Google Calendar Bug on Mac OS X

This was really surprising that Google missed this. Apple always surprises me when it doesn’t provide basic computer features and when it does do so then it is hailed as ‘magic’ or some other kind of break through. Meanwhile, other operating systems have been providing that feature for decades. Some examples are:

– Spaces on OS X, well having multiple screens has been provided by solaris and linux for years and years
– Multithreading on iphone. This is such an old concept and is a highly studied and solved problem. It was introduced first with the earliest preemptive kernels. Why is it so new on iphone? Maybe someone in the marketing department knows.

Anyway, I digressed. The bug is that Google Calendar relied on local OS to see what time it is. Normally this would be fine. But when travelling across timelines it caused a problem. I went from the East coast to the West and while I do have internet here, OS X did not bother to update the clock by subtracting 3 hours (though Windows XP would have, I have not used Win7 but I imagine it does too). Now my google calendar events started alerting me to events based on my computer clock which is 3 hours ahead of what it should be. And for a few seconds I entered panic mode that missed my events for last 3 hours till I noticed the issue :).

Google Calendar should go to a time server for current time when an internet connection is available. They don’t even have to maintain one, just use the one provided by US Navy which is the official one anyway. If there is no internet connection available then it is a harder problem. But at least solve the the former of the two use cases.

I have updated my OS X clock manually and things are in order once again. Thanks for reading.
* I know you can set the clock to update automatically but why isn’t it checked to true by default. Who wants an inaccurate clock. Plus, the bug is not in OS X it is in Google Calendar.