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

Sid Plat, good theory re why Apple employees may not know about the problem, at least for a while though that doesn't mean Apple tech at higher levels shouldn't communicate & make them aware it exists. I'm not sure if I used google calendar long ago, i dont think so but not sure. Anyway for some years, I have only used the Apple calendar.  Yet suddenly after replacing my iOS 5 4gs with an ios 8 phone, I began having this crazy confusing messed up GMT problem. Called apple support, was told to do a factory reset on my phone. That made no sense to me so I was unwilling to go through all that trouble & risk. I came to these forums. Unlike other people with the GMT I also had two other weird & serious calendar problems that started at the same time, one was that every new calendar entry gave me an alert 30 minutes before the event, even though I did not choose any alert for the event, and in Settings, it was set to default to NONE! But Calendar was somehow somewhere programmed to default to a 30 minute alert. Tell me that's not an iOS bug. & the other problem that started at the same time as the GMT problem is that suddenly none of my events were syncing with iCloud. No backup of my calendar. An urgent problem. Somewhere in the posts on this thread, someone mentioned that there might be some relationship to the Default Calendar setting in Settings. I had made no changes in my calendar settings when I changed to the new phone. I didn't even know there was a default calendar setting. When I looked at those settings, I found that my default calendar was the user name for my gmail address, which was/is my Apple ID, for some years. The only other option for default calendar were the various icloud calendars such as Work, Family, etc. I found that if I changed my default calendar to one of those instead of the one related to my gmail address, all three of my calendar problems went away, permanently. Since I have no real need to keep my gmail address user name as my default calendar, I changed it to an iCloud calendar & no more problems.  How can this be caused by anything but an iOS bug? It can't. My daughter has always used the mac.com iCloud calendar as the default, without any awareness of this setting. She has never experienced the GMT problem & is unaware of it. So for those who can function just using the iCloud calendar as default, this wont be a problem. But in my case, I wasnt even using a third party calendar, I was just using the same calendar default I've used for years, & it was related to my Apple ID which is a gmail address, & suddenly that is no longer acceptable to the iOS

Hi, kmlv

I'm curious to know what you mean by "steps I have to take to keep my calendar straight".. The GMT bug is clearly there and Apple's response has been AWFUL, but I think your problem may be different and resolved without waiting for this apple fix..

You may be able to help me with my question:

What are the productivity hits for users because of this bug? Aside from the fact that iOS calendar shows the GMT time between parenthesis?  I mean, while that GMT time being shown is an annoyance, I always have the events in the right spot in the calendar.. even when moving across timezones..

PS.  This bug happens with all iPhone's including 6 and 6+

I wasn't aware that this was happening on 6 and 6+. Thank you for the info. My issues are the GMT issues, as it did not exist previous to four months ago, when I did an iOS update. I've been through every configuration and setting possible and the challenges remain. When I set a meeting with a different time zone from where I am physically present, I have to add the meeting, close the event and go back into the meeting to change the time zone from GMT. Otherwise, my meeting times are not right. I travel globally and calendaring my meeting and flight times has never been a problem. Trust me, this is a recent iOS update issue.

Ok folks.... it looks like perhaps this is going to be fixed with the release of iOS 8.2:

http://bgr.com/2015/02/02/apple-ios-8-2-beta-5-released/

Beta 5 was seeded to developers today and the release notes indicate:

"Fixed in beta 5 3rd party calendar sync does not work in this beta"

I sure hope Apple doesn't delete this post due to discussion betas etc.  I got this information from one of many articles published publicly today.

Don't let this lull you into a false sense of security.  Keep up the pressure on Apple.  There's no guarantee they got this fix RIGHT....but at least they are trying.

If there is anyone out there that is running the 8.2 Beta and can confirm whether this fix works, that would be just swell   If I can figure out how to install the beta version I will report back on this.

You need to be a registered iOS developer to get access to the beta.  Google "iOS Dev Center" for details how to become a developer for a membership fee of circa $100.00 a year.  My reading of the line you quote from the release notes published on the bgr.com site is that the issue was not fixed, it says "....sync does not work in this beta"

The release notes for Beta 4 said:

"3rd party calendar sync does not work in this beta"

The release notes for Beta 5 say:

"Fixed in beta 5 3rd party calendar sync does not work in this beta"

The substantive new text being "Fixed in Beta 5" which appears to suggest this is perhaps "Fixed in beta 5."  Why add text that specifically says "Fixed in Beta 5" to the Beta 5 release notes if they didn't "fix" anything?

ok, let's hope so.

Dude I will gladly pay $100 to become a "developer" and get rid of this a few months in advance   If it means I can directly report other bugs to Apple that would be an added bonus, although I am not experiencing any other major ones at this point.

I do not recall the Terms and Conditions binding a developer and if you are allowed to disseminate what you learned from a beta.  I would suggest you read the T&C if you decide to proceed with becoming a "developer".  Also, be mindful that it is a beta and you expose your iPhone to a certain extent by using a beta release.

All excellent points.  If I do it it would be for my own advanced use of the beta version.  I read the agreement earlier and they are specific about what you can and can't discuss.  In the meantime there are a bunch of people busy discussing the beta over at MacRumors.  I think if you follow their thread you will eventually get cinformation about this bug being fixed or not.  I have inquired with some other sources as well   I think we'll know soon enough whether this is fixed in 8.2 or not.

FWIW:  I am usually reluctant to install any "beta version" of anything because I am highly concerned about bugs etc.  In this case Apple's public release is so buggy that I don't consider that a risk!!!

Perfect. After deleting and adding back all accounts, shut down phone, restarted, and all synced. Thank you, HofstraJet

I don't want to jinx myself but all of a sudden I am not getting the GMT error when adding an appointment on my iPhone. It's syncing fine with Google calendar.  I've changed nothing recently. I will test a few more times to see if its an anomaly, but so far so good. Maybe someone fixed something. Could someone else confirm this?

My guess is that your user account was migrated back to a server that has its clock set to the same time zone your device's clock is set to.  Accounts get migrated from one set of physical hardware to another automatically from time to time as part of most large ISP's load-balancing operations.  Many people had this GMT Bug show up on their devices....without them doing anything....as mysteriously as it has now just disappeared from yours.  Load balancing would easily explain both scenarios.

Also you know what they say...a problem that goes away on its own can come back on its own.  I hope yours never comes back.

Nothing happened that I know of (of course I don't really understand all this user account stuff). All I know is that my email and calendar accounts are part of an Outlook PST file stored on my computer). That is why I use the Google calendar to sync my appointments to my Apple devices. I'm not disagreeing that something changed, I just don't know what would have changed (nothing on my end). I was thinking that maybe Apple and Google got together and worked this out somehow, but then again maybe not......

Same is true here.  Events are handled correctly, no more GMT anywhere.  My iPhone syncs correctly with Google Calendar.  I made no change whatsoever in the settings on my iPhone or in Google in recent days. 

Magic!!! Voila.