Someday, maybe someday, we'll have a calendar app smart enough to show a month view and NOT anchor it to the first day of the month.
Look at the calendar in the App Store screen shot. It's February 27th and 4/5 of the month view is showing days that have already passed. The week ahead is totally lost because the next week is in March.
UX-wise is there something disorienting, taboo, or just plain illegal about centering the current week in the middle or top 1/3 of the view? Because this just sucks. And it never changes. It happens in every calendar app that has a "month" view, and it's the most unusable the last week of the month (which is, oh, 25% of the time you use it).
Apple is just as guilty (looking at you, OSX Calendar).
People think in months. Financials and billing cycles are per-month. Some people get paid monthly. I know in some european countries, this is less the case (current week#/year was almost as important).
Personally I really like how Fantastical does it - portrait view is daily forecast (-1 to +5 days) listing up top with the list of events going down equally spaced, but if you rotate, it becomes the month view (which is also shown in the lockscreen widget).
The Google Calendar app assumes I have pictures for my events. Unless it happens to be a birthday evite, I don't. They're mostly business, and don't even have a location (other than dial-in and webex). Does it just fill in some image if none is there?
The app does its best to generate one picture based on the event data and if it can't it will just use a smaller header.
In my experience, it works fairly well for non work events. It is a great way to add some personalization magic very simply.
Not sure about the decision to vary size based on whether it has an image to show for the event.
To me, size is an indicator, and I'd prefer it the size of the event was based on importance (either directly or based on my contacts) or meeting length. By varying the size just to include an image, Google is promoting one event over another. A small but important event sandwiched between two larger events can be easily ignored.
Maybe this app is good for purely social uses, but doesn't seem to fit my use case well.
Speaking personally: Yes. Most people are used to calendars in such a way as the one on their desk is laid out. Changing that would please a minority of people and disorient everyone else.
I kind of like the compromise that's taken. Show a few days into the next month as necessary to complete the week, but grey those days out and jump into the next month if clicked.
The 4-week view is one of the options for the configurable custom view in the Settings panel. I think 4 weeks is the default, but if you've changed it anytime in the past you might see something different. In my most-used Google account I have it configured to two weeks.
Look at the calendar in the App Store screen shot. It's February 27th and 4/5 of the month view is showing days that have already passed. The week ahead is totally lost because the next week is in March.
UX-wise is there something disorienting, taboo, or just plain illegal about centering the current week in the middle or top 1/3 of the view? Because this just sucks. And it never changes. It happens in every calendar app that has a "month" view, and it's the most unusable the last week of the month (which is, oh, 25% of the time you use it).
Apple is just as guilty (looking at you, OSX Calendar).