New Zealand Mac users missing DST patch
updated 03:55 pm EDT, Fri September 28, 2007
New Zealand DST problems
Apple has yet to issue a patch adjusting to a change in New Zealand's seasonal times, Mac users from the country complain. New Zealand's government has decided to shift its daylight savings switch ahead a week, moving from the previous date of October 1st; but without some sort of fix for Mac OS X, this will result in many computers displaying an inaccurate hour in the week between the old switchover and the new one. This in turn may throw off time-sensitive programs, such as iCal, producing inaccurate schedules and badly-timed application launches.
Apple has issued other timeshift patches well in advance of deadlines, such as one that corrected for an American schedule change earlier in the year. Anecdotes suggest however that New Zealand is not the only Pacific country to have had troubles, since while western Australia received a patch for its change, the upgrade was reportedly badly publicized and may not have been distributed through Software Update.
New Zealand coder Glenn Anderson has developed an unofficial patch for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.10, although it is warned that the code cannot reach all parts of the Mac OS, such as any Java or WebObjects material. Should Apple release an official patch, the Anderson solution should successfully be overwritten.
oh noes...
09/28, 04:41pm reply
its so hard to system prefs -> date & time. whatever whilst they do?
Bermy
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Oct 2006
yeah no s***
09/28, 05:24pm reply
just do it manually for a week. Oh no.
l008com
Professional Poster
Joined: Jan 2000
nz
09/29, 12:42am reply
just do it manually for a week
See that's the advantage of a mac, it just works....
except in NZ )-:
chucker
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2007
Re: yeah, no s***
09/29, 01:36am reply
just do it manually for a week. Oh no.
Of course, if you people understood the whole concept of time on computers, you'd know that by setting it manually causes the date/time to be wrong in GMT standards.
And why should they have to do it manually. Is it that hard to fix?
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
Already fixed?
09/29, 06:07am reply
From the output of "zdump -v NZ | grep 2007" it seems as though the change to DST is already planned for Sun Oct 7 (02:00 NZST => 03:00 NZDT).
dronkert
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2007
VERY misleading
09/30, 05:02am reply
The article states NZ has decided to "shift its daylight savings switch ahead a week, moving from the previous date of October 1st". First off, the data has never been Oct 1st (a Monday) - it was originally planned for Oct 7th. But per the new decision this past April, the new date will be "ahead a week", moving it TO Sept 30th.
Current Mac OS X versions appear to still indicate Oct 7, as dronkert indicated. Horribly-confusing article; but the intent behind it (the OS is wrong) is correct.
BDLatimer
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2005
Re: very misleading
09/30, 06:45am reply
Ah right, well indeed, it misled me...
dronkert
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2007
Change the offset
09/30, 12:52pm reply
Like Testudo says, manually changing the time on a modern Mac isn't a good idea, because it can cause all kinds of confusion in the file system.
However, the manual "fix" is to change the time offset - which isn't as easy as selecting "GMT +11" (or whatever is correct) on a Mac, you have to select a city that's in the timezone you want to be in.
ie, some of my machines are in Freetown, Sierra Leone, because I want them to be on GMT all the time.
And, what I really want to know is: how do you save daylight anyway!?
Clive
Mac Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Bad apple
09/30, 12:56pm reply
And just to add, this is just one of a long line of issues where Apple provides second rate support for international users. In the UK "Mail.app" describes British Summer Time as "DST", when the official abbreviation is "BST". Apple knows about this bug, but has yet to do anything about it.
Clive
Mac Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
i vote for...
09/30, 08:37pm reply
..."testudo' to join apple's board to keep 'em honest*!
i'm doubly surprised as i always though sir steve was NOT a 'close enough is good enough' kinda guy - alas, i guess that's what happens when you pitch your product to the windoze audience
*as much as i love 'em, they're starting to need it more and more : (
roberto
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2007