Colored Calendars on iPhone--And how they don't work.

Question

Ok. Let me start by asking Steve and Apple, "***?!"
I use colored calendars. They help [me]. I can visually look at my week view and determine how much of my week consists of work, and how much consists of play. Oh, and look, there's my silver calendar, it's someone's birthday on Saturday. And there's a red box, so that means my team is playing on Sunday. Colored calendars are great...but why don't they work properly for the iPhone when they sync??? This is the most ******** thing I've ever seen.
My Blue (Personal) calendar is Orange on my iPhone. My Green (Work) calendar is Purple on my iPhone. Oh and guess what? My Holidays, Birthdays, and other calendars are other colors too. Do you know why my personal calendar isn't orange on my iCal? Because I hate the color orange. I made it blue for a reason.
Why would they enable colored calendars without a) just making them sync to what the calendars are on iCal, and b) not giving you the option to edit the colors. I mean, if they're not going to just make it a proper sync, the least they could do is allow me to adjust the colors, right?
This is just one more thing that the developer of the 2.x software didn't think of.

Answer 1

An Apple kbase article 'explains' this (really, I would call it more of an excuse than an explanation!).
Each calendar is assigned a different color to allow you to easily identify which appointments belong to which calendar and _this may not match the exact color used on the computer_.
In the meantime, there is a workaround, although it is something of a pain. The iPhone will apply calendar colors in the following order: red, orange, blue, green, purple. (If you only sync one calendar, it's blue).
Depending on the colors you want, you first need to create 'blank' calendars in iCal to 'use up' unwanted colors. Then, you need to sync the calendars, one at a time, in color order.
Go to the Info tab (in iTunes with the iPhone connected and selected in the devices list). With the Sync iCal calendars box checked, UNcheck all the boxes and sync. Then, check the box for the calendar you want to be red. Then sync (if you look on the iPhone at this point, that calender will be blue, since it's the only one). Then, check the box for the calendar you want to be orange, then sync. Repeat for blue, then green, then purple.
For example, if I want to have two calendars, Home colored blue and Work purple, I would create three new calendars - empty1, empty2, empty3 - then check the boxes in the following order, syncing between each: empty1, empty2, Home, empty3, Work.
Also, you can submit feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html.