iOS 8 Calendar on iPhone showing GMT times for new events.

All of my settings in gmail calendar are the correct time zone (via the website and on my phone & iPad) and the gmt issue is still occuring. It is an ios8 bug, not people not paying attention to settings. Apple has told me they are aware of the bug via support chat. Apple just doesn't care enough at this point to really fix it. Submit support tickets!

The All-Day work around was posted way back on page 6 or so of this thread. It added the requirement that when you edit using the All Day method, you have to re-adjust the start time back to your time zone (the end time will follow the start time). You also have to make sure the day is the correct day as sometimes it sets to the next day.

There is no way this behavior is intended by anyone, Google or Apple. It's a bug pure and simple.

I do not believe there is a way for you or me or anyone else in this discussion to say if this is a bug or not. In order to be able to determine this categorically we need to have access to the design documentation of the calendar app. On January 27, 2015 mikalh argued that this is not a bug. My initial reaction to his reply was similar to your, it is a bug, pure and simple. However, since then I changed my mind the behavior we observe may not be desirable, or intuitive, or friendly, as a matter of fact it is annoying, disturbing, inconsistent with other parts of the same app, but it handles the time of the event correctly. In my case I enter the event time with my local time zone, the event shows correctly in my calendar but as a side effect changed the time displayed for the event to GMT, not clear why but it is correct, no bug so far, unless the design documentation says otherwise. are we in agreement so far? It is not until you try to change the time of the event that this change to GMT may affect you if you are not careful with your next steps.

My point about switching to All-day and back was that the side effect of moving the switch to the right and immediately back to the left actually changed the time of the event from GMT time to local time, for me it shifted the event by 5 hours forward. That is a bug. One could argue that upon switching to an All-Day event the system should have discarded the time of the event since now it is an all-day event and upon switching to a non-all-day event the system should have prompted for a time since it is no longer known. However, instead the system took the event and arbitrarily moved it to a different time from what it was when the event was created. This is a bug, do we agree?

Using the trick of switching to all-day and back and carefully changing the time of the event back to the desirable time zone, and as a side effect lose the GMT connection is a nice workaround but that was not my point.

Gotcha. Sorry misunderstood. BTW, Microsoft just released Outlook for iOS today. There are a number of write ups on it on the web. It seems to include email and calendar. I am not sure if and how it will sync but if it will sync my Outlook calendar across all my iOS devices, it may be a solution. Who knows.

The thing that we need to remember is, all calendar synchronizations were working just fine - UNTIL AN IOS UPDATE came out and has since caused this "GMT bug". It is not like there has been a GMT bug since the beginning of time. This is relatively recent (though been going on for too long now).

My point is; THIS PROBLEM IS DUE TO A RELATIVELY RECENT CHANGE BY APPLE. If Apple wanted too, they can go back to that release, compare relevant code changes against prior version and they'd know. But, I suspect they already know and the change was intentional for whatever reason, however, it has had this (hopefully) unintentional side-effect that is a major issue for users with mixed environments.

Thanks to all who have been working this and pushing for a resolution.

If you enter a start time and an end time, for example, 10 AM start and 11 AM end, and then a few days later the time of your meeting is moved back an hour and you go to edit the appointment and see the times in GMT times of 4 PM start and 5 PM end, how can you say that isn't a bug? Even if the GMT time shows in addition to your normal time, the times displayed when editing the time of an appointment should be in the times you entered, not in GMT time.

"I vow that everyone who comments on this thread to post their iOS version before saying "hey give this a try"."

Ummm Really? You VOW that we put our operating system? Who are you to decide what anybody puts in their post Whimsy??

I am running iOS 8.1.3 Whimsy (yes I knew just where to find it), just updated this past weekend and the GMT was happening both before and after the update.

I did not proclaim this would work for everyone, nor am I confident it will stay this way.

Maybe try to post with some TACT next time, rather than demanding. I was simply trying to help. 😐

OK, I am going to try to make it as simple as possible for people who still want to argue that this is not a bug or seem to still be speculating about whether this is a "bug" or not.

