Hey FT!

Not sure if anybody of you have this problem but as you know iCal (and pretty much any other calendar program) is hell to work with especially if you travel frequently outside of your local area. I have scoured the Apple discussion forums including various websites that discuss the problem.

The websites often presented with such non-pragmatic or complicated solutions that are not useful for daily use. However the Apple forums indicate that if you have Time Zone Support (TZS) enabled (set to your local time zone) and use the "Floater" feature when setting up appointments (set to match the destination time zone) then iCal along with the notifications/alerts will work flawlessly. As you return from your trip your phone will sync to your local time and your local appointments will continue as planned without any further hassle.

(For those that are not familiar with TZS, it basically does not sync your calendar items with your clock despite traversing across multiple time zones. If it is disabled then your calendar will sync with the time zone you are in.)

I have yet to test this in the field however since the FT appears to have frequent flyers (and since Apple products are somewhat ubiquitous) I am wondering if they have tried the aforementioned solution or if they have come up with their own solution?

Your approach sounds solid. But there is no way to set "floating" as the default time zone for a new event. So you'd have to remember to modify each event as/after you create it, which is painful and prone to failure.

I don't understand the problem. If I set an appointment in my phone at 2pm when I'm in New York, then if I fly to Chicago that same meeting will show in my phone at 1pm. Is this not the behavior you want?

I'm not sure if this is serious or sarcastic. I've played around endlessly with the settings and have finally come to a method which works only vaguely. I keep time zone support on and set it to my home time. This seems to mean that the machine does not automatically change the times of all of my appointments when I travel. However when I enter appointments automatically (eg airline flights directly from the email confirmation or the app), these come in at the incorrect time and all need manually changing.

Technically, it's the right behavior due to the time zone differences however when people are referring to appointments in a different state/time zone they are usually referring to the destination time zone. In your case, if the appointment is set at 2 pm in NY with alerts scheduled 30 minutes prior to 2 then as you travel/fly to Chicago you will actually arrive early to your meeting and wonder if it was canceled.

Let's say you live in LA, you have a meeting in NYC at 3:30 PM (in NYC), the said meeting is added to iCal in LA, and you are one that highly depends on the notifications/alerts. With TZS off and without the floater setting, your meeting will now move to 6:30 PM as you travel east (when in reality the appointment is still at 3:30 PM EST). Inevitably you will be late to this meeting.

I wouldn't say it's exactly painful, but more of an inconvenience to the end user. It's just an extra couple of clicks/swipes.

So you create the meeting at 12:30 when you're in LA, then hop on your plane. The meeting is at 12:30 in LA and at 3:30 in NYC. You create appointments in the time zone you're currently in. What's the problem?

I guess it would be nice if they included a time zone setting to create individual meetings in (thought this was in there but just looked and it isn't), but it's never been a big deal to me.

OK, now I'm confused.

I use iCal and have at times set appointments for a different time zone. For instance, my home time zone is EST. When I go overseas to Asia and have appointments set for say HK, when I set it up on iCal, click the HK time zone. Say 10 am HK time for May 17th. And let's for argument sake, say my wife has doctor's appointment on May 17th, 10 am EST.

When I land in HK, my clock is automatically set to local HK time. At May 17th, 10 am [or earlier, depending on the alerts set up], my alarm sounds to remind of same. My wife's doc appointment for same but EST would not result in reminder until May 17th 10 pm HK time [since HK is 12 hours ahead of EST].

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I have TZS turned off and, my items to my calendar based on my home time zone and if need be adjust the time on an out of time event to correspond to my current time zone so that when I arrive at the new time zone, the even is at the correct time (i.e. i have a mtg in NY at 3pm so I enter it on my calendar as noon and when I arrive in NY, it adjusts itself to 3pm). The one thing I don't adjust however is flight information/itineraries as I download those from United and they default my home time zone and change accordingly when I travel

Exactly what I do. Not sure why the OP doesn't like this approach. It's always seemed the simplest to me.

Well the floating time zone thing is pretty cool. I haven't done it, but presumably you'd set the appointment time once and never have to adjust it. It's Monday, you live in San Francisco, and you have a 3pm call (Pacific time) on Friday. So you set the event for 3pm and the time zone zone of the appointment to "floating". On Tuesday, you decide to travel to NYC on Wednesday. When Friday arrives, you have a 6pm event waiting for you. No review of existing events required.

Thanks for the re-assurance ^

i do that too -- set my appointments for my home time zone. Google Calendar tries to be smart about it, and confuses me. It seems to work this way, like goalie said. On the Mac and iCal too...

There's a time zone setting in the phone. You probably want to make sure it is enabled.