iPhone Alarms Hit By New Year's Bug

An anonymous reader writes "Non-recurring iPhone alarms stopped working on January 1 for devices running iOS 4.02, 4.1, and 4.2.1. Apparently, it will fix itself by January 3, and the current workaround is to set the alarm to repeat. My girlfriend wasn't impressed, sleeping in, and I wasn't either, having to race her to work!"

Comments

Use a real alarm clock

[jawtheshark]

I don't understand why you use a phone as an alarm clock. For one it depends on a single power supply, or you have to charge it overnight next to your bed. Second, it uses software prone to bugs. I use a normal alarm clock on 220V, with a backup battery. It invariably goes of in time...

The only time I use my phone as an alarm clock is when I'm on vacation/business trip and even then, hotels have waking services

However, to be frank: These kind of bugs are unacceptable. If this were Microsoft, everyone would be laughing and scolding, but since it's Apple I'm sure we'll get excuses....

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jcr]

What's to excuse? Bugs happen, they get fixed. This one becomes a non-issue in two more days.

-jcr

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jawtheshark]

Date issues... These have been "known problems" for ages, there are libraries for this. Why aren't those being used?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Hadlock]

They're probably (like me,) old nokia candy bar phone users. You could leave the battery dead for a week where the phone wouldn't even power on, but it would still wake up and tell you to go hop in the shower for work for another week or so. Phone clock (and more importantly, phone alarm clock) software has been stable and 100% trustworthy now for over a decade. I still have two extra (wall plug) alarm clocks for those occasions when you absolutely have to be there on time, but my phones have served me well as my primary alarm solution for the last 10 years, am i'm sure that's the case for most other people, as well.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[fatalwall]

well you could have an alarm clock like mine that randomly started passing time at a much faster pace so that at 1am your 8am alarm is blasting. That's when I started relying primary on my phone over a normal alarm clock.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[wintersdark]

Errr, why NOT use a phone as an alarm clock? Virtually every smart phone typically needs to be charged daily. If it doesn't need to be, generally people do anyways. Plug it in, let it charge overnight while you're sleeping, alarm wakes you in the morning, ready to go and fully charged.

It's *better* than your average AC alarm clock, as a power failure throughout the night won't interfere with your alarm. The phone's battery keeps you covered. I've been using my cell phones as alarm clocks for, well, as long as cell phones have had alarm clocks. I've never once had a problem with it.

And I've certainly never once considered getting a 'traditional' alarm clock since having a phone that could do the job just fine and, thanks to the magic of custom alarm/ringtones, much less offensively.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[MikeDataLink]

Mod parent up!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Peeteriz]

Why shouldn't I use a phone as an alarm clock? I have been using my phone as my 'watch' and as my alarm clock since getting my first mobile back in 1999.
It has multiple advantages:
1) It allows me to set the required waking time during the day when I'm at work and find out what will be my schedule tomorrow, do I have a 8:00 meeting that I need a bit of preparation, etc.
2) Alarm clocks usually have a single alarm time and don't work well for multiple people - I want to keep napping if my wife's alarm rings first and vice versa;
3) The phone is always with me - it ensures that I can stay with my clock habits when on a hotel on business trip or when I'm staying over at a friends place - no need to bother with different options;
4) On decent mobiles, alarm clock function works even when the phone is turned off due to low battery - the screen and calls are off, but the alarm still ran;
5) It's more accurate than an alarm clock - since it must sync time with the operator anyway for proper functioning, it's always accurate, I never have to adjust it (as for a watch), and it handles daylight savings time automagically.

Frankly, the only issue is how deeply faulty your testing process has to be to ship with such bugs in core functions such as clock and making calls? It's not a frigging computer you're shipping, it's a consumer device for which these functions are not 'additionally included applets', but main features of the product...

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[rrohbeck]

I remember learning the correct date formulas in the first semester. What's so hard about them?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck cock. Fucking fag.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Solandri]

I use a normal alarm clock on 220V, with a backup battery. It invariably goes of in time...

I started using my phone as an alarm clock after discovering that although a backup battery will allow a regular alarm clock to keep the time through a power failure, the alarm will not ring if the power is out at the time of the alarm.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[egranlund]

Yeah, most won't do this.

I use one of those bose wave radio things as my alarm though, and that does ring the alarm if the clock is running off the backup battery.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

What other phones have this bug? I would say this is pretty major, considering it can affect things like your job, appointments or other engagements.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[seebs]

I use my phone for alarms because it's the thing all my other alarms and alerts are in. I have a lot fewer missed alarms using my phone than I did when I used physical alarm clocks, which are much more failure prone in my experience.

Heck, I don't think I even own a clock anymore. Why would I bother? I have many things which reliably know the time.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

This bug is AMAZING. It will revolutionize the way you get fired.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Culture20]

I remember learning the correct date formulas in the first semester. What's so hard about them?

They were different by second semester. The problem with rolling your own date/time functions is that people keep switching things, adding a second to a year due to a close earth asteroid or switching when DST is applied. The problem with using the common libraries is that you need to update the library regularly and trust that the library maintainer is doing the above.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jaymz666]

these are simple errors that anyone who has written clock and alarm code should be aware of to begin with. It's not like date and time algorithms change very often or without a lot of fanfare.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Paradise Pete]

remember learning the correct date formulas in the first semester. What's so hard about them?

That's probably the sort of thinking that resulted in the bug in the first place. Dealing with time zones and daylight savings issues and the goofy calendar is a big pain in the ass. It's easy to get it subtly wrong. I doubt there's a programmer alive who hasn't made at least one mistake in dealing with time and dates.
I suggest we adopt a 12 month 30 day calendar, with a five day holiday at the end of the year (six days for leap year.) And no friggin' daylight savings.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[phantomfive]

I don't understand why you use a phone as an alarm clock.

Because I already have it, and don't want to go out and buy another alarm clock when I already have something that functions perfectly well.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[torsmo]

Why do you even need an alarm clock to wake up? Your body's own clock works pretty well. Whenever I have to get up at a predetermined time, I just repeat loudly " Wake up at $time", before going off to sleep, and I have consistently had positive results, waking up anywhere from 15 - 30 mins before the desired time.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Paradise Pete]

It's *better* than your average AC alarm clock, as a power failure throughout the night won't interfere with your alarm.

There are several comments like this. What sort of alarm clocks are you guys using? My $20 alarm will work just fine with the electricity out. The only difference is that without power the time is not projected onto the ceiling. The alarm and the clock don't get affected at all.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

It will revolutionize the way you get fired.

Did anybody ever get fired for buying an Iphone?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BagOBones]

The last $20 alarm clock I used that had a battery backup would keep poor time, and run many minutes fast every time it when on battery.. even with the battery it would start blinking and want to be reset just to be sure..

Also those alarm clocks just take up space, travelling? Yet another thing to pack, you could figure out the hotel alarm clock or ask for a wakeup call but it is still convenient to have your own alarm. Many people have stopped wearing a watch because they have a phone with them everywhere.

I really can't believe this is a problem.. I figure someone at Apple is getting fired over this..

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Paradise Pete]

Also those alarm clocks just take up space, travelling? Yet another thing to pack, you could figure out the hotel alarm clock or ask for a wakeup call but it is still convenient to have your own alarm.

I wasn't thinking about traveling. I sure don't pack a clock. And I don't trust those crazy "sleep system" alarms in hotels. I both set my phone alarm and ask for a wake up call.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[bysin]

I hope we've all made time and date mistakes before, that I'm not the only one. I wrote some accounting software that ran a script every hour that calculated a set of numbers for billing information. Each hour the script would run, then at midnight another script would run to calculate the average hourly total for the day. To calculate the average, I merely added each hour's numbers together then divided by 24. My fatal mistake was assuming each day contained 24 hours, which would normally be true, except for one day. This specific day, the script ran only 23 times instead of 24 due to daylight savings time skipping an hour. The mistake lead to an artificially deflated average and quite the yelling from my boss. You would think we programmers could assume something simple like there being 24 hours in a day, but apparently our time and date system wasn't invented by a programmer.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[interkin3tic]

I don't understand why you use a phone as an alarm clock. For one it depends on a single power supply, or you have to charge it overnight next to your bed. Second, it uses software prone to bugs. I use a normal alarm clock on 220V, with a backup battery. It invariably goes of in time...

Because it is there, is an alarm clock, and that is good enough for those of us who aren't alarm clock elitists.

Also what is this "single power supply" business? Most alarm clocks you plug into the wall don't have backup power or aren't actually using the backup power option (who actually puts backup batteries in?), phone alarm clocks do. Power goes out on my alarm clock that plugs in, it won't go off. My phone would though.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[sjwt]

You are aware that the 9volt dosent run the alarm if the power is off, only keeps the clock on time and the alarm in memory, I lent the hard way on that.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[interkin3tic]

You and GP seem to be playing a game of "trolling by pretending that whatever works for me obviously would work for everyone else." Seems fun, so I'll jump on:

Why would anyone need to "wake up?" I just contracted fatal familial insomnia and won't go to sleep for several months until I die.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[shutdown -p now]

What's to excuse? Bugs happen, they get fixed.

Two points here.

First of all, it's not the first time a stupid but major bug is found in iOS alarm app.

Second, it's a major issue. Alarm not going off at the right time is a bug that would be classified as "critical" under any sane categorization system - it's the most basic, fundamental function of the application not working properly. Even worse, alarm is by its nature a "mission critical" app - unlike most other stuff, which is annoying but mostly harmless when it fails, this one really trips you up. Consequently, it should be heavily tested.

And this leads us to another issue... these kinds of bugs, both this one and the one back in November, show that unit and functional testing coverage of the alarm app in iOS is really horrible. I mean, DST change and year change? It's some of the most obvious and basic corner cases that you write tests for, especially in an application that specifically deals with time! It's practically textbook stuff, or an interview question for QA position. And so it's extremely surprising when that kind of thing goes wrong in production.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[welshmnt]

I actually do this, I swear! I haven`t had an alarm clock for years now. I MAY be ten to fifteen minutes late waking up once or twice a year - tops. This includes odd times for holidays and awaydays etc.

I can`t be the only one surely ("you are - and don`t call me Shirley").

Oh yeah. Happy new year, everybody.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[torsmo]

Why would anyone need to "wake up?" I just contracted fatal familial insomnia and won't go to sleep for several months until I die.

Did it help?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[neokushan]

Yeah, why the fuck would I want to use a feature on a device that I paid quite a lot of money for? In fact, why are we using our iPhones as anything other than a fucking phone?!

(Note: For the slow amongst you, this post is laden with sarcasm).

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[toriver]

Trollbot is boring.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

One of the first actions that I take when arriving in a hotel room is to disconnect the alarm clock, so that the room at night is not illuminated by its red LCD glow!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[NFN_NLN]

What's to excuse? Bugs happen, they get fixed. This one becomes a non-issue in two more days.

-jcr

I have a Despair Inc. poster hanging in my office that was made just for people like you -

"Mediocrity: It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late."

1. There is nothing unexpected about a new year, guess what... there's going to be a new one in 364 days.
2. This isn't the first time this has happened.
3. This isn't even a hard problem to solve OR test.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[NFN_NLN]

I don't understand why you use a phone as an alarm clock. For one it depends on a single power supply, or you have to charge it overnight next to your bed. Second, it uses software prone to bugs. I use a normal alarm clock on 220V, with a backup battery. It invariably goes of in time...

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. A normal alarm clock runs on 110V, everyone knows this.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Arancaytar]

But a regular alarm clock that runs only on batteries will ring just fine in a power failure. They can take years to drain those batteries, too...

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone at my previous job almost did, he bought an iPhone, and stuck his corporate SIM in it, and started using the data without a data plan.... Managed to pull off a $5k+ bill in 1 month....

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

for things like that you are supposed to use UTC, or ignore daylight savings

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[dreamchaser]

I agree on both counts, that it is a) stupid to rely on a phone as your alarm. It's a phone use it as such. Also b) this kind of bug is still inexcusable.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[anomnomnomymous]

I'm not too sure about other phones, but my N900 will power itself off once the battery is empty; yet still leaves enough power for it to trigger the alarm in the morning.
The only time this 'feature' annoyed me when I once was unable to turn the alarm off once my battery was empty (and I didn't have my charger with me); Then again, it also saved me a few times, because I forgot to charge it.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[tagno25]

The bug is inexcusable, yes, but so is relying on a phone and not an alarm clock to get up for work on time.