First, let's start with the definition of what a "bug" is:

"A software bug is an error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways."

Above definition is from Wikipedia...here's a link to the full article which further confirms that what we have been talking about for all this time is a BUG:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug

The AppRiver blog Article linked below (an excellent article on this bug that everyone should read) states: "After extensive troubleshooting and providing several examples to Apple Support, my ticket on the issue was escalated to Apple’s Engineering team. Unfortunately there is still no fix, but I have been assured there is something in the works. Apple’s Enterprise team sent me an acknowledgement after their Engineering team reviewed my case and that of several other users. 'Thank you for calling in so we may add to impact on issue with Exchange accounts and calendars on ios 8. Apple is aware of this and currently being worked on.' From what they’ve told me they have enough examples now to know the issue with dual time zones displayed in events is specific to an iOS 8 feature."

http://blog.appriver.com/2014/12/ios-8-calendar-events-display-dual-time-zones/

Here is a post....copied from this very thread...in which on December 21, 2014 a senior Apple Care advisor is confirming to a user that this is an issue that Apple is working on a fix for, and not intended behavior:

Rick,

They are aware of the issue and working toward some type of resolution. As I stated earlier, that is the only workaround that we have currently. I would imagine that there may be an update soon.

I assume your system is in the CST time zone based on the 6 hours difference from GMT. If you look at an event and say it starts at 10AM CST or it starts at 4PM GMT is equivalent, there is no ambiguity. Editing the event in either GMT (changing from 4PM to say 4:30PM) or CST (changing from 10AM to 10:30AM) is exactly the same, it is a consistent change. Are we in agreement on this point?

Now, you have a valid point of view namely "...the times displayed when editing the time of an appointment should be in the times you entered, not in GMT time..." but it is no more and no less than your point of view on how you expect the system to behave. I may have a different point of view which says "...events will be created, by default, in your local time zone, all subsequent changes to the event time will be performed in GMT..." you must agree that it is a viable point of view, even if you do not like it.

Unless we can reach an agreement, which we will specify and document in a design document we can not, we can not decide what is a bug and what is not since we have differing reference points. Since we are not privy to the Apple design documents there is no way for us to tell if this is a bug or not. Only Apple can make that determination since they specified and designed and implemented the system as they thought was desirable.

The fact that the system behaved differently prior to the iOS 8 update makes it somewhat suspicious this change in behavior was intentional, but nonetheless it may have been for reasons which Apple has not communicated to the public. You must give then this benefit of doubt.

There is no absolute here which by which one can say this is a bug or not unless we have access to a common and agreeable reference.

Having said all of the above do I think that the behavior of the calendar past the iOS 8 update is desirable, I am definitely agreeing with you it is very bad, it is annoying, it is inconsistent, and Apple better listen to the outrage in its community of users over this change. For them to stay quite and not publish an intention to fix this problem in a future update to iOS is disrespectful of their customers, in my opinion. Nonetheless, the system is working correctly even if in an annoying manner. This is my only point, it is not a bug. It requires a change in requirements. Please read mikalh's post of January 27, 2015 who was the first as far as I can tell to argue in this discussion that this is not a bug.

I have been following this thread for a six weeks and have read every post and sometimes can't roll my eyes back in my head far enough at some of your comments. I am so tired of reading the debate of bug or not a bug and I am really tired of people trying to sound smart or prove others wrong with their reasoning in which they justify why the GMT appears or doesn't appear... or how the settings are wrong... or how its google calendar... I am not going to try to convince anybody of anything as I realize I can only change my own mind or opinion about something.

