Time Zone Update

FWIW, I use Google Calendar to manage about fifteen different calendars; when I switched from Android I didn't bother to start using iCal, really, other than just having it pull from Google on those rare occasions when I look at my calendar from my computer (instead of my phone). I'm also using a third-party calendar app (I loathe the stock calendar). So, between pulling my calendars from Google and electing not to use the stock app to interact with them, they (at the moment) seem to be unaffected by the time zone issue. I have a reminder set for DST change day to check whether my time zone issue seems to be fixed, but it doesn't look as if I need to do anything now.

Last year I had the same issue just with my Google Calendar; I had to just start setting things for the time the calendar would say it was so they would show up on my (Android) phone at the right time. It was obnoxious, but it did eventually get fixed. I'm really not happy to be dancing this dance again.

As a side note, doesn't it seem really bizarre that your calendar changed the times of your future meetings, even if it thought the time was changing? I mean, DST or no, 5:00 pm on Tuesday is 5:00 pm on Tuesday; you wouldn't schedule a meeting at 5:00 and suddenly change it to 4:00 just because it's DST...??? Strange, nonsensical behavior. Fix it, Apple. I mean, Apple products are supposed to 'just work', are they not? Get on it.

Maybe I read wrong, but I thought you said that future events were showing in the calendar as an hour different than they should. I was saying that my calendar is not exhibiting that behavior; all of my future events through February, as far as I could see without checking every individual item, seem to still be in the right time slots in my calendar without me having to change anything. That's not to say that the time zone thing isn't a problem, because it really, really will be, in a big way, but I was just saying that my calendar does not seem to be affected. Yet. I keep praying that it's just an obnoxious Apple thing to set all PST/PDT users to Cupertino, and when we are no longer in PST/PDT, then it will allow us to have our own time zone back. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I had no problem changing them to Mountain Time on my Mac. But there is no way of doing this on an iPhone or iPad that I know of. It's really important to go through every event you've created since upgrading to iOS 5 to make sure it has the right time zone.

It's not that simple. 5:00 WHERE? You may always stay in one place and only have meetings with people who live next door, but for those of us who travel or work with people on the other side of the world being able to work with events in different time zones is important. Internally time is kept as UTC (GMT for the traditional) and adjusted for display depending on your time zone setting. This isn't to excuse Apple; they need to do a better job of time zone management. But to cut them a little slack, it's not a trivial problem.

Thanks for the tip. I did check all of the events coming up in the next couple of weeks, but I figure I'll leave the rest until after the 6th hits the fan. Maybe that's practical of me, maybe it's lazy, I dunno. I do know that all of the events I've created in my phone show up properly on my online calendar, so for right now, they seem to be syncing with Google properly. I haven't bothered with iCal, but I suppose I could open it up and see what it does. My biggest concern is whether I will be able to leave the phone set to automatic time/date; I travel a lot, and also, I'm worried the phone will lose time if I don't have it automatically pulling from the server. That's not gonna work.

I'm with you, man. I didn't say it was trivial; it's a REALLY big deal to me. I was merely pointing out that, if you put an event in your calendar at 5:00 pm Tuesday, then it would still be at 5:00 pm on Tuesday after the time change, it's just that 5:00 pm would come later in actual time. So why change the event, as recorded in the calendar, if you haven't moved into a different time zone physically? It doesn't make logical sense; yeah, it should change times if you find yourself in a new time zone, but the entire point of DST is to functionally move 5:00 around. Changing your recorded times when the time changes sorta defeats the entire purpose, doesn't it? Otherwise, wouldn't everyone who observes DST suddenly start work at 8:00 instead of 9:00 when the time changed?

And, for the record, I do keep meetings with people in many different time zones (including Europe), so I'm aware of the coordination issue. For our purposes, we have a standard business time zone that we all reference from (adjusting in our own calendars as needed). This glitch is going to add another layer of complication to that process, for sure; I'm in the "Fix it NOW" camp right with everyone else.

LnGwStX:

If you are using Google Calendar, maybe this isn't affecting you. And if you are in Pacific time, it's not affecting you. BUT if you are using iCal on a Mac and it is set to MST, the events that were set in Pacific time appear an hour LATER in the iMac calendar, because starting Monday, 4 p.m. PST will be 5 p.m. MST.

Does that help?

Thanks for the breakdown. I am in AZ, so I am on Mountain time, except when I'm not (right now). Every menu I've ever encountered to choose my time zone from has a second, AZ-specific Mountain Time entry, so I'm not 100% sure of what our official time zone is called, but I do know we follow GMT -7 year-round. That's about all I know about time zones, having lived my whole life as a resident of the Grand Canyon state.

