Time Zone Support is STUPID!!!!!

Also, worth note. I do not use Outlook Calendar either. I spent a lot of time trying to sync it both to gCal and to other shared Calendars (both Outlook & gCal) to no avail. Multiple time zones also appeared to be not supported or it might have been a huge hassle, can't remember.

gCal allowed for sharing calendars between multiple users (view only or edit permissions) and labels or color coding carried through the same for all users. Color coding or assigning "labels" were user specific (locked to the computer app/user defined) in Outlook.... so I gave up even bothering with the hassles.

hi hans.

a great big thank you for this information. i have printed out the pertinent threads and i think i am going to try and tackle the contacts need first. again a huge thanks for taking the time to get me informed on how i might do this. i have been struggling with it for a very long time.

long form thoughts on the time zone problem:

on the time zone "sync" issue. i have gone through both my thread and this thread once again and i have to say that some of the answers are absolutely spot on (in terms of what they are saying they need) while some of the other answers were mildly infuriating. that said, perhaps this is in fact an issue of people not communicating well due problems with definitions/terminology. here goes a set of suggestions that i hope helps (and anyone who knows what i would like to see implemented should feel free to add or clarify):

note that all of the following are based upon the assumption that you actually let your iPhone update to the local time zone automatically when you travel. this would be the equivalent of updating your watch when you land somewhere but your phone is doing this for you automatically. if you don't want this to happen, presumably you can turn off the "Update to Local Time Zone" function which would be set on individual devices. that said, given the descriptions below i am not seeing a reason why this should be necessary because i cannot see why the current time zone should necessarily determine what your calendar does - if the implementation allowed you to control it properly.

"Event":

this is an event that stays at the time that you set it wherever you happen to go in the world. if you are in central standard time zone and you set an event to 7:00 PM, this event will show up and alert as 7:00 PM CST no matter where you are in the world. it will say "7:00 PM CST" while you are in CST. if you travel to the eastern standard time zone this event will update to the local time zone and will then say "8:00 PM EST (7:00 PM CST)".

if you want to set an "Event" by using some other Time Zone (say while in CST), you should simply pull down to that time zone and it will show up initially as an event at the time zone you are in, with the /selected/ time zone appended to it. this "pulldown event" would - for instance - say "7:00 PM CST (8:00 PM EST)" if i pulled down to central standard time when i set the 8:00 PM event.

the reason iCal is showing you a time in parenthesis in this case is because this is the time zone the event was set for but you are currently in a different time zone. if you set an alert for this event it will quite naturally alert you at the time this event is taking place while you are in CST or in EST or in some other time zone. if you did then travel to another time zone - say west coast - this latter event would say "5:00 PST (8:00 EST)" and it would of course alert you at 5:00 PM CST.

iCal will behave similarly for an event that is not a "pulldown event" (i.e. one where you simply set a date and time while in your current time zone. in this case (say the first example), this event that was set at 7:00 PM CST would read as "7:00 PM CST" when you get on the plane to go to Los Angeles. when you arrive in Los Angeles and turn off "airplane mode", you will then see this as "5:00 PM PST (7:00 PM CST)" while walking down the aisle and after having grabbed your bags and successfully avoided whacking someone in the head with it.

this way if i set an "Event" for PST for my return flight from Los Angeles (while i am in CST) i can select the correct time zone and i can SEE the correct time zone at all times. i will know what time this event takes place in the time zone i am in and i will know what time the event takes place in the time zone where the event is actually taking place. i /see/ the time zone i am in first because this is where my two feet are standing and where my head is as it is being held up by my body. but more importantly - it will also ALERT me while i am in PST time zone correctly (i.e. in advance of the event by 30 minutes or an hour or whatever) and it will not get adjusted in some confounding way for some confounding reason.

