Q: Time Zone Support is STUPID!!!!!

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

You'll be up & 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?

Vandana22.... meant to respone back earlier, but hadn't.

Yes, it works without question.  Sunrise Calendar App now has support for iCal, been out for about 3 months.  I don't use iCal, so I don't know how it functions or interacts with Apple's botched Calendar(s).

I was giving this a bit of thought after seeing your comment, in the knowledge there would be Apple people who would continue to believe it can't be done or it is tricky.

There are two examples given, which supposedly make it difficult for Apple to fix with the idea they are a rarity (they are not).

1) Events that start in one time zone and end in another.  FACT - this is not some super complex, new instance.  Any flight itinerary one reads is formated this way if you cross time zones and has been done this way for ages.  A flight itinerary does not tell you your departure AND arrival times in the time zone you start in, they tell you the start time in TZ 1 and finish time in TZ 2,

2) Setting meetings in different timezones, then traveling to that time zone and going to it on time.  Google & Sunrise show you the time based on where you are at that time.  That laptops don't automatically update to the local time zone, who's fault is that.  No one's really... but we all know, if we want to operate off the local time zone, then we need to manually change it over or else any applications that go off the PC/laptop time will be wrong (iCal/Outlook/etc.)  This alone is why I want a web-based calendar, not a calendar locked to a computer.

I don't know what else to say.  Last I knew... every program has a contacts export function.  Everything that is important to me is out on the cloud (calendar events, contacts, etc.) so I don't have to worry about ever losing it, I don't have to do any backups, and I can access/edit from any device/computer/internet access I have.

The only solution I know of that works from both a phone and stand alone computer is to never change their time zone - to turn off clock updates as you travel.

It isn't clear to me why google calendar will work any better than iCal since it doesn't allow floating appointments.

Busycal for the mac does have floating time zone as an option as well as some other nice features. The rub is with scheduling from the phone since that doesn't seem to allow floating appointments.

It is true they can be edited and changed later from the desktop or laptop - but you need to remember to do that - computers are supposed to do that kind of work.

Having to enter the time zone for every event is a nuissance - particularly when traveling internationally and you would need to look up the destination time zone.