Except this bug is for one off alarms, not reoccurring. You would not want to reset your hard to set bedside alarm just for one day.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[sa1lnr]

Or you could just use one of these.

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=mechanical+alarm+clock&hl=en&cid=3439387371748796012&ei=ZVkgTdX5HoGI-gbkoNCzCw&sa=title&ved=0CAoQ8wIwATgA#p

No worries about electricity at all.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[MrHanky]

Oh, really? Relying on a phone for one of its simplest features is "inexcusable"? Mobile phones have been able to do this reliably for more than a decade. It's practically an Apple-only problem: for everyone else, it "just works".

But yeah, let's blame the victim.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Khyber]

Hard to set bedside alarm?

Turn a knob and pull out a button, versus tons of keypresses.

Have you ever owned a decent alarm clock?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[tagno25]

Mechanical sometimes make precision hard, but precision is not necessary.

Digital almost always requires numerous button presses, while holding down one button. And if you go past your time then you have to cycle forward till you hit your time.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[phoenix321]

Everybody uses their phones as alarm clocks now.

Simply because it works reasonably well, is always on hand and works the same way at home, on business trips and vacations. And has a battery backup.

People simply assume the alarm function to be much too simple to allow even the stupidest developers to not get them right. Nobody expects people to mess up simple functions like that. And nobody expects the device itself to report the wrong time. For that reason, developers who can't get an alarm app working should be fired straight away. And OS developers who can't get their OS to report the correct time for each and every case should not only not be developing OS'es, but only be allowed to develop static HTML web pages for the rest of their careers.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thegarbz]

How old are you? Do you know anyone under the age of 25 (number pulled from my arse) who doesn't use their phone for alarms? I mean nearly everyone I know doesn't have an alarm clock. Nearly everyone I know doesn't have a clock at their bedside either.

Why at this day and age can I not expect to have an alarm application working perfectly enough that it can be used for mission critical cases where it's fault has nothing at all to do with a failure of the underlying device? Why at this day and age do I need yet another piece of electronic rubbish sitting in my room if I consider the time I wake up "mission critical"?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jimicus]

I remember learning the correct date formulas in the first semester. What's so hard about them?

I think most of these bugs come about in the conversion between internal time storage (which is probably something simple like "seconds since the epoch") and the UI layer. Getting the number of days in the year is easy, but how do you then deal with things like timezones? What if the phone's moved timezone since the alarm was set? Then you have things like Daylight Saving (which varies according to where you are in the world - some countries don't observe it at all, others don't all observe it at the same dates).

Put it this way, if you wanted an example of something with real-life application that on the face of it looks simple but in reality is absolutely chock-full of corner cases for you to make mistakes in, you couldn't do much better than something date/time based.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[phoenix321]

Not to mention there's no way to reliably determine if the battery is still working or not. Without the alarm clock blinking like they used to, it's very hard to tell if there were daily short blackouts when you and everyone else were at work that drained the 9v battery. Depending on the reliability of your power supply, replacing the battery on fixed, pre-set intervals wouldn't guarantee a thing.

The only ways to know the battery is dead is by either checking it regularly with a voltmeter and replacing it much before the critical voltage or live with a remaining risk of x% where x can only be guessed after you sleep-in.

Probably unsuitable for people working in transportation, medical, law enforcement, power generation. How do these people ensure their wake-up on odd schedules, different changing locations with harsh consequences for ever being a minute late?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thegarbz]

I'm the opposite. I don't understand how you don't use it as an alarm clock. Here we have a device which (aside from the bugs in one specific phone) should be capable of perfectly performing an alarm clock function. It is a device that people tend to keep fully charged at all times, and it is a device which most people keep on their physical person whenever they can.

I can't fathom why you want yet another device to do something that any number of devices in your immediate vicinity right now is capable of doing already.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[phoenix321]

A normal alarm clock runs on whatever voltage it was designed for. Usually, they are designed for the national grids of the countries where they are to be sold. Clocks to be sold in the US run on 110V, clocks to be sold in most other locations run on 220-230V.

Since the advent of switching power supplies, this distinction is usually moot as most electronics are now designed to accept any voltage between 110v and 230v with either 50 or 60Hz line frequency. Eliminates the logistics hassle.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[phoenix321]

Phone alarms have proven to be extremely reliable for more than a decade. Only smartphones of either OS flavor have ever ever failed something as dumb as the alarm function.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[PoconoPCDoctor]

I have a iPhone with my corporate e-mail (Exchange) configured. The security policy locks the screen. My cool alarm clock app won't work due to the sec. policy. But, I fail to see how this iPhone "bug" becomes an issue - there are many other ways to wake up or be reminded and if you rely on your iPhone for everything, you have a single point of failure. Plan A. My iPhone wakes me up. Plan B. Not needed - see Plan A. Oops.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[shutdown -p now]

FWIW I'm 25 and I use dedicated alarm clock - though it's electronic and not mechanical. The reason is that 1) it has a nice and simple display for a bedside clock that doesn't shine too much at night (dim red digits and no not-quite-black backlight), and 2) it's got a nice huge snooze button.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Peeteriz]

As I said, using my mobile phone (not iPhone, I've usually had Nokia devices) as alarm has worked for me for 11 years now - I have no Plan B other than waking up sometime later myself; simply the Plan A needs to be actually reliable as consumers would naturally expect.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Gadget_Guy]

But, I fail to see how this iPhone "bug" becomes an issue - there are many other ways to wake up or be reminded and if you rely on your iPhone for everything, you have a single point of failure.

So how many alarm clocks do you have on your bedside table? I have only ever had two alarm clocks that have ever been unreliable: a clock radio that would randomly turn itself on for a minute at a time throughout the night, and my iPhone which failed to wake me up this morning. All the other problems have been due to blackouts, which is why I only get clocks with battery backups.

I'm mean seriously, the age of digital watches being a pretty neat idea is over. Even the cheapest Chinese clocks can reliably sound an alarm at a specified time of the day. How could the iPhone get it so wrong?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Portability. I use alarms on my phone for many more things than just getting up in the morning. Alerting me as a reminder for an event such as the bread maker finishing, 30 minutes before an appointment, plus many more.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[gander666]

my kingdom for mod points. Alas, I will have to comment instead. The parent is totally correct. While I haven's coded in a long time (seriously, that is), this is a major moving target, and has been since antiquity. Just read up on the history of the calendar and time keeping to keep yourself occupied for hours.

It is not as simple as the GP implies, and I totally agree with the post above that mentions using an alarm clock with a battery backup.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Arlet]

It is a device that people tend to keep fully charged at all times, and it is a device which most people keep on their physical person whenever they can.

I put mine in my pants pocket, not on my person, and I take my pants off at night. Maybe I'm weird.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Kjella]

Probably unsuitable for people working in transportation, medical, law enforcement, power generation. How do these people ensure their wake-up on odd schedules, different changing locations with harsh consequences for ever being a minute late?

RAIAC - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Alarm Clocks. Seriously, I used to use two alarm clocks - one regular and one nasty "you're about to oversleep, go directly to work, do not pass go, do not collect $200" alarm that's only slightly less annoying than the fire alarm. On normal days I'd just switch off that one after getting up, it was just backup. This was not so much due to technical failure but because the first clock was easy to turn off if you just intended to snooze, at least if you're dead tired and just want five more minutes. Also because if I first oversleep, I tend to oversleep a lot not like just one hour. With the iFail I had gone down to one since I could have two different schedules with different alarm clocks, as it should always have enough battery but I'll have to revise that policy for DST changes, year changes, leap years and whatever else corner case they didn't test.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

My old "Weekendsleeper Clock Radio" (yeah as the name implies, it can be set NOT to ring/play radio on weekends!) can use both 4xAA batteries and a power adapter. I have both at the same time so I dont' waste the batteries unless the power is out (which hasn't really happened more than once in 15 years anyhow). But the nice part is, when I was using it without the power adapter, I realized it STILL ringed even when it was low on batteries, just instead of the complex ringing or radio, it did some quieter, continuous beep.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[zippthorne]

I use a normal alarm clock on 220V, with a backup battery

Pfft. A mere 220V? A real geek would use wye connected 3-phase power.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey they missed the antenna problem on iPhone 4 (which at the end is more important affecting the primary function of the device - phone) how the heck do you think they could catch this?! :p I never liked apple products (tried a Mac mini, tried an iPhone and now I got an iPad as christmas gift from my boss) IMHO they care only about how a product looks.... For the rest it has to "just work".

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[CubicleView]

Assuming the "mission" is wake me up in the morning, everyone I know excluding my parents uses a phone.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Culture20]

> > with a backup battery ... > the alarm will not ring if the power is out at the time of the alarm.

Ha? Hence the backup battery. 5 Informative, really?

Yes, 5 Informative. Really. Most clock radio backup batteries only keep the time circuits going in the event of power failure, just like the clock batteries in computers. Alarm circuits are ignored (especially if the alarm is set to radio wakeup mode). If you want a totally reliable clock radio, you use a UPS or find one with one built in.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[kerrbear]

This and the infamous Zune bug of a few years ago could be easily avoided if the coders would UNIT TEST DATE FUNCTIONS WITH REAL DATES! it's not hard and avoids all those embarrassing articles.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[yodleboy]

what's an alarm clock? seriously, my wife and I haven't had one in the bedroom for years. We've also never had issues like this with alarms on any previous cell/smartphone.

As for lots of key presses, that's a one time event on most phones. Unlike a bedside phone, I can set multiple alarms. say one for weekdays and one for weekends, and one for that day i had to get up really freakin early. Reusing an alarm is as simple as tapping the toggle from off to on.

I'm just amazed by the number of people on here that are acting like it's the users fault this very basic fucntionality doesn't work. Oh, just don't use it. WTF? Of course when it's Apple, they get a pass on this kind of stuff. We're just holding it wrong, right?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[f.ardelian]

Tell that to the stock market

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I use a battery powered alarm clock. I have an evolution reminder to change the batteries every 6 months. Bonus for it not shining a light in my face unless I press down on it. Extra bonus for not tying up an outlet (that I can use for my mobile). Seriously, any iPhone user ought to have learned their lesson the first time. But the real blame rests solely with apple, for designing one of the most simple applications and not even boundary testing it. For shame.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[icebraining]

I second that. My Nokia phones have never failed to wake me up, including my new-ish E65. From what I can tell, the clock isn't simply software, it's a dedicated chip (that wakes the software just for ringing and displaying the screen).

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jmac_the_man]

Again, what if this was Microsoft, and Zunes stopped working because of leap year related issues. Would you have excused them? Or would you have posted "I have to wonder why MS's quality assurance department (don't laugh, they must have one) didn't try setting the clock ahead to see what happens?"

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[multipartmixed]

> In fact, why are we using our iPhones as anything other than a fucking phone?!

You use yours as a phone?! I tried that, but it was unreliable. Now I just use it as an i.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

A bug that affects 2 days out of the year, on a holiday weekend only, which has any number of clocks available which are probably already being used instead of a phone with a battery that goes dead every few days so that their critical appointments on said holiday weekend aren't missed?

Am I missing something? Really?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[icebraining]

Your body's own clock works pretty well.

No, it doesn't. Not only it needs syncing (which might not always be possible), as it is highly affected by changing sleeping patterns and indoor light.

Just because your specific combination of biological clock, regular sleeping patterns and adequate light doesn't mean most people can rely on it. I certainly can't trust it more than a $3 alarm clock, it fails too randomly.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[imthesponge]

Exactly. It's not hard to verify the correctness of these things, though it takes some effort.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[imthesponge]

Because the iPhone is a toy, not for actual business use. It's meant to look neat and play games.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[quacking duck]

I'm over 30 and though I have a regular radio alarm clock, I use my iPhone exclusively for regular alarms during the day and week. I'm reconsidering that position now.

I needed a one-off alarm for this morning. It didn't go off. Thankfully a fast-approaching cold front produced strong winds that knocked over things on my balcony and woke me up.

Failure to catch bugs in extremely basic functionality--twice in as many months--is inexcusable. Apple's inability to patch something like this without rolling out a gigantic 400+ MB firmware update highlights a massive shortcoming in their software release methodology--the DST bug was publicly known for weeks before it hit North America (having hit Australia first), but it wasn't fixed until some time after when it was rolled in with other updates.

This from an Apple customer of over 20 years.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but not all of us have the same days off and for the people who do, it's almost certain that they have plans for those days.

