ThinkSecret says that Apple is getting ready to upgrade OS X Server with some sort of improved mail and calendar solution, probably Hula. That’s nice and all, but I REALLY want them to upgrade iCal to support some publicly-available calendar server. The ability to publish read-only calendars was nice in 2002 when it was first added, but it’s been three years, and I’m still waiting for the ability to share read/write calendars with other family members. I’m aware that I could probably do this with .Mac, but I’m not willing to pay $100/year just so I can edit events on my wife’s calendar a couple times per week.

Having said that, Hula looks pretty nice. Even without iCal syncing support, I’ll probably consider it when it’s time to upgrade my mail server software again; fortunately that’s probably at least a year away still. If iCal gets CalDAV support before then, then I might have to be a bit more aggressive with the timeframe. Either that or look for other CalDAV servers.