Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Camelot · Sep 11, 2002, 01:53 PM

Wouldn't you think that if the iCal developers went to the trouble of customizing the dock icon to show the current date, they'd at least bother to make sure it updated at midnight?

When I first launched iCal (yesterday), I was pleasantly surprised to see the dock icon display Sept 10. That's one of the nice touches that turn ordinary apps into extraordinary apps.

However, midnight came and the icon still said Sept 10. Sleep the system and wake up, and it still says Sept 10.

Quit the app and relaunch it and the dock icon now says Sep 11...

For any calendaring app to be truly useful, it has to be easily accessible at any time - and that means always running in the background. Having to quit the program and relaunch it once a day defeats the purpose.

Oh well, there's always iCal 1.1, I guess...

C.J. Moof · Sep 11, 2002, 01:56 PM

heh- you prettymuch wrote the post I had in mind. So yeah- what he said!

Pretty lame to look at the calendar in the dock and have it claim it's yesterday... DesktopCalendar got that right months and months ago.

Adam Betts · Sep 11, 2002, 02:07 PM

Strange, mine changed at the midnight.

Anomalous · Sep 11, 2002, 02:08 PM

Maybe Apple didn't anticipate that people would be up all night playing with iCal.

Rickster · Sep 11, 2002, 03:11 PM

yeah, mine changed at about midnight too. I think it's rather silly though that only the dock icon changes, and not the app icon displayed in alert panels and such. (of course, it makes perfect sense, though, since other apps that want to change their dock icon, like Mail and OmniWeb, probably don't want little badges in all their alert panels.)

gorickey · Sep 11, 2002, 03:57 PM

I am personally glad iCal doesnt install a daemon of some sort or other background process to run constantly to update something as simple as an icon...a simple restart of the app takes a few seconds...easy enough for me.

C.J. Moof · Sep 11, 2002, 04:04 PM

Pttthh. I expect a "supercomputer" to be able to tell me what the day is w/o me quitting and restarting an app.

Hrm.... my non-updating icon was on a powerbook, sleeping at midnight. I'd be interested to know if the ones that updated were sleeping or not.

Spirit_VW · Sep 11, 2002, 04:05 PM

The icon updated at midnight on my Power Mac G4 533, but it didn't seem to on my iBook SE 366. Odd.

MojoRising022 · Sep 11, 2002, 05:03 PM

Stupid question...does you iCal icon reset to July 17th when you restart?

boardsurfer · Sep 11, 2002, 05:07 PM

Mine does - while the app is starting up, the icon shows 17th of July. Then after a few seconds, it updates to the correct date.

schep · Sep 11, 2002, 05:18 PM

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Strange, mine changed at the midnight.

Was your computer on and iCal running?

Mine didn't update and was asleep @ 12:00 iCal not running

Nexus5 · Sep 11, 2002, 06:05 PM

My icon switched to 12 just 5 minutes ago.
I was able to "see" it switching.

nexus5

Camelot · Sep 12, 2002, 12:21 AM

Originally posted by C.J. Moof:
Hrm.... my non-updating icon was on a powerbook, sleeping at midnight. I'd be interested to know if the ones that updated were sleeping or not.

My system (PowerBook) was on, active and not sleeping and the icon did not change. My system is rarely asleep at midnight

I did try putting the system to sleep after midnight in the (vain) hope that it would update the icon upon awakening, but no. Quitting seems to be my only option.

::maroma:: · Sep 12, 2002, 12:45 AM

2 questions:

1) For those that had the icon switch at midnight: was iCal running?

2) For everyone: what build(v) are you running?

I will test mine at midnight tonight. I am running v400.

Miniryu · Sep 12, 2002, 01:11 AM

Originally posted by boardsurfer:
Mine does - while the app is starting up, the icon shows 17th of July. Then after a few seconds, it updates to the correct date.

Yup. Sho 'nuff mine said July 17th when I began reading this thread. Since then I launched the application and it has changed to the 11th.

::maroma:: · Sep 12, 2002, 03:02 AM

Well, it's 12:01 and it still says the 11th. iCal was not running. It changed to the correct date when I opened it.

Subzero Diesel949 · Sep 12, 2002, 03:06 AM

Hmmm...mine updated.

Ibson · Sep 12, 2002, 03:16 AM

Originally posted by ::maroma:::
Well, it's 12:01 and it still says the 11th. iCal was not running. It changed to the correct date when I opened it.

Applications have no way to update their dock icon if they're not running.

Adam Betts · Sep 12, 2002, 03:29 AM

Originally posted by Ibson:

Applications have no way to update their dock icon if they're not running.

Congratulation, we got a winner here!

Yeah, app don't have any unique access to dock if not launched. It HAVE to be launched in order to communicate with the dock.