So the question remains. What other phones have this bug? Why does a $600 iPhone have a bug like this when a $20 phone doesn't?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember learning the correct date formulas in the first semester. What's so hard about them?

I worked on the Point-of-Sale systems for two of the largest retail companies in the United States, and both of them had to resort to turning the entire system off twice a year to avoid the problems caused by Daylight Saving Time. They would shut the systems down shortly before 2AM, then wait until after 3AM before turning the systems back on.

In both cases, there was code throughout the system that made bad assumptions about dates and times, and management never considered it important enough to devote the time and money to fix it. Instead, they just had people manually shut the systems down for the duration of the DST change.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Ambient Sheep]

Yup, I was caught by something similar myself. It gets even more fun when you get to the other end of the year and you find out there's a day with 25 hours in it. :-) This led to one app I worked on declaring that October had 32 days in one particular menu, because a previous programmer on the project had subtracted the time_t() of 1st October from the time_t() of 1st November, then divided by 86400 to get the number of days in the month, then rounded up for some reason (probably because six months earlier he'd spotted that April only had 29 days, and rather than find out why, he just fudged it, the so-and-so!).

This was partly due to the Microsoft C V5 library (yes, it was that long ago, early 90s) handling DST stupidly; the same module in the V6 library fixed the problem. However we couldn't upgrade the whole library as it would have bust our memory requirements and caused other, now long forgotten problems, so we shut our eyes, crossed our fingers, and substituted V5's time module with the V6 version and, thank God, it worked perfectly without trashing everything.

We also rewrote our own code to do stuff a bit more cleverly than that. And at least we tested. Which is more than Apple seemed to have done. I wrote Y2K-aware time-handling code back in the mid-80s for some filling station EPOS machines, which damn well worked 15 years later, because I'd tested it.

To get back to the subject line, this is why I still use a real alarm clock, only using my mobile's alarm as extra backup for important things like catching flights. I've written enough time code to know how difficult it can be to get it done truly correctly, but you really would have thought Apple would have the knack by now.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Junta]

While not excusing the pretty atrocious iPhone alarm quality, an alarm clock with battery backup is about 5 dollars, is always exactly in the same place, has big, simple physical buttons dedicated for alarm clock function, and is so damn simple that no one really screws them up (at least the ones that have no clue what day it is and don't do auto-adjust for DST and the like).

For the application of alarm for waking you up for bed, I would highly recommend that anyone who uses their phone instead of any alternative stop doing so. The complexity causes stupid risks like this and the interface is hostile to operation when you were unconscious seconds before.

There remains the case of daytime alarms that is problematic, but I don't know about the iPhone and how/if calendar notifications in their platform are affecting/make moot daytime alarms.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[russotto]

Second, it's a major issue. Alarm not going off at the right time is a bug that would be classified as "critical" under any sane categorization system

Sure... for an alarm clock. For a music player that happens to have an alarm clock, not so much.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Sabz5150]

Why shouldn't I use a phone as an alarm clock?

Did you not see the topic of this article? My plug in has never crapped out due to bugs. Looks like you can't say the same for that phone.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

You are nothing but a hypocrite and an apple fanboi. Your comment history does suggest that you were jumping up and down on much more trivial bugs than this when it was other companies who were at fault, but when it comes to apple, it 'just happens, and gets fixed'.

It's because of douches like you I stay away from apple. Go, Steve Jobs is waiting for his next blowjob.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a normal alarm clock on 220V, with a backup battery. It invariably goes of in time...

I started using my phone as an alarm clock after discovering that although a backup battery will allow a regular alarm clock to keep the time through a power failure, the alarm will not ring if the power is out at the time of the alarm.

All he needs is some 220 Volt batteries...

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a new clock, loser.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole thing (and the whole Antenna-gate crap) is just stuff that is blown out of proportion by MS shills because they can't understand why the entire smartphone market is dominated by Apple. The truth hurts, as Android and WP7 are just bit players fighting for scraps in today's phone market.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[mlts]

What is ironic, the last time I saw a time/date problem on January 1, it was the original Zune that went catatonic the whole day. It fixed itself the next day, and MS did push out an update so it would never happen again.

Yes, time and date stuff can bring errors, but isn't this something that there are automated tools to doublecheck? At least test critical days and times of the year (Dec 31, Feb 28, Feb 29, Jan 1, the Sunday where DST starts, the Sunday where DST ends, checking if a timezone change affects stuff, etc.) This should be part of regression testing as well.

Bugs happen. For a lot of people, no alarm on the first of January isn't a bad thing. However, there are a lot of people whose job might be placed at risk if they come late. There are also a lot of people who work shift work at jobs that often change schedule. These jobs, you just don't wake up naturally 15-30 minutes if the alarm doesn't go off... one may wake up 4-8 hours later, which at best means no hours earned that day (if on an hourly wage.)

Even if it isn't a job, there are people who use the iPhone as a travel alarm at hotels and expect it to wake them at least before check-out time.

Of course, this isn't something that is a world ender for most people. However, this isn't just a cosmetic bug either, because it has some impact on people's daily lives, but because there isn't a way for a third party app to handle alarms (well, assuming a non-jailbroken iPhone), Apple has more pressure in making sure their stuff works right.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Peeteriz]

You can't say that for the mobile computing device that Apple is selling - normal phones crap out as rarely as normal alarm clocks, i.e., never unless you hit them with a hammer repeatedly.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BLKMGK]

I use mine because power can go out for 6 hours and it will still work just fine, otherwise it's charging. My alarm, even on backup battery, still sounds quite loudly. Does your's even sound on backup battery or just hold time? I can set 4-5 alarms, hit snooze for hours, and use different tones to indicate that yeah dumbass THIS alarm is the one that means business get moving.

You've found an alarm clock that can do all that? If so do please tell us who made it and what model!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Gadget_Guy]

Because the iPhone is a toy, not for actual business use.

And a clock radio is for business use? It is substantially cheaper to make than an iPhone and yet they call usually make an alarm ring every day. Is a VCR/PVR a business grade device? No, but they can still record programs each week. And where the hell can you buy an alarm clock designed for business use?

For all the faults that I find with the iPhone, it still does some amazing things. Keeping a clock going and ringing an alarm would not be a task that I would consider amazing. It is trivial. It should not cause a problem for anything, even if it just looks neat and can play games.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[mlts]

I have used $15.00 prepaid Nokia phones when on outdoors trips (where I wouldn't want to risk a smartphone even in an Otterbox case.) When having to get up to make it somewhere in time, the cheapie device never failed me.

The issue here is that this is basic functionality of a device; one never thinks about a smartphone having time/date issues, and most people have not thought of these types of corner cases since they were stacking boxes of MREs in their bong shelters preparing for Y2K. People take a reliable alarm clock for granted.

The lesson learned from this -- if one has to be somewhere and it is a career changing/ending move if they are late, one should consider an additional alarm. Since the Nokia prepaid phone is so inexpensive, it is cheaper than a lot of travel alarms.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Threads like this one are always instructive to me - showing me how other people use devices and interact with the world. Some folks (in this thread; not necessarily the parent) telling people they are "idiots" and the like for being "behind the curve", etc simply because they have different usage patterns or different physical interactions. For example, I have sleep apnea. I toss and turn all night and generally look at my old style red LED numbers alarm clock. I wouldn't even consider using a phone for this as I want to be able to see the display easily at night and I wouldn't want my phone to be anywhere near my bed (I am upstairs, phone is downstairs). I don't want to have my small amount of actual sleep interrupted by something like PayPal deciding to send me an email and making my phone beep. (Yes, I could turn off sync or put on airplane mode or many other things but it is far simpler to put it on the charger downstairs before going to bed). I almost never have my alarm clock go off. It is set for 3:20 AM, but I am generally out of bed by 3:10 or so. With the sleep apnea it isn't hard since I look at the clock all the time when I toss and turn anyway. My situation makes me wonder about all these folks that manage to sleep in late if their alarm doesn't go off. They obviously have different interaction with the world than I do. My boss at work doesn't use an alarm clock either, yet he is generally in the office by 6:30 AM. I understand though that people are living with different conditions, different requirements, and different preferences. That doesn't make them "behind the curve" or "idiots". It just means we have normal diversity.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[NFN_NLN]

>>>This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. A normal alarm clock runs on 110V, everyone knows this.

A normal alarm clock runs on whatever voltage it was designed for. Usually, they are designed for the national grids of the countries where they are to be sold. Clocks to be sold in the US run on 110V, clocks to be sold in most other locations run on 220-230V.

Since the advent of switching power supplies, this distinction is usually moot as most electronics are now designed to accept any voltage between 110v and 230v with either 50 or 60Hz line frequency. Eliminates the logistics hassle.

You should put more effort into your sarcasm detection algorithm.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[hjf]

Yeah it's called the RTC (Real Time Clock)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[LingNoi]

If you replace the phone with an alarm clock you wouldn't have fixed the issue of daylight savings time which specifically requires you to change the time on your clock. So instead of the phone screwing up and making you late you have yourself forgotten to change the time making you late. In either instance you're still late regardless of how you keep the time.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[omglolbah]

I've yet to have any issue with my Android phone, but I do not trust -any- device to work in 100% of cases.

I work with control systems for oil rigs for christ sake, I know a little about failure rates... even of multi-million dollar systems.

I use my phone as a gentle wake-up noise at T-20 min, then a clock radio for T-18 (2x snooze :p) and Finally my server goes batshit at T-3 if I am not yet up and have hit the magic CGI page in firefox for the day.

It works, and I have yet to have any triple-failure of my system ^.^

Overly complex? Probably.
Do I like it as I have it now? Yup, which is really the only thing that matters.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[omglolbah]

Aaaah, the snooze button.

My nemesis....

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BLKMGK]

Tons of keypresses? You don't own an iPhone do you? I have 6 alarms on mine, 3-4 to help me get up in the morning with various tones and one for weekends plus another for random things. Adding or changing any of them takes me about 10 seconds. Oh, and NONE of them are working right now! I do have an alarm clock, there's a ton of reasons why I use the phone instead starting with being able to use different tones for different alarms and with the ease of changing them or setting them. I have yet to find an alarm clock with more than 2 different alarms and one or two tones. In short - the iPhone, when it works, makes for an awesome alarm that has no issues with loss of power. Bonus is that I own it for other things.

when will folks figure out this isn't "just a phone" and see that is a small multifunction computer?!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[icebraining]

Well, all of them must have RTCs, I suppose, but Nokia's has an alarm feature built-in (maybe the iPhone also does, but simply doesn't use it, who knows).

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

And no friggin' daylight savings.

Sorry bud, but in this economy we need all the savings we can get.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[JimboFBX]

I counted 36 alarms on my iphone. Fortunately I still use iOS 3. Granted, the only reason I still use iOS 3 is because my computer hard drive failed and I'm afraid all my stuff will get wiped when I try sync to a new library on a different computer. Fucking apple.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[ottothecow]

24 here and I use a real alarm clock.

This particular beauty is easy enough to set (you can go forwards or backwards..so not of that scrolling past the time business) and has 2 separate alarms. I have one that goes off on weekdays in time to get me to work--I never turn it off. The other one is set to work on any day; I leave it turned off most of the time and turn it back on when I need to get up early for some reason (or wake up on the weekend at some time other than the nebulous "the sun is now too bright-o'clock").

It always works, sets itself to the atomic clock, adjusts for DST, and cost a whopping $10 at target back when I left home for college. As an added bonus, I can look across the room and know what time it is.

This means I am free to to plug in my phone at night to charge on the counter (where my other chargers live), don't have to worry about a low battery dying in the middle of the night, and don't have a problem if I managed to forget my phone on my desk at work. I'll use the phone alarm if I travel or sleep somewhere else but when $10 gets you a perfect tool built for the job...why wouldn't you use it?

Of course, the fact that a better tool exists doesn't really excuse apple for making an alarm clock that doesn't work right. Especially since one-off alarms are the only thing you would use if you used a "real" alarm clock most days (and since New Years morning probably results in a lot of people waking up on couches/beds that are not their own)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[revscat]

> I doubt there's a programmer alive who hasn't made at least one mistake in dealing with time and dates.

*raises hand* Yup. I ran into an issue earlier this year where we were getting currency exchange rates from a webservice on a daily basis. Our dev and QA environments were in CST, and our production servers were in Pacific time. When tested in dev and QA everything was fine, but once deployed to production the rates never expired.

