A few of you sounded interested in where my iCloud calendar experiment might be headed, so I thought I would keep you posted.

The original purpose

I’ve been a Google Calendar user for years. My only complaint with Google Calendar is that it is, like all Google services, tied to an email address. When someone sends a meeting invitation to an address other than the one attached to my Google Calendar, accepting the request on an iOS device is difficult to impossible.

I wanted to see if iCloud would serve as a better standalone calendar solution.

Meeting request/acceptance

The first 24 hours with iCloud resulted in mostly negative progress from where I was with Google Calendar. iCloud didn’t seem to want to send any email notification when I invited others to a meeting.

Later, it started working. I think the problem had more to do with iCloud email glitches, which were being reported by others.

It’s been working fine the last few days.

My iCloud calendar email address

Once iCloud started sending email notifications for new meetings, I couldn’t figure out how to control the email address it was using. (Naturally, it was using an email address I didn’t want it to use.)

After much fiddling, mouth holding, and séance saying, I figured out that iCloud was using the email address associated with my Apple ID. This seemed odd since iCloud allows you to specify a different email address in iOS settings.

But sure enough, once I changed my Apple ID email address, iCloud began using that when generating meeting requests.

It’s worth noting that changing my Apple ID, of course, triggered all kinds of additional downstream taps because it meant I needed to sign out/in on all my Apple devices.

iSpammed. Much.

I saved the worst for last.

As I mentioned before, I imported my entire Google Calendar, with all its history, into iCal. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Until last Thursday night… when iCloud decided to re-send meeting acceptance emails to every single person on every meeting I’ve had in the last three years. I’m not the only one.

And I’m not just talking about meetings I organized. It emailed every bloody email address it found on every appointment. Hundreds of emails. Hundreds.

I’m still getting phone calls and “This is weird” replies from people wondering why I’m accepting meetings from 2008.

I have no idea why iCloud did this, but I'm hoping it was a one-time event.

It’s also a reminder why email is such a God-awful place for private information. It’s unnerving how little control you have when an email server goes rogue.

From here

iCloud sync is very fast and so far very reliable. It also feels cleaner not having to sync contacts and calendar appointments with Google on my Mac. In other words iCloud is working well aside from the aforementioned snafus.

At the risk of sounding like an iCloud apologist, I’m going to stick with iCloud for now and hope I’m past the turbulence. The fasten seat belt sign is still on, though.