Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / May 2006

[NSCalendarDate calendarDate] returns the time of now.

[[[NSCalendarDate calendarDate] timeZone] secondsFromGMT] gives you
seconds away from GMT.

NSTimezone is staggeringly simple to use.  You get the local timezone as
an NSTimezone like this:

NSTimezone *tz = [NSTimeZone localTimeZone];

You can then ask tz for information about the zone:

// In Colorado this returns "America/Denver"
NSString *zoneName = [tz name];
// In Colorado this returns "MDT"
NSString *zoneAbberv = [tz abbreviation];

Other details are available, like the offset from UTC-- just look at the
NSTimezone documentation.