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

Well -- I see the Apple Community forum "police" were very busy last night --- removing / deleting all posts that mention the "p-word" -- citing a forum policy violation. 

It is interesting that Apple has the time, energy and resources to step into this forum thread and delete all posts that even refer to the "p-word" -- by my count, at least 7 posts related to the "p-word" topic have been deleted and disappeared overnight.  Talk about squashing a dialogue/debate.... about how to get an "bug" fixed!

While I am supportive of Apple Community forum policy/rules --- I think this recent enforcement of forum policies goes beyond the spirit of the forum.

Very sad and very disappointing.  If Apple was doing it's job LISTENING to it's customers and COMMUNICATING to the Community and taking ACTION to resolve this "bug" --- we wouldn't even have to get to the discussion of needing a "p-word" created/signed...

I think they have an automated bot that does it.  Happens WAY too fast be an actual human moderator.

In any case I noticed that several of the news story links on "that thing" got spaces inserted into them and don't work.  You should edit "that thing" and make sure all the links work.  Also include a link to the MacRumors story:

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/23/ios-8-gmt-calendar-bug/

I have provided links to "that thing" on the YouTube video, so if you search for "iOS GMT Bug" click on the YouTube video, you will see a link to "that thing" in the video description.

Let's see if this post gets deleted.  If id does, you be sure Apple IS monitoring this.  And it would be really disappointing to see that they have been paying attention to this thread all along and failed to step in and show any sort of leadership or responsiveness to their customers.

Thanks JG - I am on it.

Machine or Human.... it doesn't much matter.  The result is the same; people are unable to see the discussion/dialogue unfolding and make an informed decision on whether to participate in "that thing".

I would advise anyone who is interested in this thread to follow it by clicking the link at the top of this page and entering your email address. Posts that do not contain references to "that thing" have also been removed. That would seem to indicate human intervention.

Agreed. I opened a ticket when the bug was first identified. The support team confirmed troubleshooting by the Engineering team is in progress.

I do wish Apple would make a public statement.

So glad this is getting visibility by tech analysts from various news publications.

It has caused me a lot of pain!

This is a problem that I have seen ever since moving to iOS8. I had asked the same thing to Microsoft support forum (I am using Office 365), but they said this is an Apple's problem, as there is no setting on Exchange server side to change.

This is NOT a bug. While I agree that the behavior is a tad annoying at times, it is clear that the system is working exactly as intended - a bug would be behavior contrary to design. I will try to explain why:

I have two calendars added that are not iCloud calendars. One is an iCal file that I added manually, the other is a subscribed calendar. The manually added calendar (the 2014/15 NHL Schedule) was published in EST and the phone correctly imported the calendar and displays the events according to my local time zone. The subscribed calendar was published in GMT as are many of this type, yet again the events display correctly in my local time zone.

If I create an event in my local time zone then either travel to another time zone, or manually set my phone to another time zone, lo and behold the phone exhibits the same behavior - times are listed in my original time zone and editable in my original time zone (this is very handy if you are away on business but need to update an event for when you return to the office).

Google calendars store all events (evidently) in GMT and display them to the users according to their timezone setting on the website or in the appropriate app. Since iOS has no way of knowing to which time zone your Google account is set, it displays the events in local time but they are editable in GMT.

So, if this isn't a bug, what is it? Well, the community clearly desires a different behavior from the product and therefore this is a feature request or requirement. Unfortunately, bugs will take precedence over new features in future software releases so if Apple is aware that users are unhappy with this NORMAL behavior it may take a while before it is changed.

I sync my iPhone calendar with Google. When I create a new entry in the calendar and save it, the time zone changes to GMT. Even if I explicitly choose my local time zone before saving, this still changes after saving the entry.

How is this not a bug?

This was not the behaviour prior to iOS 8. Previously a created calendar entry would remain in the local time zone even when synching with Google.

So mikalh:  your claim is that Apple purposefully designed the Calendar to take appointments that users set up, and rather than keeping those appointments at the time the user selected, to switch those appointments to a completely different time zone, in some cases even placing this appointments on different days than the user entered them on?  And that this is "normal behavior" that users just don't like?  No other calendar in the world works that way, and I assert there's a good reason for that.

Let me ask you this:  if BMW designs a new car that, when you press the gas pedal, is causes the car to slow down, and when you press on the brake it causes it to accelerate....would you call that "normal behavior" since that is how the vehicle was "designed."  Sure all drivers of the car would claim this was a "bug" or defect, but you would simply say "no it's not a bug because that's how the car was designed" correct?

Does it hold any significance for you that Apple's own engineers have confirmed this is a bug in iOS?  I suppose they don't understand what a bug is either.

It's a bug in the following scenario:

Create at event with timezone +6 GMT. Start: 8am, Finish: 9am.

Click it to see and edit details.

Try to change start time to 1030am

iOS shows you start time as 2am !!.. So you have to calculate in GMT times what's the new time to start!  That's clearly not the desirable behaviour..

That's the only real-life-productivity implication I've seen so far.  That's easily workaround-able by editing graphically by drag and dropping the event in the calendar instead of entering the details..

A couple of posts ago I asked if there was any other real productivity implication besides that but I received no response..

(There's the display annoyance of showing gmt times in parenthesis but I can easily live with that)

Because that is how it is designed. Events are being changed into Google's default time zone for compatibility purposes. What you want is to be able to set the default time zone for your individual Google calendar to always show your local time zone, since this feature does not exist it is a user requirement NOT a bug.

OK.  Well I don't use Google....for anything.  I use Exchange.  So how exactly does your theory hold up in that case?   And what's your explanation for why no previous version of iOS exhibited this behavior even when syncing with Google?  For some reason, now, when nothing has changed at Google, Apple decided it would be better for users to have their appointments automatically re-assigned to different time zones even when they go in and explicitly tell iOS they want it in a specific time zone?

When a company "designs" a defective product, that doesn't mean it is "working correctly because that's how they designed it" it means it's defective.  Again Apple's own engineers have confirmed this is a BUG and that they are working on a fix for it.  What shall we argue about next?  Whether the world is flat or round?

I think you may be wrong that this is not a bug. When someone is in their home time zone and sets an appointment for 2:00 CST and the appointment shows up on your calendar 8 hours later which in many cases could be the next day and you miss your appointment that is a bug. Prior to the 8.0 release when you set an appointment for a specific time the appointment came up at that time that is how it use to work and that is what this group wants. Not being able to set an appointment for a specific time on your calendar and expecting it to come up at that time can not be the way this was designed that makes no sense.

But isn't it odd that this only affects Apple products? Why am I not seeing the same behaviour/problem when I use Google calendar for syncing my Asus NPFI or Nokia Lumia 1020? And why this only started around the time iOS 8 was launched?

I still see this as a bug. The behaviour of ignoring the time zone I select and putting all new entries in GMT is not correct behaviour. And it was working fine before.