back to article iPhone users suffer summer appointment chaos

iPhone users are turning to Google for help as an incompatibility with Outlook shifts appointments by an hour instead of switching on daylight saving. iTunes version 9.1 currently can't cope with daylight saving time, shifting appointments by an hour or even a day as it struggles to cooperate with Microsoft Outlook. Given the …

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  1. Richard Gaywood 1

    Not the first time I've seen this

    A colleague of mine was travelling in the US in one timezone. He accepted a meeting request sent from a client in a different US timezone, which was booked into our Exchange server, running on GMT. He was less impressed when his iPhone woke him up for the meeting at 4am the next day! We never did figure out what broken timezone calculation had resulted in that particular time.

    I work on flight booking systems for a living; timezones are susprisingly tricky.

    1. Jon 52

      TIMEZONES

      Time zones are even trickeir whan the device itself moves, at least flight book people and airports stay still. I have ships moving accross the globe (crossing the dateline is fun) with local to ship time, local to port time and UTC.

      I can't wait for worldwide decimal time in UTC, just go to bed at 4am in USA and 8am in Australia.

  2. Daniel Bennett
    WTF?

    Is it?

    Really?

    Are you sure?

    I've really not had any of this... 9.1 and 3.1.2 .. theeen now i'm on 4.0 Beta1...

    Maybe i'm lucky!

  3. DEAD4EVER

    iphone users suffer apointment chaos

    well thats certainly different from apples side of things usally they get things right first time now the iphone is having syncing issues usally its microsoft who have problems huh and there loads of apple fanboys out there all shouting the odds saying apple is better this and that wrong apple is no different than microsoft sure they make nice glossy products but the fact remains there prices are extreme no wonder they havent got a high share in the market place. i for one wont be buying a iphone as there is plenty of alternatives out there not just apple thats all people think about thease days apple apple apple god its pathetic. hopefully some other mobile company can make a new big phone that beats the iphone either 3gs or upcoming rumord 4g. il be happy with a htc phone there phones are pretty impressive

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      why?

      did you bother with any full stops if you're going to leave out all the other punctuation?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        Why did you bother full stop?

        Why...?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      @DEAD4EVER

      I read as much as I could but then my head exploded with the pain of it. Nice rant.

      It's a 2-way street, this communications business. What makes you think it's Apple's fault more than Microsofts? My Windows mobile gear has never synced with Apple's stuff without 3rd party applications (unlike the other way around, iPhones and iPods will happily play with Windows).

  4. nichomach
    Jobs Horns

    "Apple will no doubt...

    ...fix the problem in the next iTunes release..."

    I love the starry-eyed optimism inherent in that statement, but why do I have the feeling that the fix'll be "Are you nuts? Why would we do that? Move to a different timezone!" *grin*

    1. Rattus Rattus

      "Move to a different timezone."

      "Not that big of a deal."

      Sent from my... etc etc

  5. Lou Gosselin

    Apple should fix that.

    Finger pointing aside though, DST is more trouble than it's worth. It should be boycotted, who's with me?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Boycotted?

      Are you sure you mean boycotted as it seems that is what Apple have decided to do in this 9.1 release?

    2. Mad Hacker

      DST should be boycotted

      I agree completely. When I was younger growing up in the States I thought DST was a stupid American thing like shunning the metric system. Then I started traveling internationally and found other countries do it to! I grew up in Arizona one of the few states that DOES NOT do DST. Everyone else needs to get on board and stop this DST madness. If you want to get up earlier, here's a tip, get up an hour earlier. Don't wait for the government to tell you when to get out of bed!

      1. GreenOgre
        Paris Hilton

        Walk a year in another man's timezone....

        ... before telling him how to live.

        Has the desert heat addled your brain?

        Come up north and try out life without DST. (Hint, the days get shorter in the winter, longer in the summer)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          WTF?

          @GreenOgre

          The days still get shorter in the winter and longer in the summer if you *do* have DST...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        There are some muppets...

        ...who want DST all year round in the UK, and even double DST in the summer.

        One such nutter is in the office I work in. Wants to enjoy more light in the evenings.

        Said nutter arrives at work an hour after me and, presumably, leaves an hour later too. Try explaining they could set their alarm earlier, which is effectively what they are wanting to force on the rest of the country, and they cant get their head round it.

        I'm only up this early as the other half doesn't have such flexible hours and has to get up that early anyway.

    3. Rattus Rattus

      Oh hell yes.

      The state I live in, under pressure from the business lobby, tries out DST every twenty years or so. We just recently gave it another three year trial. What an absolute pain in the arse it was, both on a personal level and the sheer number of support calls it generated (mostly Outlook-related), twice a year.

      At the end of the three years, we once again held a referendum to see if we should keep DST permanently, and once again the referendum gave a resounding "No!" I guess in another twenty years they'll be pushing for it again.

  6. Silver
    FAIL

    Doesn't work

    I rolled back to 9.0, replaced the itl file with a blank one (so the database would get re-created from the xml file) and then updated the two dll's as per the instructions.

    Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. I'm still stuck with all day events on Monday being shown on my iPhone on a Sunday :(

  7. Stone Fox
    Coat

    Apple.

