More on iCal 1.5

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
October 15th, 2003 • 9:25 pm

While some things have been fixed, as noted earlier, other haven’t, unfortunately. And it’s not because they haven’t been reported to Apple. (They have.)

This one is a recurring problem that I have had with all versions of iCal so far, including the latest 1.5 build.

My computer is normally set to turn on the screen saver after 20 minutes, and to put the displays to sleep after about 40 minutes. (The general setting for putting the computer to sleep is set to “Never”, and the “Put the hard disk to sleep when possible” option is checked.)

This works fine most of the time. However, if I have an event in iCal that is set to display a notification in the form of an iCal alarm message and if the displays are asleep at the time of the alarm, iCal wakes the displays. When I return to my computer, even if it’s hours later, the displays are still on, with the screen saver active.

If I did not have any screen saver on, it would be even worse: the displays would be left on with the same static picture for hours!

After that, even if I dismiss the iCal message and get back to work, and then leave the computer for more than 40 minutes, the displays do not go back to sleep as they should. (The screen saver does kick in after 20 minutes as expected.) Somehow, the fact that an alarm has gone off in iCal causes the energy saving feature to stop working properly (but not the screen saver).

This is not normal. Both the screen saver and the energy saver should continue to work as expected after an iCal message has popped up, i.e. kick in 20 minutes after the message in the case of the screen saver and 40 minutes for the energy saver, in my situation. But only the screen saver works as expected.

I am not sure how long this disruption lasts. Usually, I put my computer INTO deep sleep at night, and the next day the energy saving feature seems to be working normally again. I am trying to better circumscribe the problem, but I have work to do…


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