I was able to fix it, but it was subtle and difficult to track down.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[RightSaidFred99]

Oh nonsense. This takes an especially high level of ineptitude. Seriously, basic date bugs? And this isn't even the first for them, wasn't there a similar issue last year?

It's like a bug in 'rm' that accidentally converted the '.' character into a '*'. I mean, seriously? A date bug? Apple is pathetic.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[coolmadsi]

I suggest we adopt a 12 month 30 day calendar, with a five day holiday at the end of the year (six days for leap year.) And no friggin' daylight savings.

No international time zones would be helpful too; set everyone's clocks to the same time around the world. Sure it might confuse some, but I'm sure people would get the hang of it after a while.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[RightSaidFred99]

Bollocks. Mission critical depends on the context. Would anyone use a phone for an alarm to launch to space shuttle or determine when a patient needs an insulin injection? No. At that level it's certainly not "mission critical".

Mission critical in the context of your cell phone might be waking up for work, knowing when to pick your kid up from soccer practice, whatever. Nobody's going to die, but it sure is a pain in the ass and is one of the more important things you use your phone for.

Really, mostly what I'm saying is I have a hypothesis that Apple sucks and I love stories like these because it confirms my theory.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[coolmadsi]

How old are you? Do you know anyone under the age of 25 (number pulled from my arse) who doesn't use their phone for alarms? I mean nearly everyone I know doesn't have an alarm clock. Nearly everyone I know doesn't have a clock at their bedside either.

I'm 23 and have an alarm clock on the bedside table that plays a CD to wake me up. However I do also use my phone as a secondary alarm clock (partially in case I don't get up for the CD alarm and partially in case of a power cut which would re-set the CD alarm time to 00:00)

I remember a few years back I had a old (well, by today's standards) Nokia phone with me on a trip to Hungary. I set an alarm on my last day to ensure that I would be up on time to catch the plane (I had no other form of alarm, didn't bring too much as we were mostly backpacking around hostels). The battery died during the night, but we were up in plenty of time anyway (the plane wasn't early, but I still didn't want to risk missing it).

During the day, while we were getting ready to head to the airport, I heard a noise from my pocket; the phone (battery dead remember) had saved enough power to inform me that my alarm was going off (all that was displayed on the screen was 'ALARM' and the time, I couldn't relly do anything else apart from turn the alarm off). THAT is what I would call something that has been very well thought out, and a very useful feature, particularly in critical situations. I don't know if its a feature on new phones nowadays though.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BLKMGK]

What's interesting is the HUGE number of alarm apps in the iTunes store. tempted to get one to try, think it would have the same bug?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Nethead]

And where the hell can you buy an alarm clock designed for business use?

But maybe not in the sense that you meant.

http://www.promotionalmagazine.com/promotional-products/387-advertise-your-business-with-customized-alarm-clocks.html

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[mlts]

From what I read, they have to be running in the foreground for the alarm to work. If one just flips to the app and lets it sit, that's fine, but a lot of people do E-mail, FB, and other things, then hit the home screen and let the iPhone remain on the Springboard, where the app can't do an alarm unless the device is jailbroken.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Nethead]

Oh, and of course, the Executive alarm clock:

http://www.americaninnovative.com/products/neverlate-exec.php

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, another deluded whiner. Just shut up and buy an iPhone like the rest of us people who actually like getting stuff done. It is only a matter of time before you use a Mac or iOS device on your job, or you won't have a job.

Android isn't going anywhere. In fact, it is dying like how Windows Mobile died in the past several years with app vendors fleeing the sinking ship left and right. Nobody wants unreliable hardware and a worthless, fragmented OS. This is why there is a massive exodus from Android devices to iOS devices.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

I got bitten by both bugs (the dead Zune 30 GB), and my iPhone alarm clock not working.

Guess which kicked my butt worse? No alarm on the iPhone. It was just by the grace of $DEITY that I got up, saw the time and managed to make hotel checkout while I was out of town. A dead MP3 player might be critical if it was going to be used for some music playback somewhere. However, relying on an iPhone (which is a reliable device normally) and having it nearly screw up your vacation was completely unexpected.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Khyber]

You mean unlike a bedside alarm, and I'll tell you you're dead wrong as I've got one nightstand alarm clock with alarm settings for EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I don't understand why you use a phone as an alarm clock.

- The phone sets itself, inluding daylight savings time.

- It charges next to my bed so I have a fresh charge the next day. This is a good idea anyway despite you're implied suggestion oterwise.

- I have it set to only go off on weekdays.

- I have it with me so I can set it right away if I have to work on saturday or go in earlier the next day.

- It can display a text message about why it's going off.

- Instead of setting the time, I can just tell it to go off in 3 hours because Im taking a nap.

- I have my alarm with me when Im sleeping somewhere other than home.

- Ive been doing this without fail for years. My stupid ass alarm clock, however, needed a lot more attention.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[zach_the_lizard]

My clock sets itself automatically (save for the time zone; it defaults to West coast time, and I'm on the East coast) once powered on.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[zach_the_lizard]

Something similar happened to me. I store all my music on my (new) desktop, but have my phone synced to my laptop. For whatever reason, my laptop didn't connect to my shared drive, and as a consequence, all of the music on my iPhone was wiped after the upgrade. On the plus side, iOS 4.x is a pretty good upgrade.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[zach_the_lizard]

I'm 21 and don't use my phone as an alarm; it's too quiet. On the other hand, I don't use any other alarm clock either. I do have a clock by my bed if I want it though.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Steviecandtheplace2b]

i have 4 alarm clocks (cos i sleep thru 1) all set to the same time 1) bedside alarm 2) bedside alarm number two 3) cell phone 4) MacbookPro (With Alarm Clock 2 app)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jo_ham]

I think you misspelled "Android" in your final trailing sentence.

Apple bugs get huge attention on slashdot, Android bugs, like say the "SMS sent to random people" bug got a huge number of "I have never seen this bug, it's a non issue" and other such posts. It was funny to watch.

This alarm clock bug bit me this morning, but it was a lazy Sunday so I wasn't actually late for anything. Still, it shouldn't have happened and I assume there is some very screwy code in the calendar app which handles events like alarms, as seen by the odd bugs during BST/DST.

It didn't happen last year, so clearly something has changed and not enough QA testing was done to check for conditions like this (or perhaps it was and the particular condition was just not evident for some reason). It should not be in shipping handsets, so it needs to be fixed. Software bugs are a fact of life though - no complex software system is immune.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BasilBrush]

This particular bug? Only the iPhone at a guess.

On the other hand, iPhone doesn't suffer from the Android bug also just revealed, where it can send SMS messages to the wrong contact.

http://www.gizmocrunch.com/rumors/4584-new-year-iphone-android-alarm-sms-bug

Now for all the potential problems of an alarm not going off, I can think of some far more serious scenarios from messages getting sent to the wrong person from your contact list.

It's kind of one of those "without sin"/glasshouses/stones things.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BasilBrush]

iOS 4 allows alarm apps to work in the background. You'd want to check on the App Store description that a particular alarm app has been written to take advantage of this functionality of iOS 4 though.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

if this was Microsoft, and Zunes stopped working because of leap year related issues, nobody would notice.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thetoadwarrior]

It does become a non-issue and really it's not a big deal but considering this keeps cropping up and not jsut with Apple. The Zune got hit by a new years date related bug too.

These are some of the biggest and richest companies do they not properly test date related applications? It'll require more than changing the date from Monday to Tuesday on your system.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BasilBrush]

I don't use my phone as an alarm clock.

And anyone who thinks any programming related to time and date is simple knows very little about the topic, and will learn better by making a time/date related programming fuck up at some point in their career.

What's rather more disappointing is the testing failure. 1st January is such an obvious test case. If I was the team manager I'd be going after the person responsible for the testing, not the programmer. And if it was the same person responsible for both, I'd resign.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm not excusing Apple but it appears to be horrible across the board. The Zune had issues and I'm sure there are many more applications that have as well. These are some of the biggest software companies. There is no excuse for something so basic to be so hard to get right for the likes of Microsoft of Apple. It's not like this is a brand new functionality that no one has tackled before. They should know exactly what they need to test for.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Hognoxious]

The problem with rolling your own date/time functions is that people keep switching things, adding a second to a year due to a close earth asteroid

Right. Because if I set my alarm for 07:15 and it goes off at 07:15 and one second I'll totally miss my flight!

witching when DST is applied. The problem with using the common libraries is that you need to update the library regularly and trust that the library maintainer is doing the above.

If things like that are hardcoded and only set for the following year or less the library is shite, and you're even more shite for using it.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thegarbz]

HAHAH Nice. So do I (work on emergency shutdown for major oil refineries). I admit though that if I have something critical like a job interview or a flight I will set an alarm as a backup.

My point would be that while my sleep cycle definitely doesn't have an integrity level rating why is it that we can't rely oh a phone for something as fundamentally basic as making a tone at a certain time. In the emergency shutdown world we pride on simplicity for safety. An if this then that type safety function has less failure modes then a complex sequence. So why is it that the device can do something as complex as digital communications but foul up something as simple as making a tone at the right time?

See in my view (I live in an area where power outages are quite common) I think my ancient phone actually has a higher reliability than my alarm clock which while it'll keep it's time during a power outage, doesn't actually sound if the power is out, which has happened to me before.

Maybe I should put it on a UPS :)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thegarbz]

!!!! My phone scares the shit out of me when the alarm goes off. I've put a custom alarmtone that starts gentle and gets progressively louder on it because of this. May I ask what phone it is? My sister's is similar. She can't ever hear the thing ring.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jc42]

Well, I certainly wouldn't argue against replacing our idiotic calendar system with something sane. But that's really a different problem than getting computers to deal with date/time values correctly. I ran across an elegant explanation of the problem some years back, when I got involved with my first java project, and the first time we crossed a DTS boundary, the code's time calculations got all screwed up. I did a bit of digging online, and came up with the simple explanation from a writer who said, in essence: "Look at the java specs. They require that the clock routines store the date+time internally in local time. This is all you need to know to correctly predict that code based on these routines won't work, and will never be debugged. In particular, new bugs will always appear when going in or out of DST. If the basic, internal time representation is in local time, these bugs will always exist, and no programmer will ever be able to fix them. As long as java decrees local time internally, its clock routines will never quite work right."

The writer went on to explain why the only sensible internal representation of time is in a universal format that's the same everywhere. Such a time value can be translated to any "user-friendly" time notation desired, in the software's human-readable output. But translating the other direction isn't always possible, and even when it is, the algorithms are often so complex that programmers just won't get them right.

There was a further observation that, if you want to do date/time arithmetic (and you will), the universal format should be a single number in a format that the hardware can use directly. This will save you the cpu cycles needed to convert to a hardware format for calculations, but is otherwise immaterial. The number can be the typical second counter, as used in unix, vms, and other OSs. It can be the floating-point day counter used by astronomers. It could be the ISO time format. The exact form isn't material; what's important is that you can do arithmetic with it efficiently, and that it be the same inside every machine (whose clock is correct ;-). But if you need sub-second precision, it's nice if the representation can handle that.

I once worked on a project where the management decreed ISO timestamps - the long character string, like "20110102194617". We software guys groaned, but we quickly found an excuse of the form "one of our products uses Standard X, which requires the unix time value" to write the two appropriate conversion routines. From then on, we could use the unix time value during in-memory calculations, and the only cost was an ISO-utime conversion during input, and a utime-ISO conversion when writing to the database where it would be visible to non-programmers.

I've also worked on numerous projects where the management decreed local time. On those projects, we just admitted openly that the date/time calculations would never be correct, but we'd do our best to patch as many of the inevitable bugs as we could find time for. In a few, we arranged things so that managers could never actually see the internal data representations, and we hid the universal timestamps behind "format for display" routines to show the data in management's favorite format(s).

Actually, deflecting discussions of the internal time formats to discussions of calendar reform could be an interesting way of preventing management from learning how you're actually getting the dates and times correct. And if enough of us start doing it, maybe we can get some calendar reform.

Clock problems are a lasting source of geek humor ...

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jc42]

... but how do you then deal with things like timezones? What if the phone's moved timezone since the alarm was set?

Some years back, shortly after I got my first cell phone whose clock synced automagically to the cell towers' clocks, I was on a trip to northern Arizona. The state of Arizona doesn't use DST; it's always in the MST (Mountain Standard) zone. But the Indian reservations, which are legally independent of the state and answer only to the US government, use DST. I found that, when driving around in the countryside, my phone would frequently jump back and forth between MST and MDT, depending on whether the tower it was talking to was on a reservation or not. When I mentioned this to locals, they'd just grin, and suggest turning off the time syncing while I was in the area.

