iCal 4.0.4 Default alarm times are wacky - 338 hours before

YES!!!

John, thanks so much for the code. 🙂 It wiped out all the dumb-*** alarm options, except for the 1 hours before. I can now put in my own '30 minutes before' and that too comes up as an option in my list. I hope I can find this thread if it happens again.

Glad it helped.

If it helps there is a bookmark this link at the top right of this discussion under Actions. Then at least you should be able to find it if you log back into Discussions.

The best sign that they don't care is that in the feedback link, the most recent version of iCal I can complain about it 4.0.4, when I have 5.0.2

Also the default delete thing didn't work for me.

The options on that page have always seemed to be 12 months behind. I have reported that to Apple many times. Their response in the past has been that all feedback posted there is read.

Thanks again. I have bookmarked.

Thank you. This seems to have fixed my issue. It's astonishing that this fundamental issue has not bee resolved by Apple.

I have this same issue on a brand new iMac using iCal 5.2 and tried using that code in terminal but got the following message back:

There is no (PersistentMenu-lastUsedAlarms) default for the (com.apple.ical) domain.

Defaults have not been changed.

Doesn't make sense as I have do have other alarms set that I've had to do manually.

Bump

Yeah, it happened to me again just the other day AGAIN. Apple REALLY needs to do something about this!

--Brian

To girliegirl23:

What does Bump mean 😕

If you are having this same issue on a brand new computer, you have the option to call Apple for a fix, if they have one, since using the code didn't work for you. Are you sure you typed it in correctly? It seems to be working for most people, though I'm not sure if the code works for OSX Lion users. Most of the people here looking for the cure are using older OSXs, such as SL, I think.

"Bump" just means that he wants to keep the thread alive by posting something kind of meaningless to it.

This has been happening to me for years and it just happened again on a brand spamking new OSX Lion installation that I started totally clean on about a month ago. I know the solution already because I have had to do it several times before. I get out a PLIST editor and find the offending file and manually tweak it. That's merely annoying for me and basically impossible for most normal people. What needs to happen is for Apple to track down this bug and kill it. It has been around about as long as iCal has from what I can tell and it's long overdue for a fix (as are a lot of other things about the creation of calendar entries in iCal). People have been posting about this problem for years and so far Apple has been doing nothing. Grrr.

Wow, it happened to you again Brian? That is a 😢 shame.

I wonder if there are more users having this issue who haven't commented here or come here for the fix. One of my Mac friends is astonished at the number of problems I have compared to all the other Mac users he knows. I convinced him to switch to Macs about 3-4 years ago. It's funny because I've been a Mac user since the 80s, yet he knows far more about programming than I do. I often went to him when I had Mac problem, but he's moved back to London now, and travels worldwide for Cisco Systems and to his girlfriend's. So, I try not to turn to him for help much anymore. I've had at least 12 different Macs over the years, but this problem only began when I was using a MacBook Pro with SL, and then not until May or June of 2011. I gave my MBP to my son-in-law last Christmas, when his Dell laptop died forever. He then shared my daughter's MB laptop for almost a year, which wasn't very convenient for either of them. I got a used Air running Lion now, but I don't use the calendar on it yet. Mostly I just use it to watch videos, read the news, listen to music and read email. But when I begin traveling next month, I likely use the calendar on it too. I sure hope it doesn't give me problems. Anyway, my Mac Mini, which runs SL too, started having the problem last winter. I lived with it for awhile, until it got worse and worse. So glad the fix John gave us worked for me. I haven't seen a reoccurance since then.

There's actually another nearby problem in this area too which is that the algorithm by which presets are selected for the alert timeframes is, not to put too fine a point on it, ********. I can put a hundred meetings into my calendar with an alert 3 minutes before and iCal never adds that to the defaults, but if I even one time put in something that is a week before the event it decides that's my FAVORITE time to set alerts, and like the other weird times that work their way into the list it seems that iCal never ever wants to forget about them.

While I am griping about iCal, I should also mention something general about its design and features. I'm pretty sure that Steve Jobs used iCal and he probably used his usual "critical" detail-oriented mindset to make using iCal to look up appointments perfect. Alas, he probably had an assistant who actually put the appointments and things into the calendar and that whole process is annoying in a lot of ways. For example, why do new events always show up as "all day" by default? Once I create an event's name I then have to open it up again and click edit to specify the time, alerts, etc. Lots of unnecessary clicking and moving the hand from the mouse to the keyboard. What kind of craziness is that? This is supposed to be "productivity" software!

We have really not seen anything new in iCal other than I suppose iCloud support in some time so perhaps they don't have a big team working in that area. They should! It's a critical part of everyone's daily work pattern so even little annoyances become a big deal. Are you listening Apple??

When entering an ical entry, you can type for example "Marketing Call 2pm" and the time is automatically entered for you. You don't have to re-open it to edit the entry.

Oh, that's a nice (though not easily discoverable) feature. I'll definitely use that.

BUT, what about the fact that it uses the wrong default calendar and I need to set the alerts? I have to do at least one of those things on pretty much every event I put in the calendar after all.