is the end result of over 5 years of work and over 1200 hours of new development. Which doesn’t include the thousands more hours that have gone into our legacy calendar and productivity apps that are at its foundation.

Not Extreme Agenda 10.0, yet.

What is the idea behind it? Well, it obviously has its roots in our expertise in productivity apps, and more specifically Extreme Agenda. Let’s call it an extension of that. But Extreme Agenda for iOS was started in 2009, so a lot of that App is based on ideas and code that are over 13 years old (which in turn was based on the Windows Mobile version that was even older). iOS has grown as a platform and I’ve grown as a developer since the early days. So I had to decide if I wanted to keep painfully band-aiding that legacy code forever, or do a clean break and rebuild almost completely from scratch to have more modern, clean, and flexible code that will make it enjoyable again to expand on and be much more future-proof.

But if I was going to do this, I wanted to have creative freedom to really make it in a new way, and just starting it as “Extreme Agenda 10.0” still handcuffed me in several ways to use or deal with some of the issues that I wanted to get away from. Too much of that code would have had to come along. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the good parts did, but I wanted them only if they made sense. And even most of those good parts got rewritten.

I admit, I started down the road to rewrite the existing EA code first, it just didn’t feel right…

And if I really want to get back to this being my main thing I had to make it something I really looked forward to jumping into all the time and more importantly to be viable in a business sense. Extreme Agenda has baggage in that Apple almost forces a new app listing to do a “paid upgrade”. Or switching an app that has only even been a paid app at a premium price to a free app with purchases/subscriptions just adds a whole can of worms. Compounding that issue is the secondary versions of the app that upgrade to the full version, like Extreme Week, as they only add to the confusion.

Business

To make a productivity app viable as a business, I have to try to have my premium products go after a premium market. With my Grid calendar app, I put out a lightweight(for the time) calendar app with a lot of great features and a cool design. I have always been proud that so many thousands of people thought that was enough, they just wanted a cool lightweight calendar with calendar text. So Ulti-Planner will in a way replace that. The basic version feels like a souped up version of that app. But then that equation didn’t translate into sales even at a low upgrade price so the Grid’s development never really paid for itself. So I need to convert and/or reestablish a great base like that, and have a better value proposition and better ways to express that value. I have to find ways to have more of the people that use and love my products for years help support further development. I need to replace some of the simple of Grid, and at the same time all of the power of Extreme Agenda, in one package.

The Code, so good…

The codebase of this app is something I’m very proud of. It actually started as a suite of apps that are in one codebase, so a Contacts and List app are right there needing to be finished up and incorporated too. Uniformity in design and modularity in execution.

You’ll also notice that these apps are super lightweight and super fast. The goal was to build it to stay under 10mb as an app, and open instantly. Quick install and quick launch. And they are built to use a lot of the same UX/UI choices of the apps that you use from Apple all the time, but with a touch of something extra. So they should be super fast, super intuitive, super sexy, and ultimately super powerful once you continue to discover what’s under the hood in the advanced features.

This code has been in development for over 5 years, so has been thoroughly vetted in that time. I have used it as a daily driver for over 4 years now, and have had it in beta for much longer than would normally happen. So the app is very solid from release. And in that time I’ve allowed the scope to run away from me. The calendar and reminders basically have feature parity with Extrema Agenda and then it adds so many more new features that the new code affords. It is a mature product from the get go.

And yes, one of the reasons I ultimately decided on this route is so that eventually this Engine can be used to build that elusive Extreme Agenda 10. Having it all in one project meant that right away I built an internal target that is a tab based app, with each of the Apps in a tab. Obviously that alone won’t get me to what I want to do with EA10, but it’s a beautiful foundation to build on. I’ll have to figure out those other questions about how to handle EA10 when I get there. Right now grinding Ulti-Planner is the goal.

Competition

We watch the competition, and we wouldn’t claim that this is a “best-in-class” app without knowing what’s out there. IT IS BEST-In-CLASS! We have created a blend of the right features in the right package that you can stack up with any of the established leaders in each product category, and come out feeling ahead. And our price point for the planner still generally falls under the price these other premium products are trying to get for one app. Usually “way” under them.

We encourage you to see for yourself.

History

So Ulti-Planner was my original Windows Mobile planner way back starting in about 2004. So it pre-dates the widely successful Extreme Agenda, and happened to have a lot of the same DNA, as all my apps do as they evolve. It featured multiple calendar views and tasks along with tons of customizations, a recipe we haven’t given up on.

We have been doing mobile calendars/organizers for 20 years!! So hopefully we can demonstrate just how far we’ve come in the game…

Thank You

So there is the idea behind this overly ambitious project. I wanted to get back to the roots of what our passion is at Birdsoft. And I feel like the market is finally to the point where it can recognize and support premium level apps. I’d like to thank all of the customers that have supported Birdsoft over the years, and welcome any new users that want to see just what we are about…

Any feedback is always welcome.

Ulti-Planner.

Your calendar evolved.

Well, we finally got out one of our two apps that we have had in the works for a long time. This one was hard to get the last bits in place, because when we were testing it, we were also golfing, and well… we like golfing.

The quick story is, I wrote the “big sister” of QuickNine back in the early 2000s on Windows Mobile. FairwayWatch had a lot of the same bells and whistles like quick score entry, stat tracking, GPS range finder, etc… that QuickNine now has. You’ll see some of the natural inheritance that came from the original UI…

Well, when the pandemic hit I, like thousands of others, got back into golf pretty heavily to stay in shape, and get outside, and easily social distance. So I went to the AppStore to look for an app that could help me keep track of my scoring and progression and hopefully do some GPS distancing and planning as well. But everything I looked at was either very quickly thrown together by a hobbyist with very few features, or was very well backed but either had a clunky confusing interface or required an online account and massive data collection in order to use it. Or Both. And they had price tags in the $30-100/year range to top it all off.

So I did what I do, and wrote an app.

I think you will see that for a 1.0 version, I have it pretty dialed in with most of the features you will need. Having tons of experience in this space before and like 15 years experience in the power that iOS has, I was able to create something that I’m really proud of, and that can be the basis for a bunch of other cooler stuff in the future. Yeah, we get a Watch version done right is probably really needed. Better Stats, shot tracking, club selection; I think these are all cool things, but are also things that need to be done right or they really get in the way of just letting you golf!!

So give the app a try and see what you think. The 14 Day free trial let’s you do all the Rangefinder and mapping as well as a bunch of advanced scoring, so try it out completely and let us know what you would like to see. Or use the Scorecard for FREE if that’s all you need.

http://qnineapp.bsft.co