"Hard Time Event": this is an event that stays at a constant time (i.e. it is always the same number wherever you happen to go in the world. this event will say "7:00 PM CST" when you are in central time zone, or "7:00 PM EST" when you are in eastern time zone or 7:00 PM PST while you are on the west coast. and it will alert based upon this local time. presumably if you wished to know when this event was taking place in some other time zone (for instance CST) you could presumably check a box that says "Append Home Time Zone to Hard Time Events". in this case this 7:00 PM event in China will automatically append in parenthesis to whatever the CST equivalent is to 7:00 PM at that spot in China (or Katmandu or whatever). it would say "7:00 PM (whatever time CST)".

"Executive Mode Events". presumably there is a need to see all events at a particular time zone no matter where you are - or two or more particular time zones no matter where you are. in this case i would imagine one could simply have a calendar-based checkbox that says "Record All Events in Home Time Zone and Append Event Time in Parenthesis". in this case one would let the calendar default to your Home Time Zone - or your would set a Home Time Zone for that Calendar. this Calendar would show all events as "7:00 PM PST (whatever time it is in Katmandu)" or "8:15 AM PST (whatever time it is in China)". this would happen if you pulled down to Katmandu time zone and set an event or if you pulled down to China Time Zone while setting an event. if you simply set an event in PST it would not append anything in the parenthesis and simply say "7:00 PM PST". i supose if you wanted to know what time this Local Time Zone Event was in China or Katmandu you could have a checkbox that said "Append Time Zone <pulldown to time zone X" to all Home Time Zone Events".

presumably this way you could then have a Katmandu Calendar or a China Calendar and the events here would read "Whatever Time Katmandu (7:00 PST)" or "Whatever Time China (7:00 PST)". this way, one of these could be for the person tracking the boss's schedule (this would be the PST calendar since they are in PST) and the latter two could be for the Boss while travelling in China and then Katmandu or whatever. ideally one could simply have a copy function which would let you set the calendar in your Local Time Zone and have the copies simply convert per the time zone change. this way the person taking care of this could keep the calendar as PST and PUBLISH a copy of this as a Katmandu Calendar and one as a China Calendar.

i am guessing that major confusion could be avoided with these two scenarios by having a setting that says "Always Show Events in this Calendar According to Home Time Zone" which is probably a given since this calendar is specifically set for one time zone and you could also have one that says "Do Not Adjust the Appended Portion of (regular) Events in this Calendar when in Other Time Zones (i.e. keep time zones fixed)". this setting would ostensibly let the boss always have two calendars that tell him/her when the events are taking place in Chine and in Katmandu, irrespective of where he/she happens to be at the moment. presumably the appended aspect of these two calendars could be controlled as either showing the LOCAL TIME for the time zone he/she is currently in or you could tell these Executive Calendars to always show you another time zone as appended to the events. For instance both the Katmandu and the China Calendars could show the local time zone in parenthesis or they could simply show the Home Time Zone and append PST times to all events.

anyway, the lack of functionality here was making me a bit grumpy and some of the responses seemed a bit off target. obviously i am not tied to any of that but i thought that putting my head to it my productively add to the future implementation or at least help in describing what i need. if something more modest on this is not in the recent iOS update it would be wonderful to see in the next release.

BTW, i do think there is something in there for the guy that wanted all his events to show up "datebook-like" in the sense that one could simply set all events with a pulldown for the time zone they want (or just default to Home or even where you happen to be at the moment) and you could tell iCal not to update these events. alternatively there should be something above that lets you set the event to a time zone and have your Home Zone appended in parenthesis or has your current time zone appended in parenthesis or has your current time zone listed and the original time of the event and the original time zone appended in parenthesis.

excluding the complexities of accepting and transferring the actual time zone information it seems like programming something to accomplish the above is pretty straightforward IMHO.

peace.

Hello HWs

I just discovered this..... https://vimeo.com/sunriseapp

1) links & searches in Google Maps, easy edits too!
2) supports different time zones, shows both & they are editable on the phone!
3) multiple gCal support
4) links to FourSquare, LinkedIn, Facebook, others
This is brilliant! Thankfully, somebody realized Apple's flaws and fixed them!