I will try to make one point- THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE CALENDAR APP ON MY IPHONE AND IPAD THAT ARE BOTH RUNNING ON THE IOS 8.1.3 OPERATING SYSTEM (by the way Whimsy Collective, I want you to clearly know that I was not compelled by your "vow" to state my operating system). Whether it is a bug or purposeful design I do not care, the bottom line is THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE CALENDAR APP ON MY IPHONE AND IPAD THAT ARE BOTH RUNNING ON THE IOS 8.1.3 OPERATING SYSTEM. I use exchange for work and Google calendar for my personal life and both are messed up... THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE CALENDAR APP ON MY IPHONE AND IPAD THAT ARE BOTH RUNNING ON THE IOS 8.1.3 OPERATING SYSTEM.

I am a very savvy tech user and know my way around technology with no fear or trouble. In my place of employment the IT guys often come and ask for my help to trouble shoot. I am tired of troubleshooting how to make my calendar work correctly. I am not interested in debating with anyone on a simple "work around" or "just remember to subtract 5 hours" or any other ridiculous suggestions. When I open my calendar and enter the time and date of an appointment it should remain in the time zone which I assigned it originally. I do NOT care about how or why it syncs with google or exchange nor do I need an explanation about programming issues and things are working how they are designed vs. how I expect them. If someone designed the calendar app to automatically add a different time zone in parentheses and then completely lose the correct time zone in the edit then they should be fired. Someone suggested that we just tolerate it because it is only in parentheses whats the big deal. I laughed out loud at that then I remembered 10 years ago when I carried my calendar book around how I would always write the actual time of my appointments then underneath, just for fun, I would write the time the appointment will be if I moved to Greenwich (sometimes I was really daring and I would write the time for Indonesia and Hawaii too)... Seriously... We are just supposed to accept this as okay and deal with it?

I have called and submitted tickets and all that jazz and have been told by apple support that it is a google problem... a settings problem... then "oh yes, we are aware of the issue and we are working to fix it... Please be patient... but why don't you just change everything to iCloud calendar..." UGH! I even signed that thing we are not allowed to mention on here because the post will be removed.

I close with this point... THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE CALENDAR APP ON MY IPHONE AND IPAD THAT ARE BOTH RUNNING ON THE IOS 8.1.3 OPERATING SYSTEM and Apple needs to fix it.

@Backgammoner: with all due respect, there is no way in **** that Apple intended the Calendar program to behave in the way that all of us are observing. Therefore this is "unintended behavior" and a bug by definition.

"If someone designed the calendar app to automatically add a different time zone in parentheses and then completely lose the correct time zone in the edit then they should be fired."

Totally agree.

Yes, the Microsoft Outlook iOS app was released today.... it is based on the Acompli iOS app -- which MS purchased a few months ago. Smart acquisition for Microsoft (kudos!).

So - I have the Outlook iOS up and running on my Iphone6 and iPad Air2 (all iOS 8.1.3) -- with FOUR (4) MS Exchange (Office365) accounts --- and everything is working fine on each device and across each device. No GMT "bug" issues whatsoever. And, no issues with my Mac O/S or Windows 7 computer clients (using Outlook and Apple Mail, plus Web Mail).

I ditched Apple iOS calendar app weeks ago... and now only use Calendars 5 (Readdle) or Micosoft Outlook for iOS for my calendar app.

If you are only an MS Exchange or Office365 user --- use should be happy (enough) with these two solutions --- until Apple gets it's act together and resolves the GMT Bug (yes - it's a BUG.... let's all stop wasting time debating this issue!).

Cheers

Absolutely, good definition:

"A software bug is an error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways."

You must agree that the system does not produce incorrect results. Editing an event in your local time zone or in GMT is equivalent. So, if you entered it in EST (say start time 10AM) but changed it in GMT (say from 3PM to 3:30PM) the system is behaving correctly. There is no bug in here. There is no incorrect result here, do you agree?

The problem is with the rest of the definition "...or unexpected..." and "...unintended..." you and I may have different points of view on what to expect and what is intentional. Therefore this part of the definition requires us to have a document in which we agreed on expectation and intentions. Since this reference document does no exist, at least not publicly, or is not pointed to in this discussion then we cannot decide if the behavior of the implemented system is buggy or not.