Time Zone Update

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).

One more note: While the time zone on your phone is wrong (Denver), don't add any events to your calendar. Period. Because they will all be wrong. Your phone needs to say Phoenix time zone before you can add events. Because I changed all my events that had been added on my phone to MST on my Mac (they had been added when the phone read Cupertino), I thought it was fixed. But in fact, the time zone shifting actually crashed my Calendar. It stopped syncing altogether and a mobileMe senior advisor had to delete my mobileMe account and recreate it with a backup calendar. So this isn't as simple as it sounds.

I'm going to continue to keep Set Time Zone automatically turned OFF until they get it to read Phoenix. I advise you all to do the same.

And that, Glenn, is why even Denver won't fix the problem! A beautiful explanation, btw.

All of my iDevices are set to something different when I set them to "Set Automatically" yet they are all sitting in the same room in the Phoenix time zone.

iPad1 = Phoenix

iPad2 = Cupertino

iPhone 4, iPhone 4S = Denver

iPod Touch (4th gen) = Phoenix

Frustrating.

It's really inexcusable.

gadgetgirl875 wrote:

All of my iDevices are set to something different when I set them to "Set Automatically" yet they are all sitting in the same room in the Phoenix time zone.

iPad1 = Phoenix

iPad2 = Cupertino

iPhone 4, iPhone 4S = Denver

iPod Touch (4th gen) = Phoenix

Frustrating.

I wonder if it has anything to do with their network connectivity? Are both iPads 3G, or are they Wifi, and are they on the same networks? Have they all been connected to the same places?

I'm just wondering because my iPhone reset itself this morning from Cupertino to Denver after I disconnected it from the network and it was only connected to wifi. I put it in airplane mode and turned on the wifi and it changed to Denver time, and then when I put it back on the Verizone network again it stayed on Denver time. I don't know if that was a coincidence or what, but it worked.

Also, for those with calendar issues, I am really curious why mine is unaffected while yours seem to have suffered a terrible fate? I looked at all of my events and none of the times have changed. I don't use 'floating' events (never knew that was a thing) since my colleagues and I use a standard time zone and I just always automatically change the times. I was in Salt Lake City for three days (came back last night) and when I looked at my calendar, events had not changed times; I didn't worry about it because none of them were happening while I was in the different time zone, but that made me think about how the calendar events changing would be kind of important. If it's 3:00 pm MST, it should appear at 3:00 pm MST no matter where I am. Maybe that's what I wasn't getting before; is that what a 'floating' calendar is supposed to do, and is that what 'time zone support' is for? I wonder if I had changed my time zone support to 'off' if my events would have changed times? I guess I need to look into all of that; I haven't been out of town by myself and had to coordinate a meeting time from anyplace besides home. I suppose this could be a problem.

In the short run, it seems like it's all okay for now for me since it switched automatically to MST and my events are intact, but what if I travel? Hm...

iPad1 = Phoenix

iPad2 = Cupertino

iPhone 4, iPhone 4S = Denver

My experience exactly, except that my iPad2 is also in Phoenix.

I suspect the iPads (both are WiFi only) are getting their timezone from my Airport base station, which is set to Arizona/Phoenix, while the iPhones are getting the timezone from AT&T.

Frustrating.

Very.

On my iPad 2, when this first happened my time zone was set to Cupertino. I turned Set Automatically off and then back on, and the time zone correctly changed to Phoenix and has stayed that way. That hasn't worked on the iPhones.

The difference between the iPads and iPhones could well be related to WiFi vs. cell. I would be surprised if the iPads were getting the actual time zone from the Airport, but I suppose it is possible. Phones have always gotten their automatic time setting from the carrier. But that's time, not time zone. It certainly appears that in iOS 5 the time zone is being calculated based on location - incorrectly in Arizona.

I'm in Arizona. iPhone 4, iOS5. DST bug woke me an hour early in March, so I set it to "Set Manually." That put the click back to normal.

Sometime between then and now (iOS upgrade?), it got set back to "Set Automatically" because the $#&%ing thing woke me an hour late today. Awesome.

The problem is still there. I put it to "Set manually," it sees Phoenix. Put it to "Set Automatically," it switches to Denver. Still does it right this second. First real disappointment in Apple since the Powerbook 5300. This is really not that difficult to fix.