How do I get Apple to update timezone quickly?

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Level 1

31 points

How do I get Apple to update timezone quickly?

Hi all.

How do I make contact with the appropriate team at Apple to have the timezone data updated as soon as possible?

The local time law has been change (actually, twice this year). The old law indicated that DST was to be changed back to winter time on September 8th. The newest law says it will change on October 27th.

I checked on the Mac, first in Terminal and then figured out a way to check this in the GUI. My 10.6.8 will switch the clock back (or rather, change the UTC offset from 3 hours to 2 hours) on September 8th. This is not good, and it's very soon.

I'm not sure what the situation is with the newer systems - Lion and Mountain Lion.

On Linux machines, this situation is corrected by updating the tzdata package. The tzdata files have already been updated and are now at version 2013d which reflects the correct time law. I believe Apple is using the same data, but I'm not sure what will happen if I compile and change the files manually. And anyway, it's not just my problem - it's every user (who still uses 10.6.8, assuming the problem is fixed in newer versions) here in Israel and everybody who sets meetings etc. with people in Israel.

To check whether the zone is correct in Terminal I used:

$ date -v +1m

Thu Sep 26 21:57:01 IST 2013

(This reflects what the time zone will be a month from now. It's IST and it's supposed to be IDT)

And also, this:

$ zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2013

/etc/localtime Thu Mar 28 23:59:59 2013 UTC = Fri Mar 29 01:59:59 2013 IST isdst=0

/etc/localtime Fri Mar 29 00:00:00 2013 UTC = Fri Mar 29 03:00:00 2013 IDT isdst=1

/etc/localtime Sat Sep 7 22:59:59 2013 UTC = Sun Sep 8 01:59:59 2013 IDT isdst=1

/etc/localtime Sat Sep 7 23:00:00 2013 UTC = Sun Sep 8 01:00:00 2013 IST isdst=0

The date on the last two lines should be October 27th rather than September 8th.

In the GUI, what I did was create an event in local time in Calendar, and then change its time zone to UTC. The event jumps 3 hours before September 8th, and 2 hours after it.

iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 26, 2013 12:02 PM

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Answer 1

MrHoffman

Level 10

146,407 points

Aug 26, 2013 2:11 PM in response to Herouth Maoz

These timezone definition changes are fairly common, when viewed world-wide.

For notifying Apple, contact the folks at the Apple Support Center or (if you have access) log a bug report. (The folks at Apple might or might not notice any postings made here.)

For the immediate case, updating the timezones yourself is straightforward; the sequence is basically the same on Linux, OS X, Unix and even OpenVMS. Ugly, but it works. (The US folks got to see this mess first-hand a few years ago, but there are other locations that see these sorts of timezone definition changes far more often.)

For those following along that aren't familiar with this sequence, this old posting should get you close when rebuilding your definitions, though the timezone database has moved to IANA.

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