Q: Never ever ever ever change my appointment times in iCal!

I have read dozens of posts.  I have played with the settings and my behaviour until I am sick.

In >30 years of using both paper and electronic diaries, I HAVE NEVER ONCE SET A TIME FOR ANY OTHER TIME ZONE APART FROM THE RELEVANT ONE FOR MY MEETING!!

I just was late for another meeting having flown in from the UK to Prague.

I am running MacOS 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro

Following recomendations from Apple itself, I turned off the hopelessly muddled and confusing 'Time Zone Support' (which never worked in practice as things that synch or when you add appts in a hurry you never see the dialog to set time zone for the specific event)

1/ The 'automatic time change' did NOT change my time zone.  (and yes, I WAS on the internet)  I had to do this manually

2/ In doing this manual change ONCE AGAIN ALL MY MEETINGS WERE CHANGED BY 1 HOUR!!

Imagine my embarassment when my client shows up 1 hour 'early' literally catching me with my pants down (I was in the toilet) and unprepared. Joked with him that he was quite keen - he takes offense that he was spot on time.

Put in a new option in Preferences: NEVER CHANGE TIME (or word it as "PRESERVE TIMES AS ENTERED")

Turn it on by default

Just fix this. Obviously the programmers behind this 'feature' (a pain in the backside for many years) never had the real world experience of travelling between time zones.

Just fix this.  I cannot believe that the hundreds of complaints I have read about this asinine feature are groundless.

Just fix this. You have exacerbated the problem a hundred-fold by encouraging us all to use our iCal as the root to which we synch our iPads, iPhones, and 3rd party calendar systems.

Just fix this.

Gordon Howell, gkh@ec1.com

35 year IT veteran, Apple user since 1980