iCal 4.0.4 Default alarm times are wacky - 338 hours before

Thanks, John. This worked for me.

For anybody having this problem: Are you only seeing this with *Google calendars* in iCal? It seems to me that what appears to be happening -- for Google calendars -- is that iCal thinks "all-day" events need to get alerts *the previoius day* -- and not the default number of minutes set for the alerts in the Google Calendar settings.

So -- in iCal -- if I create an event in *week view* for my Google calendar -- I get the alerts set to 15 minutes (what I have for my Google Calendar settings.) This is expected.

if I create an event in *month view* -- the alert is always set to 4:45 p.m. the *day before the event*.

My Google Calendar appears to think my work-day is 9-5 (even though my "working hours" setting is disabled.)

So, iCal (and Calendar in iOS) is somehow translating an alert to an all-day event to be near the end of the previous days "working hours".

So, I'm wondering if this is an incorrect (IMO) intentional design?

I've figured out that the issue is with Google Calendar users as well. But I've been using Google Calendar and Mac for 5 years now and am only finding this issue with OSX 10. For instance my macbook which is still on Snow Leopard does not have this issue.

Secondly, even if you try to CHANGE The 1390 min reminder, its automatically reverted back right before your eyes within seconds.

Hey John - I've applied your fix 3-4 times now. When I put in a test item and then pop it open to see what is shows for the alerts, it will momentarily show 15 minutes, but will then suddenly switch to something like 1030 minutes instead? Do you have any thoughts on this?

I never had this problem until fairly recently.

I have had this problem for years. Periodically some crazy number appears and I go wrench it out with a plist editor. It's really annoying but Apple doesn't seem to be too interested in doing anything about it.

The crazy number is what it is -- all day events are giving you a reminder "X" minutes before the "end of the day" of the previous day.

So, if you normally have alerts set for "15 minutes" -- and your work day ends at 5:00, if you create an all day event tomorrow, you'll get the alert at 5:00 minus 15 minutes.

File a bug on this if you don't like the behavior -- I think Android calendar devices give you an alert at 15 minutes before midnight for those events. I don't know which is necessarily the better behavior, but I can see both points of view.

THe problem really has nothing to do with the "What if there is an alert time before an all day event. The problem is that iCal for no good reason decides that these weird times are to be among your default times. You can use 3 minutes befopre the event all day long and (sometimes) not have it appear as one of your defaults and then let just one instance of 9634 seconds before (or after) even momentarily be set as an alert time then it will go straight to the default options, push out a good one that you actually use, and never ever be removed no matter how many other same alerts you set. (Until you wrench it out by editing the plist file or something like that.)

We have been complaining about this for years and Apple has so far not done anything about it.