Time Zone Support is STUPID!!!!!

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. 🙂

Am I right here that our goal is to have the time of an event be the time the event is to occur at the location where the event will take place . . . and that time should not be adjusted to some other time if/when we change time zones?

I find that selecting "Floating" for the event keeps the time as it should be.

The annoying thing is that I can't make Floating the default in Preferences. So I need to selected it each time I enter an event.

I have no idea why Apple calls this "Floating." I think a better term would be "Stable" or "Fixed."

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!

Are you reading or listening, Apple? My use of Apple computers dates back to the mid-1980s. I agree with D Hull that

"It used to take Microsoft to take something as simple as wanting absolute times on a calendar and make it too complicated to understand."

I had the same problem as others relate on a recent trip two time zones away. Since then (including resetting several important appointment times), I have left Time Zone Support turned off. It seems ridiculous that the solution is to leave this feature turned off, but I won't know if this solved the problem until I travel again across time zones. I don't have the time or inclination to explore other solutions and/software. I already have way too many apps on my iPhone and iPad. By the way, I enter most appointments on my iPad or iPhone, rarely on one of the desktop computers or laptop - Most computer gurus predict that the Apple community is going in the direction of doing most, if not all things, on mobile devices!

It seems to me that this feature would be a good one for Apple to eliminate in the next update of the iOS, especially if the best and easiest "fix" is not to turn it on!

Apple does not listen here. To provide them feedback, go to www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate link.

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.

Ironically, there was a fix, but it went away.

Apple added the ability to select TIMEZONE = none (or floating?).

Essentially, it told the calendar to ignore the time zone (CST,MST,PST) information, but keep the time (Dec 25 @ 5:30pm). This meant that even when you change your Application to another time-zome, Christmas dinner is still at 5:30pm when you look at your calendar. For 90% of the people, this is the desired simplicity. Probably less than 10% of users (the business travelers communicate across time zones) want the face value of the times to EVER change.

Today, iCal (still) supports the SIMPLE floating/none time zones. But the feature is hidden, and not within reach of the average user. Apple took the "none/floating" option away from the "Edit Event" dialog.😟

If you have some programming skill, you can manually remove the time-zone information from the .ICS files.

This problem has been waxing and waning for years. See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1289964?tstart=0

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.

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.

I've had most of the problems mentioned in this discussion. It seems that many users have the need for an electronic calendar, which in a host of ways is sensitive to variation in time zone settings and user locations, and many others have little or no such need. Those in the former category encounter multiple problems and account for the need for this long discussion. Those in the latter category, including myself, don't need to worry much about alerts and conference calls and would be very happy with what some have referred to vaguely as a "paper calendar." A good example of the latter is the TripCase app. It gives all flight departure times in the local time where the flight originates and arrival times similarly -- just like you get them on the airline itinerary. It simply is not sensitive at all to what time zone you're in, or will be in, or what time zone the phone or laptop is set for. If the TripCase app were extended to include all sorts of events (not just travel times), it would be the kind of calendar many -- but not all -- users would crave. It seems to me that Apple and Google could and should offer that sort of calendar as an option. It would still have problems even for the users who would delight in it, but that set of problems would be preferable to the ones we have with calendars that are sensitive to time zones of location and event.

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.

EVERYONE HERE IS THE ANSWER TO THE TIME ZONE CALENDAR PROBLEM.

UNLINK YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS' ONE BY ONE FROM CALENDAR IN SETTINGS.

SEE WHICH ONE IS CAUSING THE PROBLEM, THEN DON'T USE THAT EMAIL WITH CALENDAR.

THIS WORKS.

Travelling and keeping appointments both in my home time zone and current time zone, to say nothing about flight times, remains excruciating with Apple's configuration: For business reasons my calendar needs to remain on Chicago time, which you can do with time zone overide; but then when you make an appointment while traveling that appointment also goes on US central time, although if you open the appointment you can show your current time zone for the appointment. In short, you have to do time zone mental gymnastics either with time zone override, which can't get your traveling appointments correct, or the time zone feature on, which adjusts your home calendar times to your current time zone. I read this entire thread and do believe I understand the software issues. In a way, the executive assistant who wrote during the summer of 2013 seems to me on the right track -- keep a paper calendar! Why not have a toggle switch on the calendar that says "use as though a paper calendar," which would unlink the calendar entirely from any time zone configuration. You would have to have a sub-text that warns that alarm and reminders from the calendar can't be given, but for some of us that would be a good trade-off.

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?

It is stupid BUT here's a simple solution I found.....

Go to "MAIL, CONTACTS, CALENDARS" - then scroll down to "CALENDARS" and select the first option "Time Zone Override" and turn it "OFF"!

This will ensure all events display according to the time zone of your current location - which is just what everyone will presumably want!

Really hope this helps as it's things like this that can spill frustration levels over to maximum proportions!