    It just works.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Hardly surprising...

    ... when I continually get Outlook invitations like

    11:00-11:45 (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.

    Then I have to ask if they really want me to arrive 11:00 GMT (= midday BST), which is what the invitation says, or at 11am local time.

  9. max allan

    I blame Microsoft

    Microsoft still can't get it's head round the idea that BST is not GMT. Outlook will send appointments with the Subject of "10 AM GMT" and put them in the 10AM BST calendar slot.

    Does anyone at Microsoft listen? No, they don't.

    Do they listen to people saying "Make your OS look like OSX"? Yes, apparently they do.

  10. Matt_V
    Go

    Exchange Sync

    We've had this on 1 (out of about 20) of our sales guys as well, they sync directly with exchange (we didn't want to put itunes on their laptops) this particular user found that changing settings in the time zone support (settings > mail, contacts, calendars > time zone support right down the bottom) sorted it out...

  11. Dennis
    Boffin

    Re: Apple should fix that

    "DST is more trouble than it's worth. It should be boycotted, who's with me?"

    Excellent idea.

    But let's go one better and do away with all time zones. Everyone uses GMT.

    Then the UK works 9am-5pm, Europe 8am-4pm, New York 2pm-10pm and so on. No more worrying about what time to ring the US office .... I want to ring the LA office and I know they work 5pm-1am. Easy.

    1. Lou Gosselin

      Re: Re: Apple should fix that!

      Excellent catch, however your examples are still using AM/PM. Shouldn't we drop those conventions too?

      1. Wize

        But GMT is derrived from the UK

        They should be using UK conventions...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    If they need timezones ...

    They blew it.

  13. PsychicMonkey
    Jobs Horns

    are you sure...

    that Apple haven't just deemed that Daylight Savings Time broke their Terms & Conditions so removed it?

  14. Velv
    Jobs Horns

    Do Apple Listen ?

    Well they might not care about customers, but they do read and react....

    I read the forum mentioned in this article. There were comments from lots of people about Apple not caring, and taking no action, and contact being made with various journalists, etc.

    Since I found the forum from El Reg, I attempted to post the following (verbatim):

    (start quote)

    Now published on The Register

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/20/iphone_daylight_saving/

    Has anyone mentioned an American's four favourite words ?

    "Class" "Action" "Law" "Suit"

    In it's current state the product is not fit for purpose (given calendar functions a major selling point in the sales spiel on apple.com).

    (end quote)

    Apple decided this was:

    (start rejection reply)

    Speculation

    Off-topic or non-technical posts

    Non-constructive rants or complaints

    (end rejection reply)

    Nothing is speculation

    OK, it might not be technical, but it is certainly not off topic

    It is constructive (pointing out that journalists have now taken an interest), not a rant or complaint.

    Draw your own conclusions!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      RE: Do Apple Listen?

      "Well they might not care about customers, but they do read and react...."

      I notice you had NO information from the Outlook forums etc

  15. Stawarz
    Megaphone

    At last...

    ...the press has got wind of the issue to which many of us have been waiting over 2 weeks for acknowledgement from the guys at Apple.

    Will we see a fix soon, who knows!

  16. Steve Brooks

    bloody daylight savings, its all wank!

    Isn't it about time we stopped all tihs pansy arsed pissing around with time zones and daylight savings wank. If you want to get up an hour earlier get up a frigging hour early. Put all computers on 24 hour time using one central time standard, if software wants local time, the user can type in the current time and the software can adjust itself, but the ocmputer and all appointment and time sensitive programs should run on 24 hour central time, and I don't care what central, Greenwich, paris, even bloody Timbuctoo, but the sooner we stop changing the master time on our computers every time the bloody sun starts shining thee happier I'll be!

  17. peter_the_shark

    Flash Forward?

    Glad it's happening to others, and not just me. Thought I was suffering a localised flash forward!

    C'mon Apple, give us a fix... if you're hoping to win business customers, this kind of issue creeping past testing ain't going to help.

    Oh, and love the fact that some of the Apple fanbois are suggesting this is a Microsoft bug. Err, all working fine prior to iTunes update. Go figure.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    confused in Time Zone

    I have to say that time zone management never worked for me: what do you do when people send you invitation and their time zone is wrongly set?

    what are you supposed to do when you are moving from different time zone - I have found out that changing the time (as opposed to time zone) makes less problem, but it is still a pain.

    And this is on my computer only, or with my Windows phone - sorry no iPhone here...

  19. Andus McCoatover

    Have another crack at R&R101...

    It's the commentard once again who hasn't found the Shift key. At least he's found (I say, 'he' - no woman could be that daft) the little tiny dot on the lower right key of the keyboard that delineates a sentence. Occasionally.

    Oh, their/there/they're knowledge gives a bit more credence to your comment.

    Sarah, were you kipping to allow this muppet through?

    Move along, nothing to read of any worth.

    Tip, "DEAD4EVER". Either switch on your spell-checker or live up to your nick. FOAD is a better name here for you. Or, BRAINDEAD4EVER? You choose. Wisely.

    It's 'rumord' you're a moron.

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