Canion dot Blog

Recently I came across an annoying calendaring problem. I have a number of domain names, with associated email aliases. These all reconcile via my Fastmail account.

I noticed the other day that calendar invitations created in my calendar app of choice, BusyCal, were defaulting to being sent from one of my non-default email addresses.

There was no obvious setting for this in BusyCal and it was an issue that I hadn’t noticed at all over previous years so I assumed there was some problem at the server end. I checked Fastmail but its calendar settings were configured to send calendar events from my primary and preferred domain. Nevertheless, I fired a support ticket to Fastmail. Over the next few days (the one ding on Fastmail is slow support turnarounds) they verified my settings were correct. They inspected the logs generated by BusyCal created events, and tested things from their end. After all of this, they confirmed the problem was coming from BusyCal.

Off I went to BusyMac support. Their fast support turnaround confirmed that it was BusyCal causing the problem, and that the software had no ability to choose which email to send from - it took the first in the arbitrary list of available email addresses.

It didn’t end there, however. Soon after, I received an email saying that they had looked at the issue - agreed it wasn’t ideal, and built a new beta build that offered up an option to choose the originating email address for new events. They provided me a download link to this new beta.

It works perfectly. Now, BusyCal will create new event invitations from my preferred domain.

What really works, though, is tech support. These are the unsung heroes of software. Helping mere users like me get more out of their products. This is another reason why I am happy to pay for software. These people are doing real work, and like the rest of us, they deserve to get paid for what they do.

I’ve been a subscriber to Setapp since it launched. In fact, I participated in a pre-launch user interview to help the MacPaw team develop the offering.

I’ve been a happy customer, and I believe I may be grandfathered into an older plan because I am permitted two seats. This has traditionally been for two Macs, but with Setapp now commencing a formalised iOS offering, I suppose this now makes more sense as a Mac + iPad combination. It’s a shame that the second license doesn’t include unlimited iOS devices, but that’s their business decision to make.

Setapp is a subscription service, and good financial management suggests that one should occasionally audit subscriptions to ensure a good deal is still being attained.

To that end I have completed a quick audit of my Setapp usage.

It pretty clearly indicates that I’m still getting what I would consider reasonable value. Of course, the longer one subscribes, the more you trend towards ‘should have bought it’. But if the major applications release a major paid upgrade, then once again the subscription calculation improves.

All up, I will keep Setapp for another year. And start putting money away for the next years subscription straight away using a YNAB category!