Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), iCal and MobileMe

For me this problem is a ‘show-stopper’ for which I need to find a fix – urgently. I know everything with iCal and MobileMe was working before the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but now it isn’t.

I have reported the problem to Apple, and hopefully they will get a fix out soon.

The problem is highly reproducible…

I have a rather complicated calendar that I publish via MobileMe with no ‘titles’, so people can see when I am free, but not what I am doing. Under 10.6 the publication goes OK, and the file can be downloaded from MobileMe and re-imported in to iCal with no problems. The calendar is also visible when logged in to the MobileMe site. However, if the calendar is accessed via a http://ical.me.com/username/calname type link the page will not display and will report an error – see http://www.me.com/not_found/. If the webcal://ical.me.com/username/calname type link is used the file will download and display in iCal with no problems. The file will also display OK in Google Calendar.

To explore this further I created a much smaller iCal file that only contained a couple of weeks of appointments, and some repeating events. Again the file appeared to publish OK under 10.6, but it still gave an error if accessed by the http://ical.me.com/username/calname type link. The file could be downloaded and would import OK in to iCal.

Interestingly, when I imported the file in to iCal running under 10.5.8 it loaded OK, and when published to MobileMe the file could be accessed via a http://ical.me.com/username/calname style link with no errors. All very odd.

The fact that an iCal file can be created so easily, and can be published, and work with 10.5.8, but not with 10.6 suggests it is a 10.6 problem.

One final thought. There is an outside chance that the problem is with MobileMe and not 10.6, or just my MobileMe account….

Apple have said they will call me back on Monday. I have sent them the new ‘mini’ file, so hopefully they will be able to get to the bottom of this quickly.

Watch this space…..

Update: Tuesday September 1, 2009 – The problem is caused by ‘all-day’ events. Move all the ‘all-day’ events from the calendar you are trying to publish to a new calendar, and then republish the old calendar. This should fix things until Apple comes up with a solution.

Update: Friday September 4, 2009 – Comment below seems to solve the problem – run iCal in 32 bit mode (see this post for more details)

Update: Saturday September 5, 2009 – The solution to the problem I posted yesterday does not work, all the time. Turning on 32 bit mode appears to allow the calendard to be accessed in some situations and not others. (More details)