Time Zone Support is STUPID!!!!!

I've tried all kinds of combinations between my MacBook Pro iCal and my iPhone and it just doesn't work.

First, with iCal on my laptop, turning time zone support on gives the option of selecting which time zone to display and set events on the calendar. With support off, the calendar updates times depending on which time zone you're in. This makes no sense!!! If anything, the calendar times should stay fixed and not change at all if support is off. Turning support on should make the calendar adjust times.

Second, what's the point for entering times in different time zones anyway? If I have a meeting or a flight anywhere in the world, the time is the time no matter what. If I have travel to a different time zone and I set an event for 2 PM, that event will change time when I go to another time zone giving me the wrong time. If I set the event for 2 PM in a different time zone, it will diplay the wrong time in my current time zone.

Third, there is no option to start in one time zone and end in another. I fly all the time. If I turn time zone support on and set a time for a departing flight at 4 PM Eastern, there is no option to arrive at a time in another time zone, so the arrival time will be wrong when the calendar updates in the arriving time zone. If I turn support off, and set an event to start at 4 PM and travel an hour ahead, the calendar will then say the event is at 5 PM when it updates in the new time zone, which is wrong and I'll miss that event.

If I turn my laptop calendar time zone support and iPhone TZS both on or off, times keep getting screwed up. If one is on and one is off, it gets screwed up. Just as an example, to keep my laptop calendar to have the actual time of all my events no matter where I am, I turned time zone support on and set to Central time, where I live. With TZS off, all my times would change to one hour ahead when I go to the Eastern time zone which would screw up any event I would need to refer to. My iPhone has TZS on as well. I have a flight at 3:30 eastern arriving home at 4:30 central, but if I create the event in eastern at 3:30 there is no option to finish in central, so I would have to mark my arrival as 5:30 eastern. When I get home, my calendar would say I left at 2:30 and arrived at 4:30. If I had looked at my calendar before my trip to the eastern time zone, my calendar would say I'm leaving at 2:30, which is wrong for the zone I would leave from, but the arrival time is correct.

Now, with all TZS turned on, and my calendar set to central, and a 3:30 PM Eastern flight with a 24 hour advance alert, my phone alerted me at 4:30 Eastern of my 3:30 Eastern flight because my calendar was set to Central time, not Eastern. Had I had TZS turned off and entered the flight as 3:30, it would display at 4:30 when I arrived in Eastern and my departure and arrival time would be wrong when my calendar updated once in returned to Central and, while still in the Eastern zone, every single event in my calendar would be advance by one hour to reflect the Eastern zone and would be wrong for the actual time those events were to take place in Central, or any other time zone.

If I lived in New York and I traveled to Los Angeles and had an 8 AM meeting in LA, while in NY my calendar would say I had a 11 AM meeting if TZS was on and set to Eastern and wouldn't change to 8 until I manually selected the Pacific time zone. If TZS was off, my 8 AM meeting would display as 5 AM when I arrived in LA and the calendar updated automatically.

The whole system just makes no sense at all and serves no purpose that I can see. The time is the time regardless of where I am or what time zone I'm in. I will always be where I am and the time will always be the time. Why make it change? I want to look at my calendar and have the right time no matter where I am. Apple needs to fix this thing to either add multiple time zones for a single event's start and end time and display the time zone in the calendar or they need to get rid of time zone support altogether.

If anybody knows of a way to keep the calendar on both the computer and the iPhone to actually work in a manner that doesn't change times and will alert me to the actual time of events regardless of time zones I'd love to hear it. Outside of turning off location services, which will screw up every other app, I don't see a fix. Unless Apple give the option to turn of location services for iCal on the iPhone.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1, Aslo MacBook Pro 15 inch Early 2008

Posted on Jun 21, 2012 12:09 PM

Top-ranking reply

chrismcs

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Mar 6, 2013 8:45 AM

The problem, however, like I was mentioning in my last post - it doesn't matter what system you go to. Every calendar app you use (Google, Outlook, etc) will inherently want you to be more precise than your paper calendar because they are inherently different than a paper calendar. When you specify a time on ANY calendar app, you are inherently specifying a very precise point in time, not just a "time" (ie you are specifying that time in a given time zone) -- and this is a MUST for any calendar app to properly do its job (sharing calendars, meeting requests, etc). Think about it - if someone in a different time zone sends you a meeting request at "4pm", how in the world do you know when that appointment really is? Did they mean their time zone or yours? And if it were to appear at 4pm on both of your calendars, one of you is wrong.