I think some cell phones have gotten smarter about this since then. My current phone lets me turn DST on/off separately from syncing, so in boundary cases like this, it will stay consistent with itself. It also delays the syncing a while after crossing a time-zone border, apparently to make sure that you're really in the new time zone. But this is only a heuristic, and I expect there might be some situations that would confuse it.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BLKMGK]

Holy crap, that's a riot! If I had mod points I'd want to find a way to give you all of them. Awesome!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jc42]

I mean, DST change and year change? It's some of the most obvious and basic corner cases that you write tests for, especially in an application that specifically deals with time! It's practically textbook stuff, or an interview question for QA position. And so it's extremely surprising when that kind of thing goes wrong in production.

Huh? I learned years ago that DST and timezone changes are exactly when you'd expect the code to be wrong. In particular, I always look for clock weirdness at a DST change -- and I've rarely been disappointed.

You might expect the companies that develop the software to thoroughly test such things. Based on experience, I don't expect this at all. I expect them to sell their gadgets, and only bother getting it right when they get over some threshold number of bug reports.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[shutdown -p now]

Huh? I learned years ago that DST and timezone changes are exactly when you'd expect the code to be wrong.

Precisely. Which is why, when you're writing an application that specifically deals with time, that's the very first thing that you test!

I mean, we're not talking about some Indian outsourcing sweatshop here. It's Apple. They're supposed to be better than this.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Come the fuck on -- Apple gets scrutinized for this because THEY ARE APPLE.

The company that has "no comment" on ANYTHING
The company that announces anything prior to Steve's little puppet show on any given fucking day
The company that denies faults in their product till the bitter end

And lastly, my favorite -- The company whose mission statement is:

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

What the hell kind of mission statement is that?

For full disclosure I use almost entirely Apple products, because I find they are the most usable on the market and for the most part they "just work", but to operate a company the way Steve Jobs operates it and to NOT expect special selective scrutiny is FUCKING STUPID.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Kyusaku Natsume]

Yup, I really enjoy Apple's devices, but bugs like this and the remote execution bug that rooted iPhone 4 just by visiting a web page are inexcusable. This bug should have been fixed since the first time it was spotted.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[narcc]

However, to be frank: These kind of bugs are unacceptable. If this were Microsoft, everyone would be laughing and scolding, but since it's Apple I'm sure we'll get excuses....

Why would anyone make excuses? This will revolutionize the way we think about being on time -- You anti-Apple zealots are so predictable.

Like every game-changer Apple creates, you'll ridicule this as 'stupid' or 'an inexcusable bug' until this unimaginably innovative concept starts showing up on your iPhone wannabe Android "smart" phones as other handset manufactures begin the next round of catch-up.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Kyusaku Natsume]

I think that the reason that these bugs bite them is that instead of relying in the iPod/iPhone’s internal real time clock the alarm app uses the iCal calendaring services and tries to be location aware. Normally, it would be a nice and powerful touch for the app, but there are too many corner cases to account in this scenario that the app becomes really prone to fail. However, if Android and Symbian manage to do this in a reliable way Apple can do it too; at least, you could set a preference in the app to make it “location/DST aware” or let it behave like a not powerful but reliable plain old mechanical clock.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Any particular reason you didn't write a similar version of this rant in the Android text-message story?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yeah, why the fuck would I want to use a feature on a device that I paid quite a lot of money for? In fact, why are we using our iPhones as anything other than a fucking phone?!

(Note: For the slow amongst you, this post is laden with sarcasm).

For your consideration. 2011 Slashdot Insightful Awards

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Did he do this when he was in Mexico or something?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jrmcferren]

That might not help, sometimes noise on power lines can interfere with some digital clocks, I've witnessed it myself.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[shutdown -p now]

I didn't see people writing "oh, it's just a bug, so what?" in that story.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[jc42]

I mean, we're not talking about some Indian outsourcing sweatshop here. It's Apple. They're supposed to be better than this.

I think you mean that their advertising leads you to believe that they're better than this. ;-)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[lazybeam]

I rely on my infant son to wake me up. Obviously that is useful to everyone?

  Fwiw I really use my nokia phone for alarms as it's less loud compared to my bedside alarm, so it will be less likely to wake him or my wife up if I need to get going before they wake up.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[lazybeam]

Who needs to wake up before the 4th of January anyway? Today was a public holiday! Sleep through the long weekend

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link, I hadn't read about that Android bug. It looks like I'll continue to stay far away from both Android and iPhones for some time.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[thegarbz]

I do this too, then should I sleep in I would get woken by a set of alarming pants on the floor :)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Phroggy]

All the AC-with-battery-backup alarm clocks I've seen will sound the alarm normally when running on battery, they just won't light the display (so you can't see what time it is, but you still wake up). This goes for clock radios too.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha hahahaha.......

Hello Mr. JCR, good to know that you are an Apple Shill :-)

Keep up the greaaaaaat job, sir :-)

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I noticed that too. My crappy chinese alarm clock also has the very annoying issue of running ~30% faster when it's on battery backup.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

That was completely awesome. You are my new hero

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Jurily]

If things like that are hardcoded and only set for the following year or less the library is shite, and you're even more shite for using it.

It's not hardcoded in the library, it's hardcoded in the rules the library is supposed to follow.

For example, about a week ago, it was decided that there will be no leap second in 2010 because the Earth rotated slightly faster than expected. Did your library handle that?

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[kellyb9]

I'm not the biggest fan of Apple, but even I think you're underselling the iPhone by calling it JUST a music player. Ask any college student, an alarm clock is a critical feature of all cell phones.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[russotto]

I was thinking of the iPod Touch, but an iPhone is also not primarily an alarm clock. I'm not saying the bug is a good thing, just that I don't think it's reasonable to consider a temporary problem with alarms not going off a "critical" bug in a device which is primarily not an alarm clock -- whether it's primarily a music player or a phone.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[sh00z]

No international time zones would be helpful too; set everyone's clocks to the same time around the world. Sure it might confuse some, but I'm sure people would get the hang of it after a while.

It's been tried, about a decade ago. They called it "Internet time." And no, it didn't catch on, in spite of being promoted by lots of heavy hitters (CNN included it in their online masthead.) I think the biggest problem was that Swatch let their ego go just a little too far, and they attempted to move the prime meridian to Switzerland. If they had aligned with Greenwich, it might just have caught on.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

I have yet to have a clock who's alarm doesn't work with the power out... but I have to say that I RTFM before I rely on a new clock. I also test it. It is something I rely on to facilitate my life so I don't want any surprises. So, to your issue, you must have a testing process like Apple does. "It just works" and damn the torpedoes!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Cro Magnon]

I have 3. My olde alarm clock radio wakes me up between 5 & 6, depending on how often I hit the snooze. My wristwatch goes off at 6:15, telling me to get off Facebook and eat my breakfast. And my iPhone goes off at 6:30 telling me to get out the door.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Cro Magnon]

I tried telling myself "wake up at 6". I woke up at 6PM.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have been nabbed by date and time issues. I have and I consider my self to be a reasonable coder. There is no logic behind it You have to read the rules cross your fingers and prey.

If you are using Java then this might help
http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/
I'm not independant as I do know the bloke that wrote the lib. It was written because of the issues we were having.

Matt

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[hjf]

I noticed that most smartphone users complain that their phone's alarm doesn't work when the phone is off.

I thought my friend was weird when he said that but then lots of people say the same. I don't get it. Why do you even turn off the phone anyway? If someone calls you in the middle of the night it's cause they really, positively need your attention. Or is it that most people actually have annoying friends who call you at any time?

I just turn off the sync option so 3AM spam won't wake me up, but the phone is on in case someone needs to talk to me.

Back to the RTC, AFAIK, RTC chips do have alarm (pull the IRQ line when the alarm is fired). Maybe phone designers think people will never turn off their phone so they don't use the RTC's wake up capability. I don't see why. The RTC is built-in in many processors actually, so it's just a matter of turning the phone on, fire the alarm, and eventually turn it back off.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[nullifi]

I was browsing around the management website of a Samsung telephone system once, saw the DST settings and thought I would take a look. There were about seven lines, with text boxes for the month, day, year, hour, minute, second that a DST change would occur. I thought to myself, "what happens when these seven years have passed?" Does the phone system update itself, or will our times suddenly be of because it has no entries for DST? Either way, that has to be the worst implementation of DST I have ever seen.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[icebraining]

I thought my friend was weird when he said that but then lots of people say the same. I don't get it. Why do you even turn off the phone anyway? If someone calls you in the middle of the night it's cause they really, positively need your attention. Or is it that most people actually have annoying friends who call you at any time?

I just turn off the sync option so 3AM spam won't wake me up, but the phone is on in case someone needs to talk to me.

I have a landline, so if someone really needs my attention they can call that. Leaving the phone on is wasting energy, battery life and be subjected to receiving SMS fom annoying people who don't understand you have to get up in the morning (usually uni colleagues, but not really "friends"), or my phone company sending me alerts about some promotion they have going.

Besides, my Nokia alerts me even if it doesn't have enough battery to stay on, which is a very helpful features when I don't have a charger with me.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

In the future, if you look up pwnd in the dictionary - it will point to this post.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Zencyde]

These little glitches aren't excuses for why alarms failed to go off at all. If a second was missed here or there, I'd understand. But the alarms failed to work. What does your code look like if these library updates are what causes this sort of problem? I expect a device to work as intended independent of these small anomalies. The device didn't know it would happen or that it did happen and no desynchronization in the Earth's rotation should cause the alarm system to fail. Nor would the desynchronization event affect the time system outside of being off from "official time" by a couple of seconds.


So let's be honest. The coders at Apple just fucked up hard.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BLKMGK]

Yeah, I tried to use a 3rd party app (FooBar?) to manage the music on my iPhone. It failed and now my phone isn't recognized by iTunes and it wants me to reset - I'm 2firmware releases behind. So, I get to lose a ton of info when I reset just to be able to update. F'ing Apple! At least I can use a file browser to pull pics off.

Oh and being tied to ONE machine to synch also sucks and I hate it. I've seen methods for synching multiple computers and a single library shared somewhere but I don't trust rigging it like that and some place like DropBox isn't going to be big enough for my music. Oh and no way do I allow iTunes to "manage" my music - hells no!

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[BLKMGK]

Yeah but are they broken too because of an underlying function that Apple borked or do they actually work? Supposedly the alarm would work today - it didn't. I know someone who has OLD firmware having never updated and theirs worked just fine. Go figure...

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[zach_the_lizard]

It's an iPhone. The thing is just too puny for me. Maybe if I put on headphones / earbuds it would wake me, but that would be a smidgen uncomfortable.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Cyclloid]

Recetly with my new(Samsung) phone, I was on a trip and I drained the battery. I didn't have my power cord with me so it was without power for about a day. It didn't have enough power to boot up but the alarm still worked.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[phoenix321]

Clock and alarms from the cheapest thrift stores work incredibly accurate. People were expecting the same from iPhone iOS and were bitterly disappointed. I used to be expecting this from my Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, but this being Windows, I have no one to blame but me for relying on it.

But yes, I think programming related to time and date is simple. Not because because it actually is trivial - which it is not - but because it is probably the best known *non*-trivial subject. It is rubbed in in every course on programming that is worth its merits. All teachers and professors and books never cease to preach to their students on how difficult programming on sorting, searching, time and encryption is, no matter how deceivingly trivial they may seem at first to a naive beginner.

Most programs will have *something* to do with time and date, sorting or searching, which is the reason they are taught so extensively. Messing up these known-hard but well-researched subjects is a tell-tale sign that even a faintest hint from all these exhaustive material in academic and educational teaching has been ignored, forgotten or never heard or read.

Which means the programmer has blissfully ignored all the warnings he should have received in education or not received any education at all.

Either way, it marks an amateur who should not code production quality software for the flagship device of the largest publicly-traded consumer electronics company in the US.

A lazy tester and a broken testing process is just the icing on the cake here.

None of them should ever be allowed within five miles of companies who produce software for autopilots and nuclear plants.

Re:Use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

well i might have unplugged an alarmclock that can go off with absolutely no grid power in my bedroom, does that result in anomalies?

Hmm

[IRoll11!s]

First poster's alarms must not be working.

