iPhone's iCal icon displays correct date, Mac OS X's still doesn't

While the iPhone signifies a massive leap ahead in mobile phone technology, it also has apparently leapt ahead of its big brother Mac OS X in a few key areas. Since iCal's debut in Apple's darling desktop OS, it has (to my knowledge) never displayed the correct date in the Dock; it's always been set on July 17th until you actually start iCal which causes it to reflect the proper date. The iPhone, on the other hand, must have received some spit and polish from the OS X engineers, because its iCal (or is it officially called Calendar?) displays the proper date every day, even if you don't start the app. In a way this makes sense, because virtually every mobile phone's home screen provides easy access to the time and date, so Apple had to get this right. Still, it would be nice if iCal in Mac OS X could catch up to its baby brother and do something as advanced as display the proper date in a Dock icon.

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While the iPhone signifies a massive leap ahead in mobile phone technology, it also has apparently leapt ahead of its big brother Mac OS X...

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Stevie C

I simply by chance installed iConiCal tonight to see how well it works, then found it didn't change the date at all! It still reads the 17th July!
( What luck, I'll just have to wait until tommorow to see. )

July 16 2007 at 7:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

joey r

Now if they could make the weather icon on the iPhone show the right weather.

July 05 2007 at 5:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Klink

[)amien's right, there doesn't need to be Daemon running all the time, only at startup when the OS checks the date. If it sees that the icon hasn't been updated today, it changes it once.

July 03 2007 at 2:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

MSF

I'm sure they could make it so it always displayed the proper date.... if you didn't have a problem with iCal constantly consuming your RAM no matter what. The calendar on the phone is always running most likely. iCal is not.

If you really want the proper date displayed that badly, have iCal started at login.

July 03 2007 at 10:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josh

For a very short time (was it only 10.2?) you could open iCal, it would display the correct date, and when you closed it, the date would stay.

July 03 2007 at 3:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joseph

I agree with #8. iPhone is running Leopard..so the desktop version will also reflect this change.

July 02 2007 at 11:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Edward

The iCal date is a bit of a tradition in the OS X world, I was told.

The reason it displays July 17 every day until you physically open the application is an homage to the application itself - it was released on July 17 at Macworld Expo in 2002.

I can't believe in this day and age of the Apple cult nobody has mentioned that.

July 02 2007 at 10:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

matt

of course that's not perfect, but it is LESS annoying...

July 02 2007 at 10:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

matt

On my OS X machine I have the iCal Dock icon modified, so that when it is not running it shows a blank calendar... then once it starts up it shows the correct date like it should.

July 02 2007 at 10:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom

Funny, my iCal icon is right once a year.

July 02 2007 at 8:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply