Reader David Oglesby has inadvertently discovered a way to make your iPhone defy time itself. Here’s a copy of the letter he sent to Apple that explains the whys and wherefores:
I entered a repeating event for every Friday at 9:30 a.m. from September to May of next year. I then deleted the 11/23, 12/21, and 12/28 events. I don’t recall if I created this event on my computer or directly on my iPhone.When I switch my iPhone to Honolulu time (in Settings -> General -> Date & Time), these deleted events show up on my calendar. In addition, there is a time zone/daylight savings problem. Honolulu is 4 hours off of CST. These ghost events (and the events that I didn’t delete) show a 4:30 start time — 5 hours difference. When I created the event, Daylight Savings was in effect, so the start time is correct for the first 2 months (Honolulu does not observe Daylight Savings), but now that Daylight Savings is over, I go to rehearsal at 5:30 Honolulu time.
The same thing happens (deleted events appear, events have incorrect start/end times) when I set the time zone to Phoenix, which also does not observe Daylight Savings. This does not happen with Miami (deleted events stay deleted, they have the correct times) where Daylight Savings is observed.
I make this personal vow to you, readers. If Macworld agrees to pick up the expense, I vow to personally travel to the Aloha State so that I can get to the bottom of this problem. And I vow not to leave Hawaii until I figure out a solution — and quite possibly long after a solution is uncovered. You never know when these things might flare up again.
At any rate, if other readers have noticed the same thing — or even better, a fix — I’m sure that would almost be as helpful as my offer to fly to Hawaii on someone else’s dime. Almost.
My head was spinning just reading all of those variables. But then I took a course in college called, "Math for Poets", so there you go.
I'm just glad the Hawaii story problem didn't include a train leaving Honolulu at 3pm going 70 mph and a train leaving Chicago at 6pm going 80 mph...
I've had a similar issue with outlook meeting appointments created by a central time user while I am in eastern time. The calendar meeting shows up as central time (one hour before the actual meeting). It's only happened once so far but... I'm sure it will happen again before apple fixes it.
My wife and I have iPhones and we've been an hour early to a number of appointments since Daylight Savings Time ended. Some of the events were repeating, some weren't, and not all events entered under DST were affected. It is very frustrating not being able to trust the information in the iPhone calendar!
What about the Time Zone Support switch in the Date & Time settings? How do you use that anyway?
@John, you can set the Time Zone (as I described above) with Time Zone support on. If you turn it off, it uses the Time Zone of your current location (determined from the cellular network).
@Paul, are you using Tiger? I had problems with Outlook meetings (created in my time zone, in fact). That hasn't been a problem in Leopard.
Well, I guess that means I'll have to stay in Hawaii for my iPhone to work properly. Not a bad trade off. Nothing much to miss in the mainland anyhow. Besides, there's gonna be 3 apple stores within 2 miles of my house by next year. Paradise indeed ^__^