There was no mention of changes to iCal in the release notes. However, preliminary test with all-day events in a calendar (and it was these all day events that were preventing the calendars being viewed once published – post 1, post 2 and post 3), with iCal running in either 32 bit, or 64 bit mode, seem to work.

Fingers crossed that the problem has been fixed.

Yesterday I received a solution for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), iCal and MobileMe Problem from Stuart (see earlier post) as a blog post comment.

I followed the advice, and tested it, and it all worked for me, and I was able to add back the all-day events to my calendar and it could be viewed on the web. This morning I went to check that the calendar was still accessible and the ‘error’ was being returned. I removed the all-day events and the problem was solved….

So, bottom line. Still don’t have a fix!

UPDATE – within 10 minutes of posting this the original blog post on a possible fix received an email from Bob saying that the fix works for him.

THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK IN ALL CASES

If you run iCal in 32 bit mode then it is possible to have all day events in iCal. To get it to run in 32 bit, quit iCal (if running), find it in the Applications folder, cmd-I to open information and click on ‘Open in 32-bit mode’. Restart iCal, and if it contains all-day events it should now publish OK.

The iCal information window

THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK IN ALL CASES – see this post

Picked up this information on a 10.6 discussion at Apple. Followed the message and I can confirm that it is all day events that cause the problem. I published a calendar with one event, worked fine. Added an all-day event (no start and no stop time), wouldn’t work. Removed the all-day event, problem solved….

PhotoGPSEditor is an easy to use meta-data editor for photo files, plus it can match data from GPS (gpx or NMEA) files.

With PhotoGPSEditor you can add location and summary details to a photo file. Location information consists of latitude and longitude data, as well as town, area/region, and country. This can be added automatically by matching up photos with GPS (gpx or NMEA) file track data, manually (just type it in) or ‘automatically’ by placing a pointer on a map to get the latitude and longitude data. The program can then add town, area/region, and country information. This process can also be described as ‘geocoding’ a picture/photo.

The program is freeware, however, donations can be made to help support future development.

This new version runs under 10.5 and 10.6 only. Unfortunately 10.4 can no longer be supported.

Today I received an email from Apple in which they thanked me for the small dummy iCal file I had sent that had the problem. Interestingly I received a ‘fixed’ file back from them which worked, i.e. I could publish to MobileMe and see it when accessed using Safari, but unfortunately all appointments (except repeating events for some reason) were off by 7 hours!

Hopefully a fix will be out for this soon….

The problem is this line: [NSImage imageFileTypes]

Under 10.4 and 10.5 it would return data in the same format, which was admittedly a strange format, but it came back on a predictable way so at least it could be handled, and the required file type, i.e. jpg, jpeg, JPEG etc. easily extracted.

Under 10.6 the format of the data returned has been changed…. and this is causing the problem.

The fix is fairly straight forward for PhotoGPSEditor, and a new version of the program should be out later this evening – early tomorrow.

Unfortunately the fix is a bit more complicated for PhotoInfoEditor (mainly because PhotoInfoEditor handles file types in a slightly different way, and also accesses more of the ‘inner-workings’ of the file than PhotoGPSEditor)….

Watch this space for updates….

The programs can run, but will not recognise any photo file formats. (Apple has changed the way such information is stored under 10.6).

The problem has been identified, and a fix for PhotoGPSEditor should be out within a few days, and a fix for PhotoInfoEditor shortly afterwards.

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)

As I suspected at the time the problem was with MySQL, and after a kick install of a new version of MySQL (see earlier post), the problem was fixed…..