Also - keep in mind...when you change time zones, the calendar is not changing when your appointment occurs..it's keeping it at the same exact point in time that you said it was - which is precisely why the time label changes when you go to a different time zone. Suppose you schedule an appointment at 5pm while in CST. If you fly to PST and the calendar still showed your appointment at 5pm, internally, it would have had to actually shift the start & end time of your appt by 2 hours (reschedule your alarms, etc).

Apple HAS given you three useful features already to navigate this: 1) with time zone support turned on, you can specify the time zone of the event you are scheduling -- so if you mean "4pm CST", you can set the time zone as part of setting the event (with time zone support turned off, Calendar just assumes you are specifying the time in the local time zone because it has no way of knowing otherwise). This is perhaps the most useful of all three features. 2) with time zone support on, you can lock all your calendar to a specific time zone. To me, this isn't a very useful feature because it would effectively make alarms useless to me while I travel. 3) You can use floating time zones where your events will shift to preserve the same "time" when you change time zones...Personally - I'd advise that you use those sparingly for alarm clock like features (like I want to run at 6am no matter where I am). I wouldn't advise using FTZ for scheduling appointments because you'll inadvertently end up making mess (consider the impact of all your appointments changing to an unexpected time because you have an unexpected business trip come up between now when when you thought you might be in a certain time zone).

You mentioned you wanted to switch to Google - but you'll have the same issue there as well. With Google, you must specify your "current" time zone. All events you schedule will be created in that time zone. Now, you could be tempted to leave your Google calendar in, say, CST, even when you fly out to the PST time zone. All your "times" will appear to be "correct" just like you entered them - but (just like option 2 in Apple's calendar app) if you rely on Google's text/email alarms - those alarms will be firing in whatever time zone the event is (so even though you are thinking about your 5pm appt as being 5pm PST, you've told Google it's 5pm CST, thus your alarm will fire 2 hours off of when you are expecting it). Additionally, if you send that meeting as an invite to someone else (or share your Google calendar with anyone), they will all see it as 5pm CST, not 5pm PST.

Google does give you 1 feature that Apple doesn't which is that you can lock a single calendar to a specific time zone. So if you live in CST and you often fly to PST, you can make a calendar that you use specifically for your PST appointments and just tell Google that your normal calendar is CST, but if you schedule any appointments on this one specific calendar, you will be specifying the times in PST.

Hope that helps clear things up a bit. I just didn't want you to be surprised when you moved to another calendar app that you'd discover it behaves just like Apple's does.

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148 replies

Feb 16, 2014 8:08 AM in response to D Hull

D Hull wrote:

For reasons that are too lengthy to explain here I need to be able to enter the events on the computer. Not the phone, not the iPad, on the Mac. Time zones and time changes ARE the problem. I still don't understand how this software can help.

I understand that. And, if you enter them in Calendar on your Mac and if you're syncing your calendar over iCloud from your Mac, the appointments will appear in Sunrise on your iPhone. I cannot vouch that the time zone thing works properly but HansWorldTravels seems to be saying it is. Given the trivial expense of Sunrise, I'd suggest you try it yourself. It may all make more sense them.

Best of luck.

Feb 16, 2014 8:14 AM in response to D Hull

D Hull wrote:

That does make sense, but I'm back to how to make it show up properly on the Mac and on the Cloud, as well.

I don't think you do understand. If you have Sunrise installed on your iPhone and if your iPhone and your Mac are set to sync calendars over iCloud, anything you enter in Sunrise on your iPhone should sync to Calendar on your Mac. Anything you enter in Calendar on your Mac should appear in Sunrise on your iPhone.

D Hull

Level 1

19 points

Feb 16, 2014 8:21 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

But...when I enter it on the Mac, the timezone issues kick in. When I went to Asia earlier this year it changed DATES. It was a nightmare. Anything that I entered when I was there was changed when I got back.

Feb 16, 2014 8:33 AM in response to D Hull

D Hull wrote:

That's the only issue I'm dealing with here. That's what this thread is about.

I'm well aware of the subject line of the thread. I was trying to explain one specific point that seemed to be causing you difficulty with HansWorldTravels's post and had caused him to say he wasn't going to reply to you anymore. I was not attempting to solve your entire issue. Sometimes, solutions come in pieces that we have to assemble ourselves. I will not, however, bother you with any more attempts at clarification.

Best of luck.

Feb 16, 2014 8:37 AM in response to D Hull

D Hull wrote:

Sorry if I sounded snippy. I'm frustrated, not understanding this very well, and under caffeinated this morning.

My apologies as well. It sounds like a frustrating situation. And time for a coffee break. 🙂

Mar 20, 2014 4:58 AM in response to lvcarlson

Just come back to this thread - which seems to have been going on for ever!

