iPhone glitch gets US fanbois up on wrong side of bed

US-based iPhone users who rely on their handset's alarm clock got a rude awakening on Monday unless they took precautions against a glitch that failed to account for a time change that set clocks back one hour over the weekend. The glitch, introduced in iOS 4, was the biggest assault in recent memory to the it-just-works …

[theJML]

Actually...

Mine rang on time. The phone displayed the wrong time however. But if I told it not to sync with AT&T, it worked flawlessly... So I just blamed it on AT&T.

I was, however, odd that the phone would display one time and yet follow alarm instructions and such for a different time (albeit the correct one.)

[RF9]

Cute title but...

Cute title. But not all iPhone customers are fanbois. I bet plenty of people that are not fanbois experienced this bug.

I hold The Register to a higher standard than this.

[Tzael]

Re: Cute title but...

Get used to it. Here on The Register you're automatically branded a fanboi of a particular camp based upon the choice of mobile phone you have. I like my Samsung Omnia which apparently makes me a Microsoft fanboi - to be honest I can live with such a title since it's used so broadly now.

You should be glad we're not discussing computer games of the MMO genre, it's impossible to have a civilised debate about the pros and cons of different MMOs unless everyone's talking about the same game!

[Pascal Monett]

"unless everyone's talking about the same game"

Sorry, but even then there are some who prefer one mode or ability over an other.

And let's not get into character races or professions, shall we ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't

"Get used to it. Here on The Register you're automatically branded a fanboi of a particular camp based upon the choice of mobile phone you have."

Not at all. On The Register fanboi only refers to Apple users, even if they are fangoirls.

[Kenny Millar]

Big Fail

Currently in the UK (On GMT) there is no way to create a recurrent alarm which sounds at the displayed time.

If you set the alarm for, say, 14:45 it will show as '14:45' but it will sound when the clock shows '15:45'

The work around in the tech note does not work.

[Anomalous Cowturd]

May I be the first to say

Hahahahahaha.

iPhone. It just works.

Except perhaps, not in the way you might have expected. Or when you expected. ;o)

[Roger Greenwood]

Seconded (Ha Ha)

You relied on a single computer for something? Anything? Wind them up - a spring doesn't forget (both clocks that is).

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time surprised

by programmers who can't get leap years correctly or time zones. I coded a lot of astronomical software when I was a student and I became early aware of this nuisances. I wonder what will happen if you set an alarm in the middle of the autumn "double hour", or the springtime "missing hour". And I wonder if the real issue is this kind of software is usually coded by someone who lives to close to the equator to be used to summer time - and the Gregorian calendar.

[ThomH]

It's strongly implied in this case...

... that the periodic alarm sounds at 24 hour intervals irrespective of the length of the day in between or whether the time it is now sounding at matches the time it represents itself as sounding at. So I'd imagine that setting the clock within the double hour or missing hour wouldn't be that interesting.

Still though, this is really basic stuff. I don't see how it can be portrayed as anything other than extremely embarrassing for Apple.

[_Absinthe_]

An article of contradictions!?

"It caused recurring weekday alarms for the iPhone to ring one hour late on Monday"

Wrong way round, the clocks went _back_, meaning an extra hour in bed, so the alarm would have gone off an hour too soon, which would mean a "rude awakening"... surely an alarm going off an hour _late_ would be a 'happy, relaxed, refreshed awakening"!?

Also, wasn't this reported a couple of weeks ago when our clocks went back [in the UK], and the same mistake was made then as well... sloppy ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: An article of contradictions....

You're not one of the iOS developers who worked on this are you? Would explain a lot.

[Daniel B.]

I'm guessing...

that the "rude awakening" consists on said iPhone user waking up, looking at the clock and screaming "OH $H!T! I'M LATE!"

I've had this happen to me on one occasion that I had an early meeting and forgot to change the alarm settings. Nasty situation, indeed!

[Robert Wilberforce-Smythe]

Er, no...

Actually, despite logic and expectation, recuring alarms really do go off an hour late, even though the time has gone back. Presumably the phone is overcompensating (again)

If there is any sloppyness going on it is firmly in the iOS camp.

[Rasczak]

Right way round

<quote>

Wrong way round, the clocks went _back_, meaning an extra hour in bed, so the alarm would have gone off an hour too soon, which would mean a "rude awakening"... surely an alarm going off an hour _late_ would be a 'happy, relaxed, refreshed awakening"!?

<\quote>

No, the alarm goes off an hour late, which is a rude awakening if you needed to be up and gone already. This was all discussed in the comments on that article last week, the recurring alarm is set for say 08:00 during summer time. Now summer time is GMT +1 so the alarm is actually set for 07:00 GMT +1 hour. The bug means that when the internal time is set back to GMT, it still adds the hour to the time of the alarm even though it now doesn't need to, hence the alarm goes off an hour after it was meant to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail

Nope, the articles are both correct. The bug is just a bit weird. If you'd read the first one properly you'd know that.

[nsld]

Steve replied........

Just change your countries time zone

Not that big of a deal

Steve

[Anonymous Coward]

Common bug?

Happened with my Nokia phone. I went to work an hour early.

[Cunningly Linguistic]

Lord - that's a title isn't it?

1) I don't have an imlatePhone

2) I work from home.

Win, win really!

[Andy 70]

that's becos...

your alarm settings are held on an apple server so the man can keep tabs on you.

will the alarm go off if you are out of signal/internets?

[Piers]

UK seems OK now....

Checked my recurring alarms yesterday and all back to normal now, here in the UK at least. "Something" is clearly tied to the US DST, since they were all screwed *before* the US change to DST.

[John 110]

Well, I used my alarm clock...

... to wake me up. Mind you, I don't own an iPhone, so I sleep in the same bed every night...

[Eden]

Not all fixed by re-creating

Deleting and re-creating the alarms doesn't always fix them.

I forwarned our IPhone users and told them to do this, i was one of many whos alarm went off an hour late even though it was deleted and re-created and I've since had to set one up to go off at 4:30am so it actually gets me up at 5:30 am.

Luckily I don't rely on the Iphone to get me up (I have a 6 month old baby for that, and failing THAT..I have a blackberry =p)

[Matt Hawkins]

Android

No one has mentioned Android.

Android = iPhone + working clock + working antenna

Oh come on. Someone had to!

[Stephane Mabille]

Fixed mine....

Hi,

Fixed mine... by accident:

My 1000% super stable that never freeze device (iPhone 3GS), crashed forcing me to keep home and lock button to reset, kept those pressed another 10 sec after reboot and got the "Plug to iTunes graph", at that point did a normal reboot (home+lock) as I didn't had access to iTunes.

Since then everything works again....

As usual... take a backup first! I'm not responsible for anything iPhone great coding might loose.

[AndrewH]

Strange...

My (jailbroken) iPhone 3G running iOS 4.0 didn't exhibit this problem - my recurring alarm has kept recurring at the correct time, with no intervention on my part.

[Tom 79]

How many

How many articles can be posted about the same bug. Fishin for clicks. Got one.

[Timo]

Simple answer

Just move to Arizona, or Indiana. You'll get a list of approved timezones that you can live in.

Sent from my iFooone

[Real Name]

Wrong Date, too!

Funny bug for me on iOS4.2 is that, even though the alarm bug was fixed, the date on the calendar icon when clocks went back also went back. So Sunday 1st became Saturday 31st for an extra day. Weirdly when it got to Monday, the date changed to Monday.

Fun!

Steve Jobs Devil, because hes being evil.