Boom ...

[Anonymous Coward]

first post

Wow. Just wow.

[Frosty Piss]

My girlfriend wasn't impressed, sleeping in, and I wasn't either, having to race her to work!

Shall I call you a waaaambulance?

Re:Wow. Just wow.

[siddesu]

Why so much noise, won't ordering a wake-up call to that same phone work better?

Re:Wow. Just wow.

[makubesu]

Don't ditch the iPhone, ditch the woman instead! No more rushing.

Re:Wow. Just wow.

[RightSaidFred99]

Apple apologists are such smug douches, and than you for demonstrating that to the world.

Uh oh

[Tripp-phpBB]

Uh oh, I see Apple bashing coming. Defend yourselves

Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for posting this very interesting story. I am utterly fascinated at this, at alarm clocks failing to work. I look forward to reading the commentary on this breaking news piece.

What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[jaymz666]

Day light saving errors, new year errors, do they just have crappy coders at apple?

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, but they are all pretty

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[pmontra]

Don't know about coders but it seems they do crappy testing.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[aliquis]

Day light saving errors, new year errors, do they just have crappy coders at apple?

No, they've got crappy hardware designers as well!

Oups .. ;)

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[drolli]

My Girlfriend also has an iphone. I mean lets forget about fucked up blue tooth support, not being able to send vcards (as i have done from small device to small device since my first palm/mobile phone), and lets just accept that automatic configuration (which worked for me in all courntries i have been in recently) is a little bit complicated for a phone for approx. 500Euro). Lets also forget that video calls follow just apples standard.

But what really disappointed me in this incredibly immature device is that under certain conditions EDGE support from the mobile cell tower prevents making calls on the iphone (my nokia works fine at the same conditions). As long a a device call itself a phone thats an epic fail. (Oh yes, dear Steve, we tried to use an legally unlocked iphone with some provider who is not one of the customer-sucking premium provider you chose. We will ask you forgiveness when you present in the next keynote 'it took us a littl bit longer to get it right, but you you can place calls in all EDGE networks'.)

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Day light saving errors, new year errors, do they just have crappy coders at apple?

They haven't apparently realized how much people put trust on these devices and unless they pick up now quickly they might find it hard way that losing the trust is easy but gaining it back once lost is damn much harder.

Shouldn't go bragging around, but I've wrestled with calendar, time and timezone algorithms quit a bit 15-20 years ago and they can be really tricky to get right. I don't recommend anyone any more try to reimplement those algorithms but instead use already implemented and tested public alogrithms and code. If you can't for some reason then you have to extensively test at least the full calendar period (28 yr) and the range you will ever expect the algorithms to cover. It's lot of thinking and pen & paper work too that is quite hard to fully automate.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Idbar]

Dude, iTunes on Windows should had give you a clue!

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[dominious]

you guys don't get it...
it's a FEATURE! you see, hippies don't go to work on new year's day because their alarm didn't work. what other company does that?!

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and that is a fact with Steve him self, testing is not a prio anymore.

Also the coders are crappier now, there are more Unix *nix dudes there to decide upon usability issues. And it causes crappy behaiviour. Seems to me that Apple is getting lesser of the developers that "get it" as Steve puts it.

Well, I guess it's all what we get for paying less now for Apple hardware, they just become one of the many others who produces crapware. Sad I'm willing to pay for quality, but Apple is loosing it. The worst thing is that there seems to be non out there that puts quality as a prio anymore.

I Amiga ever came back maybe...

One paradox in this is that Microsoft has really tried hard to change their course in this. Just look at the efforts of making IE9 to a quality browser. If the current development continues maybe MS will be the top quality tech company by 2020.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps...

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard that the testing comprises of looking whether all buttons are lined up properly, verifying that everything looks unified like the way Steve envisioned and that there is enough gloss and shine everywhere to offset any petty problems like this. With what little testing time left after the above tasks they try making phone calls to each other and chant the Steve mantra - the problem with that is they are all right under AT&T towers when they call.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Graff]

I mean lets forget about fucked up blue tooth support, not being able to send vcards (as i have done from small device to small device since my first palm/mobile phone), and lets just accept that automatic configuration (which worked for me in all courntries i have been in recently) is a little bit complicated for a phone for approx. 500Euro). Lets also forget that video calls follow just apples standard.

But what really disappointed me in this incredibly immature device is that under certain conditions EDGE support from the mobile cell tower prevents making calls on the iphone (my nokia works fine at the same conditions).

How is bluetooth support "fucked up"? I've never had a problem connecting to devices and it seems to work just the same as any other phone I've used.

You can't send vcards? I'm able to send them via MMS and e-mail without a glitch, I do it all the time.

FaceTime hardly follows just Apple's standards. It's using a ton of open standards such as H.264, AAC, and many more. Now, the entire process of establishing and maintaining a FaceTime connection is fairly complex and Apple has said that they will open the technology up to others at some point in the future, just as iTunes and the iPod used to be Mac-only but were eventually opened up to the Windows world.

I don't know what problem you are having with EDGE but I have unlocked an iPhone to run on another provider and so far there's been no unusual problems. Do you have any data on what these "certain conditions" are? Have you reported them to your provider? Perhaps the signal is out of spec in some way that the Nokia ignores but the iPhone doesn't, it's not always the right thing to make a connection when the signal is out of spec.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Concerned Onlooker]

I'm not sure what you're talking about when it comes to the vcard. I send and receive them all the time on my iPhone.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Goboxer]

Where do you think big companies stick the crappy coders? In the applications so basic you think they wouldn't screw it up. Lesson learned.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, they do.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[jo_ham]

vcard works on my iPhone, I have used it several times.

Bluetooth works fine - I have a generic bluetooth handsfree kit, my sister has a car with built in bluetooth so her iPhone integrates with her radio/steering controls/built in display and works just fine. My father has yet another different bluetooth hands free kit. My aunt has a different model car to my sister, but also has an iPhone and it similarly works just fine with the steering controls, radio, built in microphone, in-car display etc. My brother doesn't have a hands free kit - perhaps this is your problem too? Do you actually have a bluetooth device, or have you just read somewhere on the internet that "bluetooth doesn't work" because it doesn't do file transfers over bluetooth (which is a little bit of a strange omission, but if you're in range of the computer you can just connect it via USB - not ideal, but such is life).

I travel to the US from the UK relatively frequently - my iPhone handles the change just fine. I just turn off the aeroplane mode when I get off the plane and it finds a local tower, resets the time and date as necessary and I can use it as normal. Not sure what's so "a little bit complicated" about that.

You don;t have to use Apple's facetime for video calls - there are other apps you can use, and even more recently, Skype has now been added to that list.

Not sure what conditions are causing failure of calls under EDGE support. My house is in an EDGE-only area (no 3G) and I don;t have a land line - I have never been in a position where I have been out of contact with someone or unable to make a call (apart from the times I am updating my phone, just to cover all the argument bases). I can't say I've ever had my phone prevent me from calling in any other EDGE area, in any country I've been in. Where exactly are you?

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

"do they just have crappy coders at apple?"

In a lot of cases it seems to be a resounding yes, from the poor excuse for a joke that was Safari on Windows when it was initially released (it was less stable and functional than most alpha releases of software) to iTunes just being shite, to the plethora of security vulnerabilities the iPhone has suffered to simple things like this.

Apple seems to be by and large a company that creates pretty designer products, technically they seem quite inept in many areas- it's not even just software, the poor iPhone 4 antenna design is an example of a hardware flaw but from discoloration of some MacBook models due to bad plastics choice in the face of hardware heat output, to fire hazard magsafe power adapters to heat problems on iPhone 3GS and cracks resulting from them and so on. There's also a common argument that Apple design easy to use interfaces, but that's simply not true, what is true is that their UIs are pretty and are well animated, and as such are fun to use regardless of how logically set out they are- people will forgive a few unnecessary button presses and gestures if pressing the buttons and doing the gestures is actually quite fun.

It suprises me because Apple is meant to be a technology company, but I'm not sure they are, Apple just doesn't seem to take skilled technical experts seriously, it seems to very much have an ethos of form over function.

The real question is though does it matter? Despite several high profile demonstrations of technical incompetence on Apple's behalf it hasn't put consumers off at all, it's still working for them at the end of the day, so if it works, who can blame them? A lot of people prefer prettiness over function at the end of the day. You can't really fault Apple's business model certainly, but certainly it's a myth that as a company they produce software that's more usable, more secure, or more stable, that's definitely not the case. It's also not the case that their hardware is well designed or high quality as the numerous defects and the high levels of toxicity of components when it comes to disposal (a common sign of cheap materials) demonstrate.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[drolli]

> Now, the entire process of establishing and maintaining a FaceTime connection is fairly complex and Apple has said that they will open the technology up to others at some point in the future

Uhm... right... fairly complex and will be opened up later. But it is nice that it contains some "open standards".

Vcards via bluetooth to any device - without involving any network.

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[drolli]

via bluetooth? tell me how and i will be grateful whenever i need to send a contact to my girlfriends phone. its practical when travelling from country to country without adjusting hte iphones internet setting manually (possible automatically in 1seconds on a nokia).

Re:What's with apple and alarms in phones?

[drolli]

The iphone of my gf is an iphone 3gs, i think.

Bluettooth: Nice if they resolved that now - i'd say 4 years too late and i am not keeping track of which essential feature is added in each fw revision - as a normal co-user i only collide with the thing which should work, but dont. The last time i checked i was in trouble (to be precise: a Jabra 130 did not connect to the iphone of my GF in summer 2009. A BT keyboard not to the ipod of my trainee and neither to the iphone of my GF. and yes, they connected all other applicable devices i possess. A BT gps unit did not connect to the ipod of my trainee (for obvious reasosn i did not check that versus the iphone).

Vcards: the iphone is the only devices which does not react on vcards sent via BT from my phone. Anything else (from linux via android to S40 receives the card). I seem to be to stupid to find the function for sending it from the iphone (via bt).

Automatic configuration: i talked about the internet settings. Nokias have a "configuration wizard" which works with most sim cards and can extract internet APs automatically. Worked for me with at least 5 different providers - from poor development countries to premium providers. My GFs iphone makes trouble every time.

Trouble with EDGE/2g:
-Some region in Guangzhou, where EDGE was recently upgraded - problems did not occur 1 year ago
-Hongkong (even some unidentified trouble without EDGE, we resolved it by switching to 3g roaming - and only using in emergency)
Symptom: Cant make calls/calls are dropped immediately

google for it, it seems some users in Canada and other places are also affected (it seems to have to do something with the inability to handle a call while packet data is active under certain circumstances, e.g. with recently upgraded edge towers). Since no other phone seems to have that problem, its *not acceptable*.

Its nice that apple recently eased the restriction on "no application shall replace what we deliver", but sorry guys, they did not guarantee this or something. They did that long after i made my buying decision.

To add another technical issue:iphones drain the battery on unstable cell networks. In the beginning you may think the behavior of Nokias (giving up after some time) is a bug, but i know quite a few iphone users who say its a feature (i happen to work in a building which is unhappily located in a small valley without coverage.) since their iphone drain the battery every day.

Still?

[MayonakaHa]

Apple can't quite seem to get that alarm working right. This isn't the first time. My Android based phone hasn't had any issues with the alarm, but since I work from home it's not as much of an issue.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

But can you send texts to the correct person?

Re:Still?

[MayonakaHa]

Hell I barely touch the text application. Between phone calls, email and Twitter DMs there's no reason I ever need to.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

Galaxy S (an android phone) tends to set the alarm a week ahead so you have to be careful or it will wake you one week late. Also, it only supports snooze if you set it beforehand. IMHO, Android is quite a mess at the moment and you're lucky to get third party applications to work/update at all.

Re:Still?

[Totenglocke]

Hell I barely touch the text application. Between phone calls, email and Twitter DMs there's no reason I ever need to.

Wait, you Tweet to your Dungeon Master? Seems like a waste of effort if he's sitting at the same table.....

Re:Still?

[beelsebob]

No, but your android phone can't send texts to who you select.

Re:Still?

[yodleboy]

that's interesting, i just sent several texts this morning on my android 2.1 phone and got replies from the correct people. what's this bug again?

Re:Still?

[beelsebob]

That would be a bug affecting android 2.2 or higher which causes text messages to go to the wrong place.

Re:Still?

[SerpentMage]

But... What if that other person is some hot chick/dude that you were too nervous to talk to? You could blame it on Android!