It's likely, I might revert back to Google Apps for email on the iPhone... not decided yet, but Sunrise just solved most of my problems as I use locations/gps coords in the calendar events regularly/religiously, and "iMaps" was not working very good at all.

Contacts, I will probably continue to use as I have setup & outlined above.

Cheers!

hi hans,

thanks for these posts. they have been some of the most helpful on these issues over a period of years.

if you are able and things are going smooth with this app perhaps you can post back?

in the meantime i am going to try to find time to conquer contacts and then it would be very easy to get this app and finalize everything once and for all.

regards and BIG thanks.

Hot wheels, I just touched down in another time zone and it worked perfectly!

Now if only Google didn't axe a whole bunch of important features from gMaps in their latest version, life would be perfect.

Cheers

If I have a lunch on Friday at 1pm in Los Angeles, that lunch is at 1pm regardless of where I am when I look at the calendar. If I'm in New York on Wednesday, and my calendar tells me my Friday lunch is at 4pm, it's wrong. Plain and simply wrong. There is no way of thinking about it in which my current whereabouts are relevant to the scheduled time of my lunch in Los Angeles.

I understand that all of this complexity is serving multi-user calendars and conference call invitations in which an event is occurring over multiple timezones; that doesn't change the fact that iCal should offer the simple choice to opt out. You schedule an appointment for 1pm, and that appointment is at 1pm. Anytime you look at your calendar, the event will appear at 1pm. Period. That option is an absolute necessity.

I travel frequently, but I do not share my calendar with other users. In ALL cases, I would like to have the security of being able to schedule an event and know that it will be in the same place every time I look at it. The closest I can come to that with iCal is to leave TZS turned on, forever anchored in the timezone I lived in when TZS was invented. I never change it, and I let every event I add default to the same timezone (rather than specify the actual location) and so my events (past and present) remain consistent wherever I go. However, if I'm not physically in that original timezone, I can't use Siri to add an event, and I can't set alerts, because both of those functions use location services to second-guess what I want.

In this way I limp through my scheduling with a semi-effective workaround for a half-functional application. But I don't see how anyone does any better with iCal, unless they never travel.

A question for Chrismcs: You've done a good job of explaining the underlying architecture, but how do you use iCal? When you have a 1p meeting next week in a different timezone, and you glance at your calendar to remind yourself when the meeting is, do you expect to see 1p? Or do you do the conversion in your head every time?

hi HWT.

thanks. old response here i know - but - the lowdown is that you have moved to SUNRISE app for your phone and computers and you are managing well with this in conjunction with Google Calendar is that right?

i'm so confused at this point i don't know whether to re-read this whole thread or what.

however, i do know that i /absolutely/ need ALERTS to go off at the correct time and to see the appointment displayed at the correct time no matter what i use and no matter where i am...

Hotwheels, yes the way I use it works flawlessly.

I just added some flight itineraries to my calendar via gCal web and they will come up correct time no matter where I am. gCal can have infinite reminders if you wanted to add them either by text, popup or email for whatever time interval you want to set them.

I also have gCal set to email me my schedule every day. It comes to me at 5am in whatever time zone I'm in. A bit early, but it's there in my inbox if I want to look.

Opening Sunrise app on the phone lists your events for the day and gives you a summary of your events for the following day. Kind of nice also, it shows the weather for that location if you have set an address/location for the event. I believe it also shows the days even on my phones start page, but w pass code security on the iPhone it tends to bypass that page.

I've no complaints/issues w this setup. Not sure if I mentioned above, but I've completely jettisoned iTunes as well, in favor of iTools. Until &amp; unless I get another Apple product, I don't foresee me using any of the Apple related software... There's just been nothing that has worked flawlessly that I've tried or to put it another way, hasn't been a complete hassle every time I've tried to use it.

Sounds like MOST of us (travelers) want the same thing: that every appointment default to a fixed time that won't change when you go to another TZ. The rest (teleconferencers) want the opposite: appointments set to meeting time and converted to local time.