After further testing, iCal will change the date 5 min after midnight... Not so bad

Gee4orce · Sep 12, 2002, 04:04 AM

Originally posted by gorickey:
I am personally glad iCal doesnt install a daemon of some sort or other background process to run constantly to update something as simple as an icon...a simple restart of the app takes a few seconds...easy enough for me.

Err - surely it already does. Otherwise, how else can it post an alert for an appointment ?

seb2 · Sep 12, 2002, 04:33 AM

gee4orce is right, check your console log:

2002-09-12 10:05:36.214 iCal Helper[347] Launch of helper planned at : 09/12/02 11:05:36

i get this every hour and other people do, as well.

brachiator · Sep 12, 2002, 06:47 AM

Originally posted by seb2:
gee4orce is right, check your console log:

2002-09-12 10:05:36.214 iCal Helper[347] Launch of helper planned at : 09/12/02 11:05:36

i get this every hour and other people do, as well.

Right, but what does this mean for the update of the dock icon?

Or, along the same line, for the blue-highlight of today's date-column (in week view, which I happened to be in)?

I put my powerbook to sleep before midnight, and awoke it after 3 a.m. Not only did the dock icon not update to 9/12 between about 3:05 and 3:30, but neither did the highlight of today's date in week-view.

The highlight moved when I re-selected Calendar>Go To Today, but the dock icon required a restart of iCal to update...

Maybe the daemon only runs once per hour? The "launch of helper" line appears in the console about once per hour...

This raises further questions, though, because the last pre-sleep appearance of the announcement in my console log is at 22:51 yesterday, announcing a helper launch at 23:51. Well, by 23:51 the computer had already been put to sleep... There is no mention of the helper being launched until I restarted iCal at 03:33 this morning. So the helper doesn't persist during sleep or something?

Here are the entries:

"2002-09-11 22:51:29.767 iCal Helper[1209] Launch of helper planned at : 09/11/02 23:51:29"

*** then, sleep around 23:10, reawaken at around 03:10 on 9/12, with a restart of iCal about 03:33:

"2002-09-12 03:33:00.904 iCal[461] Launch of helper planned at : 09/12/02 04:33:00"

LightWaver-67 · Sep 12, 2002, 08:10 AM

I've done a search, and It didn't turn-up any results here, so I'll bring it up in this thread:

How many of you have the "666" bug with iCal...?

I call it that, because for me, it is basically jumping-ahead by 6 characters for the dock-icon display of the month. Where it SHOULD be displaying:

SEP

It is instead displaying:

YKV

Which happens to be 6-characters ahead on each letter. Cannot get it to display correctly... contacted Apple... we'll see how it pans-out.

walrusjb · Sep 12, 2002, 09:07 AM

YKV showed up for me, too, until I de-activated the Type1 version of Helvetica Neue - apparently the system version is used.

Once I deactivated, it showed September. I was trying al lthe while to figure out which country YKV was the abbreviation for September and why I was localized to there

mishap · Sep 12, 2002, 09:37 AM

Originally posted by walrusjb:
YKV showed up for me, too, until I de-activated the Type1 version of Helvetica Neue - apparently the system version is used.

Once I deactivated, it showed September. I was trying al lthe while to figure out which country YKV was the abbreviation for September and why I was localized to there

Wow. interesting bug. I'm getting YKV too, but there is no way i'm disabling my Type1 version of Helvetica Neue for Apple's version. I guess i can look at YKV for now.

::maroma:: · Sep 12, 2002, 01:38 PM

Originally posted by Ibson:

Applications have no way to update their dock icon if they're not running.

Ah ha! Of course. That just makes too much sense. Thanks for the tip.

Camelot · Sep 12, 2002, 02:27 PM

Well, my Dock icon and blue 'today' highlight just changed. I didn't notice the exact time it changed but it was somewhere close to 11am, Pacific time.

I was working on the machine until well past midnight and put the system to sleep overnight.

I purposely left the app running when it work up this morning, just to see when/if it would update.

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone will accept my iCal date as a reason for being so late to meetings, et al.

There's nothing in my console log regarding iCal anywhere around that time. In fact, my most recent iCal helper messages are:

2002-09-11 18:00:04.270 iCal Helper[8610] Launch of helper planned at : 09/11/02 19:00:04
2002-09-12 11:18:56.788 iCal Helper[8968] Launch of helper planned at : 09/12/02 12:18:56

There's nothing between 6pm and 11:18am, and the 11:18am is well after the icon changed.

krove · Sep 12, 2002, 03:00 PM

Hmm...something odd happened my iCal on the iBook.

Check it out:

I left iCal open so the date would roll, but it never did, and Wed, Sep 12 is still the highlighted date in all the views. A simple restart of the app fixed it, but nonetheless strange...