With the Apple inability to create a proper alarm all I get is frazzled...

Yeah, I think I will take the mysterious message sender anyday!

Re:Still?

[yodleboy]

well that explains why i haven't seen it. that sucks.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use my DS. I have to open it to turn it off and it has never failed me.

Re:Still?

[fatphil]

Let's say it's a 1 in 100000 occurrence. That probably means that maybe 50-100 people will suffer from the bug today, and every day. Thats an after-sales burdon - people will be making support calls, they'll be making returns, and, potentially worse, they'll be telling other people about it. It's stuff like that that severely hampers a company being able to turn a profit from a device. (Which typically takes about half of the lifetime of the device.)

Re:Still?

[Belial6]

Yep, I sure can. I use Handcent. Since Google doesn't ban applications that compete with their own, I can do that on an Android phone.

OK, snarkyness aside, an alarm clock is a FAR simpler application than a text messeging application, and this isn't the first time this has happened to Apple. That being said, I'm not sure which one is worse. I suppose it depends on usage patterns. Do you have a job that you will get fired from if you are late? Do you send insulting messages to people with the same 7 digit phone number as the person you are insulting? The Android bug seems to be less likely to hit you, but could carry a more dangerous payload.

Morning sex

[antifoidulus]

See, this is why you need to convince your girlfriend to get into the habit of morning sex. There is no alarm clock more reliable than the human wang and as an added bonus there is no snooze button either :P

Re:Morning sex

[MichaelSmith]

There is no alarm clock more reliable than the human wang

Interesting theory Julian.

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Mod this up please.

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no alarm clock more reliable than the human wang

My dog was extremely disappointed when he found out HIS wang was not sufficient for HIS girlfriend.

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, my dog's girlfriend was most definitely not me.

- Above AC. Really.

Re:Morning sex

[SeaFox]

Are you forgetting that one of the after-effects of orgasm in males is drowsiness?

Re:Morning sex

[Sitnalta]

I don't know what's sadder. Your lame The Todd-esque sexual joke, or the fact that it was labeled "insightful."

Re:Morning sex

[antifoidulus]

The girlfriend is the one that had to get to work, not the OP.

Re:Morning sex

[antifoidulus]

I think the fact that you decided to take the time out to comment on a joke you didn't like when it would have been easier just to skip it is the saddest part honestly.

Re:Morning sex

[andyr86]

Lets not forget that commenting on a comment of a comment is also pretty sad....oh...damn.

Re:Morning sex

[antdude]

Geeks and nerds with girlfriends? LOL!

Re:Morning sex

[MayonakaHa]

Hey if you find that one funny, this one will blow your mind.

I'm a geek with a WIFE and you know what? We have a CHILD!

Some pretty crazy shit there, huh?

Re:Morning sex

[antdude]

Yes, prove it that you do have them. :)

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even sadder that all who posted in this thread did so instead of having sex, which obviosly is the preferred human activity at any given time.

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

But there is an iApp for that ... it's the iToss and the person who uses it is an iTosser.

Re:Morning sex

[Rashdot]

Recommended.

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

See, this is why you need to convince your girlfriend to get into the habit of morning sex. There is no alarm clock more reliable than the human wang and as an added bonus there is no snooze button either :P

Yes there is. You just have to press it rapidly for a couple minutes, and the snooze works great.

Re:Morning sex

[vegiVamp]

Well, at some point this has got to get so lame it goes straight through the lameness and comes out on the other side as over nine thousand - informative.

Re:Morning sex

[konohitowa]

Not so. The boyfriend is apparently her boss or something, because he needed to be there before she got there. That's why he had to race her to work. He doesn't state whether or not he won the race.

Re:Morning sex

[Belial6]

You are confused. Geeks and nerds with girlfriends only seems funny before they enter the work force. There is nothing that gets a woman off more than a man with a HUGE..... bank account. Sad but true....

Re:Morning sex

[antdude]

I have a huge bank account and in my mid 30s, and still got no women. :P

Re:Morning sex

[bertoelcon]

I'm a geek with a WIFE and you know what? We have a CHILD!

Some pretty crazy shit there, huh?

It is crazy the advancements in AI and cloning we have.

Re:Morning sex

[Anonymous Coward]

then, you must be fat

Re:Morning sex

[indi0144]

Yes

You have no woman ERGO You have a huge bank account.

Re:Morning sex

[antdude]

Yep. :)

Re:Morning sex

[antdude]

"I'm not fat. I'm big boned!"

Re:Morning sex

[operagost]

Pics or it didn't happen.

So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Thinking back to the Zune clock bug error, that one affected only a single model because the bug was in the interface between a particular brand and model of RTC hardware and the kernel.

Is this a similar error, confined to a driver issue with one platform's RTC, or is it an error in logic somewhere higher up the stack, and thus going to occur on all iDevices of a given firmware level?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's put it this way: recurring alarms are not affected. You decide if it's the hardware messing up, or the alarm clock app... ;)

Re:So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That does make the alarm clock app more likely; but not entirely certain.(given the huge number of devices with embedded RTCs that require some sort of "alarm" function to occur even when the system CPU is off or running at very, very low power, I would tend to assume that many contemporary RTCs have the ability to track one or more alarm targets internally, and poke a wakeup line at the appropriate time, so the system can take appropriate action. Many cellphones and PDAs can be turned on by a set alarm even when turned as "off" as they can get without pulling the battery. Most PCs have, buried in the BIOS, an option to schedule wake-from-off at certain times on certain days, and so forth. This leads me to suspect that RTCs aren't merely dumb clocks, which would allow a driver issue or a userspace app issue to be at work.)

Happened to mine

[Chewbacon]

Mine didn't go off to get me up for work. Fortunately I woke up only 10 minutes after it was supposed to go off. Apple released a comment saying they were unaware of any reason this could happen, but as the article above said it should resolve by Monday.

Re:Happened to mine

[imthesponge]

I guess Apple doesn't have the ability to patch it.

Re:Happened to mine

[Chewbacon]

Happened again today but used a contingency alarm.

Y2k here we come

[ILuvRamen]

This is like the third slashdot reported instance of a Y2K style timing bug and the last was in 2010 when 9++ = kaboom lol. It's unbelievable that people still leave glitches like this in their software. Is time really that hard to calculate and program around? People still can't program their software mere months out from a year rollover to be able to handle it?

Re:Y2k here we come

[toriver]

Reminds me of when I wanted to update some software after installing Mac OS X 10.5.10, and the installer bailed out because it thought the version number string "10.5.10" was less than the minimum which was "10.5.8"... string comparison FTL.

It will fix its self?

[rrohbeck]

OMG, it is self aware, has introspection and can self improve? Now I know what all the Apple fans love it so much.

Re:It will fix its self?

[lxs]

SAM: I mean it fixed itself.

SPOOR: Fixed itself.

DOWSER:... ixed itself.

SPOOR: Machines don't fix themselves.

DOWSER: ... fix themselves.

SPOOR: He's tampered with it, Dowser.

DOWSER: ... ampered. with it, Spoor.

Re:It will fix its self?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Will start working again" would be a better way of wording it. I guess the problem is that 1st and 2nd of January is not in week 1, which means the iOS probably think it was 2010 or similar.
Last year there was a power outage in a small town in Norway because the software was not handling week 53 at all...

Yeah, right.

[dangitman]

This just isn't a plausible claim. As if "anonymous reader" has a girlfriend. Now I've heard everything.

Re:Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

She's from Canada...

CS 101

[vlueboy]

Very few millions of people 20 years ago were downloading shareware. Cellphones, on the other hand, have an explosion with millions of Apps being marketted, and it's now cool and mainstream to pay cash for programs from sources who barely know how to code. Our world is being overrun again by easy-money coders who never passed a CS101 course or never got a full programming education. They are likely people programming in Visual Basic made obsolete by the new niche we call the Apps world. 7 years ago the New York Times said only 10-20% of IT workers in the US had a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science (4 year studies.)

The rest just wing it; never mind that not every CS degree makes you a programmer. Some untrained people are good, but from the rest we have buggy code like these alarms; nobody tests their products well because updates are "easy."

Last year, IIRC, there was a problem with Playstations (or PSP's or some MS hardware product) with the change of date for the New Year. As GOOD programmers get older, none of the fresh programmers care to learn how to avoid the old mistakes, probably because of details in my above rant. These bugs could have happened to wipe their phone data too, and the day we start seeing that is when people will realize that Apps are just like shareware code. Then, they'll return to ignoring things from untrusted or unproven sources.

Re:CS 101

[seebs]

For what it's worth, I've never taken a CS class. As to whether that makes me underqualified or not, well, I guess that's up to the rest of the world to decide, but my employer seems happy with me.

So, let's see.

1. You seem to assume that shareware is bad code, but quite a lot of the shareware I've used over the years has been excellent.
2. Nothing to do with "Apps" has anything to do with the built-in clock and alarm in the iPhone, which is part of the Apple-provided stuff, presumably developed by relatively qualified developers.
3. You have this rant about "Visual Basic". Whatever. I have an app in the app store, and I have never in my life touched VB.
4. Who cares about a 4-year BS? For crying out loud, I never even finished high school, nor did I get a GED. Instead, I hopped on over to doing college, where I got a BA in Psychology.

Just given the quality of this rant, if I had to choose between you and whoever wrote the code with this bug in it, I'd probably take the author of the buggy code, because that person might just have made a silly mistake, which most people do from time to time. I know you're incoherent; I'll take someone I just know made a single mistake over totally incoherent any day.

Re:CS 101

[Culture20]

4. Who cares about a 4-year BS? For crying out loud, I never even finished high school, nor did I get a GED. Instead, I hopped on over to doing college, where I got a BA in Psychology.

So you're the guy who wrote the $999.99 app? Excellent use of your degree.

Re:CS 101

[donscarletti]

The rest just wing it; never mind that not every CS degree makes you a programmer. Some untrained people are good, but from the rest we have buggy code like these alarms; nobody tests their products well because updates are "easy."

This is the alarm clock program that ships with the iPhone. Apple does not hire untrained programmers to write the iPhone's core apps, nor does it hire bottom of the range code monkeys. It hires qualified and experienced people who somehow still make mistakes like this. The difference between a good and a bad programmer is that a bad programmer will write a thousand line solution to a problem like this over the course of a week, it will have hundreds of edge cases because of its needless complexity and will fail in some cases. A great programmer will write a ten line solution in an hour that is elegant and captures the essence of the problem and the patterns within, but it will still fail, because the great programmer only spent an hour thinking about it and nobody can think through everything in an hour. This is why we have testing.

Re:CS 101

[subreality]

never mind that not every CS degree makes you a programmer

No CS degree makes you a programmer. They make you a Computer Scientist.

Proper testing is a function of Software Engineering. This isn't some nitpick: they're completely different fields that both happen to often involve computers, and are frequently confused by many people who go to school to learn CS when what they really want is to be a programmer.

This is exactly the kind of bug I'd expect from someone with a CS degree, fresh out of college and working their first SE job.

Re:CS 101

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a major part of the problem is thinking that computer science and programming somehow mean the same thing... There is absolutely no reason why everyone in a a excellent development group would need a CS degree -- in fact I believe that's total stupidity.

Note that I'm not saying education is useless, I'm saying that "CS" is not the answer to every computer related problem in the world.

Re:CS 101

[Khyber]

Just how did you get into college without a GED or HSD? In the USA, as far as I'm aware of, not one single place will accept you without that as a demonstration of a minimum level of educational development.

Re:CS 101

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

This is absolutely correct. CS is not software engineering, it's not programming, and it's not computer engineering.

CS = Theory and research into computation. What is computable, on what sort of machine, in what time bounds. Research into new applications for computation (such as machine vision or natural language processing).

SWE = The engineering process of delivering software that is functional and reasonably defect-free on time and on budget.

CE = The design and engineering of computer systems. CPUs, GPUs, buses, storage systems, interconnects, etc.

Programming = The act of creating code, which (when done correctly) requires skills from CS, SWE, and CE.

The bottom line is that you can't be a good coder unless you have at least some of all three skills. Algorithms and time complexity matter. So does writing code that actually performs on real hardware. So does writing code that is maintainable and reasonably defect-free.

I am fortunate that my "CS" program was actually more of a CS+CE+SWE program. I am not an expert in any of those fields but I do know enough to work effectively on a team to solve problems and write good code.

