iPhone Calendar.App and TimeZones

Question

Is there a way to make the iPhone's Calendar App support timezones with appointments, or is there an alternative App that has multiple timezone support? I have a friend with an iPhone 4 (4.2.1) who travels around quite a bit and always struggles to book appointments with people when he's outside of his home country, the U.S.

The conversation might go something like this:

[The scene is a New Zealand Beach on a Sunny January 5th]

"Let's met for lunch a 2pm, sushi, my shout"

"Sweet, so, 2pm new zealand time is 12pm yesterday american time, so I'll put it in my iCal at 12pm yesterday"

He needs iCal to be smart enough to adjust to the timezone of the country he is in. His iPhone does figure out local time from his telco and adjust that when he enters a new country.

Answer 1

Both iCal on Mac OS and Calendar on iOS have timezone support where you can tell it what timezone to use to show your calendar. It didn't seem clear which you were asking about, so here's how to enable and use it on both.

On iCal on Mac OS, it is located at:

"iCal" menu -> "Preferences..." -> "Advanced" tab -> "Turn on timezone support"

Once enabled there, your iCal window will have a menu on the right top that allows you to select the timezone to use.

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On Calendar on iOS, it is in the system preferences at:

"Mail, Contacts, Calendars" -> "Time Zone Support" all the way at the bottom

You can turn it on there and select the timezone in the selection below the toggle.