Date and Time problems in Mac OSX?

[motc777]

In tech support, I've seen on Mac's in the past that at some point, the date and time would be off by sometimes a century. Is this a chronic problem in Mac's or not? I only ask this because when this happens, if you goto to a secure site, you get certificate errors. Thanks!

 

[iMeowbot]

On the old Mac OS, the base date (epoch) was 1 January 1904. Is that what you've seen? That would have indicated something like a dead battery. These days with the Unixy base, the epoch is 1970.

Modern Macs regularly sync automatically with time servers if they're connected to the Internet, so things like this are rarely seen any more.

 

[mad jew]

My date and time on my Macs synchronises on the internet and hasn't ever been inaccurate to the best of my knowledge, certainly not by 100 years.

 

[motc777]

On the old Mac OS, the base date (epoch) was 1 January 1904. Is that what you've seen? That would have indicated something like a dead battery. These days with the Unixy base, the epoch is 1970.

Modern Macs regularly sync automatically with time servers if they're connected to the Internet, so things like this are rarely seen any more.

This just jarred my memory. On the support calls I get when this happens, usually it was on the OS9.x or earlier, and on OSX they were on an iBook. If you are on a desktop, can you replace the battery, or is the expense too much to bother with it?

And yes, on the OS 9 and earlier, it was 1904 and on the OSX it was 1970. Thanks for helping me to remember.

 

[iMeowbot]

The cost and difficulty is about the same as dealing with the CMOS battery on a PC, it's the same thing (different battery, but all the PC ones vary too). They're really easy to change on the towers. iBooks and PowerBooks are about as much of a pain as they are on any notebook, and for iMacs it depends on the model. But the batteries themselves aren't very expensive.