 Calendar apps have a tough job. Everyone needs one, but everyone wants something different out of them. I want a concise view of the day ahead, but you might want a spaced out view of your week, and someone else might want a super dense view of their entire month. So what's an app to do? Well, some of them specialize, but most try to offer something for everyone. And the best of them do a great job presenting your schedule, no matter how you want to view it. There's no one knockout winner right now, but there is one that absolutely nails the basics. Whether you're on iPhone or Android, that's Google Calendar. I know, I know, it's a boring pick, but Google Calendar is quick, has a clean design, and has some small touches that really do elevate it above the rest. First, let's talk views. Pretty much every calendar app has an agenda view, day view, week view, and month view. But few of them are as easy to read and navigate between as Google Calendars. You're almost never lost in here, which is not something I can say for a lot of other calendar apps. The other thing I love is adding new events. Google Calendar makes it super easy by supporting natural language entry. So I can just write, lunch next Friday at two boots with Dan, and I'm pretty much good to go. You can also add reminders, which will stay put on your calendar until you clear them. And there's this neat goals feature that will automatically find time for regular tasks, like workouts and cleaning. Google automatically uses art and photos to identify your events. And once you have a location in there, you can just tap on it to jump over to maps and get directions. There are a few downsides though. Right now, Google Calendar doesn't have a widget on iOS, and most other calendar apps do. Google also doesn't have interesting calendars you can add, like sports schedules. It doesn't integrate with other apps, and it doesn't have weather alerts or time to leave alerts. Most other apps don't have those things either, but they are missed opportunities. Okay, but there are some other really solid options depending on what you're looking for. And on the iPhone, there are a lot of really interesting ones. There's time page, which is really gorgeous and maybe worth checking out. There's calendar five, which I think is fantastic, especially if you need help responding to a bunch of event invitations. One alternative that a lot of people love is Fantastical. Fantastical has excellent natural language support, maybe even better than Google's. And it has a customizable widget and icon badge, which is great for out of glance information. The reason I don't think Fantastical is for everyone is its love it or hate it interface. If you want density, here you go. It is a dense agenda view with a quick week or month bar that you can use to read the calendar. I absolutely can't read this, but if you want a lot of information at once, this is a great choice. The alternatives on Android are really different and often kind of strange, like this one. What is it doing? Why are there circles? What's happening? A lot of calendar apps on Android go for density, which I think is way too hard to read. And others come off as twists on Google Calendar to varying degrees of success. There is one that stands out though, and that's DigiCal. DigiCal stands out in a few different ways. First, it has a ton of view options, so you can get a split agenda and month view, a full on month view, even a full year view. There's also built in weather information up to two weeks out. And for a price, you can subscribe to interesting calendars. So sports schedules, TV schedules, religious holidays and other things like that. I also love that you can just tap on an event to get a quick preview of it. It's really easy to read. But as a whole, I find DigiCal a little bit harder to navigate than Google Calendar. It also doesn't have natural language support for inputting events. And you're going to want to pay $5 to remove all of the built in ads. That's not a lot of money, but it's not quite adding enough to sell me on the whole package. The truth is, there just isn't a lot of innovation in calendar apps these days. There are a few core features and most apps do them pretty well. So until there's an app out there that does something much better than the basics, I'm going to stick with the one that does the basics the best. iPhone or Android, that's Google Calendar. Look at those Tootsie Rolls that have been in there. Do Tootsie Rolls age? Doundrops have a tough job. Are you kidding me? No.