iCal and Time Zones

We didn't realize this, but there is a serious major gigantic problem with iCal's handling of time zones. You can try this out yourself on your own computer.

There are dozens of people complaining about this on the Apple Discussion Forums and on the Internet, and we didn't even realize it was a problem until we start traveling through multiple time zones ourselves. Regardless of whether or not you turn on time zone support in iCal, ALL THE APPOINTMENTS on your iCal calendar WILL SHIFT TIMES based on what time zone you're currently in (based on the date & time system preference that you set).

NOBODY in the world wants this to happen... nobody wants their calendar appointments to SHIFT ON THEIR CALENDAR! If you book a lunch appointment in New York City next week for 12 noon, you ALWAYS want this appointment to show up as 12 noon on your calendar -- NOT AN "ADJUSTED TIME" based on where you are located now.

For example, if you have a lunch appointment next week at 12pm in New York City, but you are currently in San Francisco when you set the appointment, the appointment will SHIFT THE TIME OF THE APPOINTMENT TO 3pm WHEN YOU ARE IN NEW YORK CITY (b/c you've adjusted your date/time system preference to New York). It gets even WORSE if you turn ON time zone support and start choosing a particular time zone in iCal's appointment details. If you do that, the lunch appointment looks like it's taking place IN THE MORNING at 9am while you're physically working on your computer in San Francisco, and then THE APPOINTMENT SHIFTS to the APPROPRIATE TIME when you're physically in New York City. If you look at your appointments for Saturday, you want to see your 12 noon lunch listed, not a 9am lunch listed.

This is truly insane. No other calendar program on the entire market, including Google's much superior calendar, acts like this. When you're in San Francisco and you look at your calendar for Saturday, you don't want to see TIME-ADJUSTED APPOINTMENTS FOR WHERE YOU ARE CURRENTLY PHYSICALLY SITTING. The lunch isn't taking place at 9am in New York City, it's taking place at 12pm in New York City. You want to see the APPROPRIATE TIME OF THE EVENT, which is 12 noon. You don't want to see 9am, just because you happen to be in San Francisco at the current time.

The *ONLY SOLUTION* for this is to turn on time zone support and then set each & every event to a "FLOATING EVENT", but there is ABSOLUTELY NO way in iCal to set "FLOATING EVENT" as the DEFAULT for ALL future appointments, and there's no way to go back and change all previous appointments to floating events. So you have to MANUALLY go through thousands of previous appointments and change EACH & EVERY ONE OF THEM to a floating event... and remember to take extra time out of your day to change all future events to floating events. But it gets even worse -- if you switch your events to floating events, they do NOT show up in the proper time on the MobileMe's website -- they still show up based on the time of the time zone in which you created the events.

The only other solution for this, which is much less desirable, is to go into your date & time system preference and UNCHECK THE OPTION to "set date & time automatically", choose ONE PERMANENT TIME ZONE FOR YOURSELF THAT WILL **NEVER CHANGE** INTO THE FUTURE, and MANUALLY adjust your clock in the date/time system preference whenever you travel across time zones. Note that this solution requires you to choose ONE PERMANENT TIME ZONE FOR YOURSELF FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, and you must MANUALLY change the clock in the date & time system preference FOREVER.

Hardly a solution.

Apple needs to fix this IMMEDIATELY so that ALL events are floating events ALL the time by default! Or at least give users the option to CHOOSE this as the default. Every other calendar program on the market defaults to FLOATING EVENTS. But not iCal. This is truly crazy beyond belief.

This is one really annoying bug -- and ONLY iCal has this problem.

Thanks,
Scott