Comment by kruuuder
1 year ago
> The calendar thing is working correctly.
Only from a stubborn, technical perspective. It's obviously not working as intended for GP. It should be easy to create "local timezone" events on Apple devices, and it isn't.
In fact, I'm thinking of pretty much all my events in local timezones. A concert at 8pm. Meeting someone for a coffee at 2pm. Flight departure times. Taking pills at 7am in the morning. Having people in other timezones involved is the exception for me, not the default.
There are many ways how you could implement a nice UI for that, and Apple offers none.
It is possible on macOS with the Floating time zone: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/calendar/icl1035/mac#i...
This doesn’t look possible on the iOS/iPadOS Calendar apps.
Thanks for the link. Apple's language on this whole mess is of no help. First there's their use of "Turn on time zone support" which is meaningless. You'd think this would be the solution: turning it off and breathing a sigh of relief. But no; this does not stop the behavior.
As far as "floating," it says: "To keep the event from moving when you view a different time zone, choose Floating."
When I VIEW a different time zone? Does this also mean when I'm IN a different time zone?
Anyway... I will have to create a dummy "floating" appointment on my Mac before my next trip and see what the phone does with it when I get there. But it sure seems like this setting needs to exist on the mobile devices too...
In the macOS version of Calendar, “Time Zone Support” is the name of a feature in the Settings window. When you check that checkbox, twi things happen: - the event inspector adds a timezone selector the the Start and End date/time pickers - the window titlebar gains a timezone picker.
The timezone picker in the window titlebar defaults to your system’s current timezone. When you create an event, the start and end times for that event default to the window’s current timezone.
You can use the newly-revealed picker in the inspector to change the timezone of an event. There is a single picker that alters both the start and end time. If you set this to something other than the timezone chosen in the window’s titlebar, the event will move to reflect when it will occur in the window’s timezone.
I am personally convinced this is what people want 99% of the time, and I think it’s silly that you have to check a checkbox in Calendar Settings to get it. It’s fairly common to receive details for an event in another timezone, such as a conference call or vacation. I live with Time Zone Support enabled on all my Macs, and while I rarely touch the timezone picker in the titlebar I make frequent use of the timezone picker when setting the event details window.
There’s one special option in the event details timezone picker: “Floating”. This tells Calendar to always reckon the start and end times in the timezone selected in the window’s titlebar. So if you create an event that starts at 7am and set its timezone to “Floating”, the event will always be shown to begin at 7am even if you change your system’s timezone or the timezone in the titlebar. I don’t use this feature much, but it’s useful for plotting out your daily routine. If you go for at 6am every day, regardless of where you are on the planet, you can create a floating “Daily Run” event that starts at 6am and doesn’t shift as you travel.
The iPhone version of calendar is designed differently. There is no “Time Zone Support” checkbox on iPhone. The event details view always shows time zone pickers for both the start and end times. This lets you create an event with the start and end times specified in local times in different timezones. I use this feature for every single flight I take, and I always have to enter them on my phone because the Mac doesn’t let you set the start and end timezones independently.
But the iPhone doesn’t let you choose Floating in the time zone picker, so you can’t use it to create daily-routine events. Thankfully, all versions of Calendar preserve the data and behavior of events created on any platform, so you can create your Floating events in a Mac and your timezone-spanning flights on an iPhone and they will render as expected on the other device, including the Event Details window.
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Exactly. I was thinking through how I would want this expressed in the UI, and
Time zone: Local
was exactly what I came up with.
The absurd thing about Apple's approach is, as you point out, that it serves the tiny minority of use cases. Who the hell looks up the time zone of everything they're going to do when they're traveling around? I just want it to use the time shown on the phone!
Edit event -> tap the time -> time zone -> type the city name.
(No need to look up the timezone.)
I agree that calendar’s UI is a bit of a tire fire. One of Apple’s core UI design tenants is that you should be continuously surprised and delighted when you use iPhone, and then share your discoveries with friends to build up an Apple user community.
I don’t want the phone to surprise and delight me, or hide major features like a 1990’s microsoft excel easter egg.
For instance, why in the hell are “magnifier” and “scan + ocr document to pdf” not in the camera app?
"One of Apple’s core UI design tenants is that you should be continuously surprised and delighted when you use iPhone, and then share your discoveries with friends to build up an Apple user community."
Ha ha ha, I do remember this catchphrase and it so perfectly sums up what's wrong with a lot of Apple (and, to be fair, other) UI today. I want to get shit done, not play with an Advent calendar.
Friendly FYI: The word you're looking for is TENETS. Tenants would be renting space, and I haven't received any checks yet.
Actually, not true... those AAPL dividends might count.
> why in the hell are “magnifier” and “scan + ocr document to pdf” not in the camera app?
Because a lot of people intuitively think a camera is different to a magnifying glass or a scanner.
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TBH who enters their events manually? Most important events (flights, meetings, …) get on my calendar via invite (or ics download for eg flight) and have all pertinent timezone info set correctly
Id say 75% of the events in my personal calendar are doctors appointments for the family which were manually entered based on the reminder card that the receptionist handed me.
They are holding it wrong!
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