NZ Daylight Savings Problems

NZ Daylight Savings Problems
Mac Tip #308/26-Sept-2007

We have a problem: on 30 September 2007 New Zealanders put their clocks forward by an hour. Nothing unusual about this, except that it’s a week earlier than usual. Daylight Savings will also run longer than it has in the past:

“From [2007], Daylight Saving will run for a period of 27 weeks. It now commences from the last Sunday in September, when 2.00am becomes 3.00am, and ends on the first Sunday in April the following year, when 3.00am becomes 2.00am.”

In the past, while we worked our way through the house, office and car resetting everything that has a clock in it, we could relax in the knowledge that at least our Macs would sort themselves out, and update their clocks automatically.

Not this year: Apple have failed to update the system software to recognise the changed dates.

Apple have issued a Knowledge Base article to tell us what to do.

But there’s a wider problem that affects not just Kiwis, but anyone who has any dealings with us, as David Empson explains:

• If you do anything involving international time zones, such as talking to people overseas or bidding on eBay auctions, you will need to rely on an independent world clock instead of the computer, or remember that your computer is an hour fast for everywhere else in the world.
• The same problem applies in reverse for anyone overseas with a Mac who needs to know what time it is in New Zealand. If their system is not patched, they will think the time in New Zealand is an hour earlier than it actually is.”

David’s article is comprehensive, with a great deal more information than these two points. He mentions email, web servers, databases, sharing documents, calendars.

There are three courses of action open to us:

1. Do nothing — the time on the computer will be an hour wrong during two separate weeks.
2. Follow Apple’s instructions — the time on our computers won’t match the time some others believe should be on our computers.
3. Download and apply a small, free piece of software called a patch, made available by local Kiwi programme Glenn Anderson. It won’t solve all the possible problems, and doesn’t work for everyone.

I haven’t yet decided what to do and am not in a position to make a recommendation here. I suggest you read the three pages I’ve linked to in this Tip and make up your own mind.

Whichever course of action you take, you need to be vigilant. Watch out with any activity that involves other computers: email, web, backups, sharing files and so on.

I’m still hoping that Apple may release a software update between now and Sunday that will sort out the problem. It doesn’t seem likely.

Perhaps we should all simply take a week off, shut down the computers, find a warm spot and a good book…

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