I managed to fix this on my iPhone 3, but I'm on a 5 now and can't recall how I did it. Just to add to the fun, I see that all my recurring meeting times after the clocks here go forward next weekend have been changed. I'm guessing that as the clocks change they'll go back to where they should be, but does that also mean that appointment I've put in for after the Summer Time change will automatically change themselves to the wrong times?!

Nightmare!

jpongin

Level 1

0 points

Jun 8, 2014 2:18 PM in response to pinkfloyd1969

Same thing just happened to us. We created a round trip flight event from PST to Central. And guess what? We missed our return flight because our return flight time shifted 2 hours forward in the Central time zone. Bad bad bad!! Locking the timezone should be the default setting. The user should actively change this option being aware that all event times will "shift" according to the current timezone.

Nov 6, 2014 10:36 PM in response to chrismcs

I have never seen a single post that is in favor of Time Zone Support.

Show me one, Apple! I challenge you.

Time Zone Support is less than annoying: it's destructive.

I have missed many appointments because I scheduled them when I was in, say, London, and when I returned to California the appointment was shifted 8 hours earlier. When perusing my schedule on my iPhone, it did not occur to me to look at appointments for 1am..Duh!

It's useless! If "floating" could be chosen as a default option - it would pretty much work.

But that is NOT an option.

In iOS 8, you don't have the possibility of choosing ANY time zone when making an appointment.

That's really stupid.

And did anyone notice that, in REMINDERS, your time zone is locked in when you set a reminder?

I set a few reminders for 9am when I was in London, and when I went back to CA, they reminded me 8 hours early: at 1am!! How much fun was that, being awakened by my Reminders at 1am???

STUPID IDEA. I have been complaining about it for years, but Apple comes out with update after update - with no change to Time Zone Support.

SCRAP IT APPLE!

Do you have Time Zone Support Blinders on? Does anyone like it? Or use it?

How could you be so blind and deaf to such a major flaw - that has existed for YEARS!

I'm ready to move it all to Google Calendar.

Nov 7, 2014 7:34 AM in response to rodfromca

rodfromca wrote:

I have never seen a single post that is in favor of Time Zone Support.

Probably because the people who are happy with the way it works don't come to support forums to look up threads about it just so they can post, "I like it. Bye now.". It's rather like the fact that healthy people don't go into the emergency room to report that everything is fine, that they are suffering from no injuries or illnesses.

Jan 8, 2015 10:49 AM in response to pinkfloyd1969

I agree so much with you!!! I wish Apple would make an option that when I put a meeting at 2PM for example, it stays 2pm all the time!

The changing of the times might be good if you have meetings over the phone or internet with people from different time zones... but when you travel physically, it is much better if times don't change.

Jun 23, 2015 11:15 AM in response to drjwr

my brain is careening between womdering what could possibly be a more important development priority and thinking i have to be a moron and this implementation actually does work but i am using it wrong.

someone remind me again - sunrise works as a calendar app that can cross time zones?

D Hull

Level 1

19 points

Sep 27, 2015 9:28 AM in response to chalsall

No sir, that's NOT what I want. I want it to act like a paper calendar. If I put in 2PM THAT is what I want it to say. If I get on an airplane and fly halfway around the world, it will change. If I choose "floating" it won't change on the mac, but it will on the iPad because there is no "floating" choice there. It is hideous. I missed a flight because of this bs, I've missed appointments, it's changed DATES on me when I've traveled to Asia. Other solutions suggested, like "Sunrise" don't work unless you enter things from your phone; you can't enter to in from the Mac, and if you do, it changes the time. This is BEYOND frustrating, and it's not just Apple. Google calendars acts the same way.

Once again, I am connecting several devices. I simply want the times I put in to remain the same as what I enter. Is that really that difficult to understand, Apple?

D Hull

Level 1

19 points

Jan 2, 2016 2:09 PM in response to m0thr4

I simply would like to have the option to use this calendar the same way I'd use a paper calendar, so that it doesn't change times and dates as I travel. There should be a way to do that, or something that will do that on the mac and the iPhone. Anyone? Anything? Thanks.

There is no longer a "floating" option. Whether or not timezone support is checked, the times (and sometimes dates) change as I travel. I understand that others like this feature, but there should be a way to turn it off and allow for "absolute time" in both the iOS and OSX.

Jun 21, 2016 6:20 PM in response to pinkfloyd1969

Yes!! If I write down an event in my notebook, no matter where I am in the world it stays the same.Why can't they make it as simple as that??

Is there any other app I can use that just saves events and ignores my location?

Oct 17, 2012 7:59 PM in response to pinkfloyd1969

I'm facing the same problem. Anyone has a solution for this??

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Time Zone Support is STUPID!!!!!