Time Zones? What am I doing wrong?

Question

Time Zones? What am I doing wrong?

I have used other calendar solutions for many years, but since iPhone 3G, and mobileme, I decided to give iCal a shot... using multiple calendars, all synced etc...

So -- my issue: I have time zone support DISABLED - and I go about my business, entering meetings, events, some with start and stop, some not. I may list a week's worth of events ad meetings in CA for a business trip (I am in NYC)

Hold on here....

If I enter a bunch of meetings, OBVIOUSLY in LA local time, and with Time Zone support preference OFF, my expectation is THE LOCAL TIME entered in iCal will be the displayed time. REGARDLESS of the time zone displayed on my mac.

But no... when I get to the west coast and adjust my computer's time zone pref, ALL of my events are 3 hours earlier than schedules. I UNDERSTAND what is going on, but this is INSANE... am I really expected to set the LOCAL time zone of each event? Are the apple programmers such geeks? Usually not... there must be a better way???

What's the workaround?

Thanks.

Jeremy

macbook pro C2D 2.33 17" 3GB ram, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Aug 4, 2008 9:26 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 5, 2008 7:48 AM in response to Jeremy Roberts

Hey, Jeremy.

In my experience, you either have to buy totally into it or ignore it completely. Since iCal takes its time zone from the computer's Time and Date, you can't have the time zone support off and keep changing your computer's time zone. The easiest answer to your dilemma is to not change your time zone settings at all. Deselect the "Set Date and Time Automatically" in System Preferences and set your time zone to EST.

When you turn the support option on, you are able to give every event a time zone along with a start/stop time.

For example:
-Set your main iCal time zone (in the upper right) to your home timezone, which I assume is EST.
-Add an event, a 2-hour meeting, that will take place at 10am in Los Angeles. Under the time, set the time zone to PST.
-After you save, look at the event day in Day View, so you can see it by hours. You'll notice that the event is now listed to start at 1pm. iCal has shifted the event's time to match your current time zone.
-When you fly to California, you change the iCal time zone to PST and all of your calendars events will shift accordingly. The meeting, in this example, will now be shown in its proper 10am-12pm slot. Likewise, all EST events will now show up 3-hours earlier to compensate. A 7pm baseball game now starts at 4pm PST.

Its really important that you already have your computer set to EST when you turn this option on otherwise iCal will assume the wrong default time zone for all existing events. You will have to go thru your calendars and update any event that is supposed to have a PST start time with a PST time zone.

It is a little time consuming, which is why I have always locked my computer to my home time zone. But I think I might try this again since I have a number of new calendars I share with friends on the west coast.

That being said, I haven't really been traveling since I was migrated to MobileMe and don't know how my iPhone will react to time zone support. I don't believe the iPhone changes event times when it gets its time from AT&T but can't say for sure.

Hope this helps.

TH

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