I think the Calendar app supports travelers with Time Zone Support "on" and set "floating" appointments. Am I missing something? Is it really this simple? This is what you do when you will travel. When you are staying put but want to teleconference or share calendars, you want to set the time zone for the physical location, convert to everyone else's local time.

The problem is that entering an appointment with a floating time zone isn't supported on the iPhone. It does now at least support floating when the appointment has been entered on a laptop or desktop. Since many appointments tend to be entered on the iPhone that becomes a problem.

Thanks for pointing that out. I have not yet tried entering a floating appointment on my iPhone. I've just started learning about solutions to the disconnect between the functionality we want and the behavior software engineers are giving us.

Some have suggested we live with it or move to a solution that works for us, as if this is a thing that can't be fixed. Software is as powerful and simple as the code, and the most infurating thing is that they're giving us what they think we should have rather than what we want. Classically Apple to do so, but THIS IS NOT WORKING FOR MOST OF US, most of us loyal Apple users (in my case, since 1984).

Admittedly, the issue is complex because it involves so many variables:

1. location and time zone of user when appointment entered

2. location and time zone where appointment will occur

3. location of user at the time of the appointment (traveling to vs. teleconferencing)

4. locations and time zones of user at beginning and end of appointment (specifically for travel across time zones, to correctly calculate durations while showing local times at both locations rather than the time in current time zone

It's so complex we can't even seem to agree on the terminology: some prefer "fixed" appointment time vs. "floating" time zone (equivalent concepts with opposite sounding names).

I believe what we need is to either select a default behavior/default mode for appointments with brief warnings for floating appointments ("if you travel to another time zone, this appointment will not correct for the new time zone"), or with every appointment set for a differen time zone, ask will you be traveling to the appointment or dialing in remotely. Or have appointments default to floating unless you call it "conference call," in which case it should automatically ask if you want to enter the time in your local time zone or in another time zone.

Ideally, Apple Mail should data mine emails to auto-populate air travel in our calendar, and all appointments that occur during a trip to a different time zone should default to floating, of course, overridable to a fixed time zone.

There's got to be a solution to this problem! Please help, Apple!

hi waldhaus1, all.

would it be possible to get a summary of what works and doesn't work based upon actual user experience? this help documentation is hopeless in this respect and while i have read this thread about 20 times i am still at a loss as to what settings are required.

for instance, based upon your explanation i CAN live with the fact that the iphone does not allow me to set Floating appointments and i am assuming that i could for the time being work around this by setting appointments on the iphone and then /later/ assigning them as Floating on my laptop.

however, in order to trust that this is actually going to work - and in part because i don't want to have to do any more empirical testing before or while i am traveling - it would be SUPER to know which settings exactly i need to put down for my laptop (Maverick), desktop (Mountain Lion) and iPhone (latest OS).

i mean, presumably there is a short list of settings that i can check to make sure i have them set correct and then - assuming i make sure that each Appointment is set to the FLOATING pulldown i can get this to work across time zones...?

then the crowd can backcheck whatever it is that we come up with so we know we have it right?

THANKS

You don't know by now.

Get a gmail account &amp; dl Sunrise Calendar app. That's the only settings you need to know. Why continue wasting time &amp; effort w something that doesn't work, hasn't worked &amp; will continue not to work?

You'll be up &amp; running in less time than it takes you to read this all a 21st time. :D

HansWorldTravels sounds like you are happy with Sunrise Calendar. Everything in the calendar stays the same when you switch time zones?

Just confirming because that's not what everyone wanted...but I do.

Hans, it's nice that your solution works for you, but many of us live in the Apple ecosystem that for the most part, works really well and syncs seamlessly. I do NOT use Gmail contacts or Google calendars, so Sunshine Calendar isn't going to work for me or anyone else.

This is a relatively hairy issue what with personal location vs. event location, current vs. future location, and time zone correction vs. static "text" time setting. But hey, if anyone can simply the complex, it's Apple, right?