So, in essence, this glitch does NOT seem to be affecting my calendar events since I don't use iCal and have chosen not to have iTunes sync with iCal on my computer (iCal syncs separately by pulling events down from GCal, as does my phone). But it WILL affect my entire schedule after Nov 6th, if it is indeed a bug and not just an annoying feature of Apple's arrogance that will right itself automatically. If my phone continues to follow Cupertino time after the change, then I will have to either set the time manually or else remember to add an hour to the time, neither of which options is very appealing, given both the iPhone's propensity for losing time when not automatically pulling it from the network and my distaste for extraneous mental gymnastics.

Either way, I hope Apple sees fit to fix it sooner rather than later; I see enough iPhones around me that, surely, there is enough of a customer base in an entire state to warrant immediate attention to the issue. Sadly, it is a numbers game, after all.

BuffCrone wrote:

LnGwStX:

If you are using Google Calendar, maybe this isn't affecting you. And if you are in Pacific time, it's not affecting you. BUT if you are using iCal on a Mac and it is set to MST, the events that were set in Pacific time appear an hour LATER in the iMac calendar, because starting Monday, 4 p.m. PST will be 5 p.m. MST.

Does that help?

LnGwStX:

The problem is that you can only set the time zone manually IF you turn of Set Time Automatically. Which means that you will have the wrong time on your phone when you travel. Of course, you can turn it on, you just have to remember. And in the interim, if you have set events when your time zone read Cupertino, they will all have to be manually corrected to MST.

I spoke to a MobileMe Supervisor yesterday on the phone (only took me 9 hours to get to one! 🙂) and he said there is a bulletin out on this as of yesterday AFTERNOON, which means it might have been my kicking and screaming. But why didn't they see the issue from this forum, where it was noted in mid-October??

Good to hear Apple has finally acknowledged this. You're not the only one who has called Apple and brought this to their attention. Perhaps the number of people with issues finally reached whatever threshold Apple sets for putting out bulletins. Or perhaps too many perfectly good phones were being exchanged by well-meaning but uninformed Apple Store employees. As for getting information from the forums, Apple doesn't read them, at least not officially.

BuffCrone wrote:

I spoke to a MobileMe Supervisor yesterday on the phone (only took me 9 hours to get to one! 🙂) and he said there is a bulletin out on this as of yesterday AFTERNOON, which means it might have been my kicking and screaming. But why didn't they see the issue from this forum, where it was noted in mid-October??

Simple... this is a user to user forum. Apple does not monitor the forums or in any way offer support via the forums. The ONLY way to get help from Apple or address issues directly with Apple is to contact Apple.

The root of this particular problem is that while you have not physically moved into a different time zone, this bug causes your phone to think that it is in a different time zone. Specifically: you are in Arizona. Your phone thinks it is in California.

As for how your business handles appointments, all you are doing is working around the fact that the computerized calendar system you use doesn't handle "the magic" transparently or well. Everyone should be able to enter an appointment in local time and have it show up at the correct local time everywhere else. In theory this is what Apple is trying to do. Unfortunately they haven't quite gotten it right. This is not the only time zone/Daylight Saving Time bug they've had over the years.

Now, continuing the tutorial on "how time and time zones work in UNIX..." 🙂 The problem is that the system's internal clock is maintained as UTC. The dates and times you see displayed in the Finder, in iCal, etc., are calculated as offsets from UTC. The internal clock is always on UTC, but the offset from UTC will change twice a year if the time zone observes Daylight Saving Time (or Summer Time, or whatever it is called locally). So: the reason this bug will cause the displayed time of your appointments to change on November 6th is that (back to the first paragraph), the appointment is in the Pacific time zone, and the phone is in the Mountain Standard time zone. If the time zones of the appointment and the phone were the same everything would be fine because the offsets would also be the same. With the appointment and the phone being in different time zones, the offsets get, excuse the pun, offset. Hence the problem.

When you're local, just turn Set Automatically on, let the time sync, and then turn it back off. When you're traveling it's fine to use Set Automatically because the problem is specific to Arizona. The only problem is that you have to remember to do this.

Now that Apple has apparently acknowledged the problem we can hope they'll get a fix out soon.

Very annoying. I guess Apple thought that Arizona customers were getting off too easy without having to deal with DST that they give us this crud. I nearly missed my appointment this morning due to this fiasco. Seriously, how hard can this be to know the correct time for the location?

Get it fixed Apple.

More information on this:

My phone is telling me today that my Time Zone is Denver, which is better than Cupertino today, but not come March!

Today, in iCal, one of my floating events (which are NOT supposed to change ever) was an hour earlier. The other floating events seemed fine. This is on my Mac, not on my phone, so even more frustrating and puzzling.

MobileMe support told me repeatedly Friday that "floating events are not supported by MobileMe, and are not recommended." So the only possible way to address this issue while traveling is now off the table. I was hoping for a fix by today but I guess AZ is too small a market to consider this an emergency. I bet they'd react more quickly if the problem applied to, say, Cupertino.

ARIZONA: Keep calling iPhone support at (800) MY-IPHONE (800-694-7466).