Re:CS 101

[jmac_the_man]

New years day 2009 (two years ago) all first gen Zunes failed. For an interesting experiment, match up people defending Apple in this story with people who bashed Microsoft in that story. Or vice versa, I suppose

Re:CS 101

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

You my friend are sadly mistaken.

Several way to get into college without a GED or HSD:

1) Wait a few years and then go. The colleges like your money
2) Be fucking brilliant and the colleges will accept you before you can drive
3) Have a rich daddy. The colleges like his money

Time to go.

Re:CS 101

[tkprit]

I got my hsd during first year of college; it was an early entrance program. You load up your first years of hs w/ adv classes (like by placing out), and spend your hs senior year in college as a freshman. I didn't have much of a choice--I polished off my required courses in my hs junior year, but lacked a few credits to officialy graduate; several colleges were interested in taking me early, and the h.s. took those credits (AFTER I PASSED, of course) and gave me by hsd.

That was in the 80s; it seems now more high schools offer a better range of AP and college-credit classes and/or are more open to letting juniors/seniors leave camput and take classes at local colleges. (Which is much better solution since it keeps you with your age group, imo).

Re:CS 101

[stealth_finger]

Last year, IIRC, there was a problem with Playstations (or PSP's or some MS hardware product) with the change of date for the New Year.

That was with most of the old fat ps3's. As a clock failure they pretty much all refused to work on Feb 29th, even off line as they apparently were unaware of leap years.

Re:CS 101

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing to do with "Apps" has anything to do with the built-in clock and alarm in the iPhone, which is part of the Apple-provided stuff, presumably developed by relatively qualified developers."

I know at ${DAYJOB}, the guys who wrote the built-in clock/alarm app were not ${DAYJOB} employees, but subcontractors from a large ${OVERSEAS} consultancy. Not just that, but some coders from that same consultancy have also been called, on internal ${DAYJOB} mailing lists, "bottom of the barrel third rate subcontractors".

There's no reason to expect Apple to be any different from ${DAYJOB}.

Re:CS 101

[vlueboy]

Most of the new degree students coming in have no knowledge of your explanation. People in their teens go into a CS degree thinking it is the ONLY path to get college-trained for Programming, for Information Technology. Few actually seek out CS fully knowing at their inexperienced ages about the definition of CS you gave. But incorrect choice of "Programmer vs. CS holder" training is only a small part of the systemic flaw. Most public and private colleges only have "CS," but like you said, it DOES train you on the other three.

People on /. who themselves are industry-savvy geeks worldwide that still mistake the degrees all the time, assume that ALL teenagers know to just research tradeschools for their sub career from your post. In reality, trade schools like DeVry aren't more renowned than MIT, and people may choose a more recognized name granting them more interviews even if they only offer the "wrong" field.

So people just grit their teeth and get locked into "CS." Sometimes they can't get accepted into their trade school. Right, you won't always make it into that well-researched school that does offer your CE or SWE or Prog program. And in spite of everything, only 20% of people are college-trained. Other disciplines tend to force the degree requirements while ours usually waves it off for 2 years of "equivalent" experience.

In any case, after my OP nobody cared that 80% of the people out there have no degree and still release code that is mission critical (for non-business values of "critical" where consumers are average Joes.) If I were to tell people on the current thread that 20% of their doctors and their president are certified by a degree, there'd be switching and complaining regarding the poor state of such "loose" and dangerous health-care and legal systems. This shows that defenders of the non-degree IT career path are field-biased. It's just more than a blessing for them to be in that 80% "unlicensed but perfectly employable" group when so many other fields ensure that equivalent mistakes as the Apple calendar bug are properly prevented, prepared against and systemically fixed to avoid disaster.

Re:CS 101

[vlueboy]

Thank you. That's the one that lingered in my mind. So the time-bomb failures are
1) Sony PS3 leap-year bug in 2010
2) Microsoft Zune bug 2 Januaries ago
3) An iPhone DST bug for Europe in November 2010
4) The latest iPhone's January 2011 one-time alarm bug

All are large companies and don't account for the indie app bugs we don't get to hear about on the front page. This furthers my point that something is seriously wrong with developer training in the past 5 years, both degree-less and degree-holding.

Re:CS 101

[ezweave]

To write re-usable, well-designed Objective-C on iOS takes a deft hand and you're right, there are a great deal of poorly written applications in Apple's App Store (Objective-C on iOS has no garbage collection and is much closer to, duh, C crossed with Smalltalk than anything else... there's nothing as raw as malloc, so it will allocate an appropriate amount of bits off the heap when the alloc message is sent, but you do have to worry about reference counting and telling the runtime that an object is safe for reclaiming. Very different from a mark and sweep type scheme where you can get away with not worrying about it, though that is bad too. Hell all the foundation classes still have a NextStep prefix!).

That, however (as is being pointed out by seebs et al) not the point.

At all.

This is not "App Store" code, this is code that is part of the OS... this would be like complaining about how unstable KDE is because KCalc crashes on you. Or, perhaps more appropriately, about poorly written VB apps (wink) in .NET when you have issues with Windows Media Player (a better, though still piss poor analogy).

I agree that it is far too easy for any joe (educated formally or not) to write rather shit apps, but that's just the way of things (to throw my hat into the fallacy of "appeal to authority" I've been "pro coding" since I was twenty and have the CS credentials trailing up to a Master's, but that doesn't make me right... or a good developer).

This is really a red herring, but to be fair, a good CS education isn't really an education in programming: it requires programming and touches on SE aspects of good design, but it is also an education in problem solving. Cyclomatic complexity, time complexity, good design, exposure to alternate paradigms (not just OO, but Functional and perhaps Aspect Oriented, etc), and a thorough awareness of important issues (tail recursion, memory management, etc) are things that one usually understands after having been through a decent program and, to be fair, I've met very few "self taught" or non-CS folks who understand all of those issues... but I have met some CS folks who don't know about any of them either. All that to say, that you could be a damn fine developer without a formal education, though that is much more rare.

As an aside, you will see a great deal of "I know JavaScript and Perl so I thought I had a good programming foundation" complaints in comments/reviews/discussions on iOS development. So there clearly are some chaps who are very confused about what, say, an O'Reilly book jacket means about "designed for experience programmers" and all that.

Re:CS 101

[seebs]

Very simple!

Step 1: In 9th grade, take AP Calc. AP courses you do well in (got a 5 on the test) count as college credits.
Step 2: That summer, take an intensive language course at the state university. You don't need to be in any sort of program, or "accepted" to the college, to do so; you can just pay money and take a course.
Step 3: Then spend a year taking Chinese classes in China with exchange students who are in colleges.
Step 4: Apply to college citing the equivalent of a semester's worth of course credits including specific courses that they have students in.

Easy. I also got to skip over Calc 1 and 2, plus the entire foreign language requirement, and got out after summer school of my third year, because I'd made my credit requirements.

In short, you're wrong; people will accept anything that convincingly demonstrates that you're prepared to succeed in college-level work, including as a concrete example "has already done well in college classes".

Re:CS 101

[seebs]

Fair enough, but it's still unrelated to the way in which app developers self-qualify. It's still someone hired to program, not just someone putting out an app which someone picks up.

Re:CS 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Still as incoherent as your original post. Maybe you should look into English 101.

Not to mention you sound like a bitter, unemployed, old coot.

Re:CS 101

[Anonymous Coward]

My degree in Computer Science included all the things you have listed for Computer Engineering as well as what you have for Computer Science. Of course I got my degree 20 years ago so maybe things have changed. Actually I don't remember if "Computer Engineering" even existed back then.

We built CPU's from scratch, made up our own machine/assembly language etc. and went into the theory of how they work. Did lots of programming, network design, all sorts of stuff as well as the more traditional Computer Science work like higher level math, theory and such. Hell, had I taken one more math class I could have gotten a degree in math along with my Computer Science.

Re:CS 101

[Khyber]

1. I'm 28, the ones I have applied to will not take you without your GED or HSD.
2. I created a new field of science growing plants without requiring light at all. Every agricultural science college I've applied to has soundly denied me.
3. Apparently they don't like the money enough to allow me to enroll.

Their loss.

Re:CS 101

[Khyber]

I can speak four different languages with the exclusion my native language, and I created a new branch of science in the horticultural field, and no college will accept me.

Oh well. Their loss.

Re:CS 101

[subreality]

I'm not sure if it's a deficiency of prose or if you're actually proposing that people are falling back on MIT because they can't clear the bar at DeVry. Either way, the main thread has been lost, so I'm just replying to this:

...tell people on the current thread that 20% of their doctors and their president are certified by a degree, there'd be switching and complaining ...

In coding, when you fuck up:
The build breaks
It fails automated tests
The bug gets caught in peer review
It blows up in the lab
It gets caught by methodical QA review
And some small percentage of the time, the bug ships, so you patch it later.

When a doctor fucks up, people die or are crippled, and there often aren't second chances to fix a mistake made in the OR.

As for your basic premise that we need more degrees: Good work in almost every field correlates strongly with experience, and poorly with formal education. The counterexamples are usually where you're doing something new where no one has experience. In 2011, alarm clock software isn't groundbreaking, and doesn't require fresh minds to think up a way to solve a new problem. It needs experienced engineers who have seen all the ways it's gone wrong before, working methodically to prevent it from happening again.

Re:CS 101

[Anonymous Coward]

2. I created a new field of science growing plants without requiring light at all. Every agricultural science college I've applied to has soundly denied me.

Yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence.

Re:CS 101

[vlueboy]

Thanks.
On your question about what I meant about MIT, it is that people simply find schools with big names even if the school is not known for a strong program in our field and is inadequate for training a programmer.

The name MIT was a bad example for me to have used in the earlier post, since they have CS, Programming, CE and Software Engineering, probably. Let me fix that with another example... I had a choice between applying to DeVry and New York University more than a decade ago. IIRC, NYU only had plain vanilla CS and I had no idea programming required trade schools and non-CS degrees during those highschool years. NYU has more renown than DeVry, and I applied to it completely ignoring DeVry. The latter being a trade school, would have been better equipped with more than plain CS degrees, even if NYU has more fame.

Re:CS 101

[Khyber]

And I bet you think it's a scam.

It isn't.

I've already posted proof here before.

Re:CS 101

[seebs]

Dunno where you live. In the US, take a couple of classes from the state university as "extension" classes (not part of a degree program) and you should be able to get into a college on the basis that you've already done college-level work.

At least, it worked for me. There is at least one guy out there (possibly now deceased) whose only academic credential of any sort was his PhD.

Re:CS 101

[Anonymous Coward]

So ... programming for the apple app store .... how's that Psychology Career working out?

Apple

[billsayswow]

It just works.

Re:Apple

[mschaffer]

It just works...if it's approved, and if you hold it the right way, and if don't mind being late, and ...

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you don't actually make phone calls

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when it doesn't

Re:Apple

[Ecuador]

Hehe, I get to use that quote about once a month or so to my Apple-fanatic boss. The funny thing is that he doesn't make excuses about the things that don't work as they should, and even now if you ask him he will admit he had a lot of problems with his Apple products, but he persists buying them...
For example the last incident was last month when his 24" Samsung (that I had chosen some years ago) went bad and without asking me got a 27" Apple Cinema display. Well, his attempt to connect the macbook to the apple monitor was a golden "it just works" moment. The macbook not only lacks the only connection option of the Apple Cinema display (displayport), but even if you bought a (very expensive) converter, it still does not work as the 27" has a native resolution that the macbook does not support. So of course then my boss gets a new Mac Mini to hook up to his new monitor. I first learned about the whole thing when he emailed me after trying to do the transfer of his user account from the macbook to his mac mini - the keychain was not transferred, another "classic" (since the transfer process has burnt me too the one time I tried it) "just works" moment..

Re:Apple

[JonJ]

Well, his attempt to connect the macbook to the apple monitor was a golden "it just works" moment. The macbook not only lacks the only connection option of the Apple Cinema display (displayport), but even if you bought a (very expensive) converter, it still does not work as the 27" has a native resolution that the macbook does not support. So of course then my boss gets a new Mac Mini to hook up to his new monitor. I first learned about the whole thing when he emailed me after trying to do the transfer of his user account from the macbook to his mac mini - the keychain was not transferred, another "classic" (since the transfer process has burnt me too the one time I tried it) "just works" moment..

So your boss is a moron and you have a profound misunderstanding of "It just works". Nice.

Re:Apple

[jo_ham]

So at some point you (or he) changed his password with the OS X install disk (sounds like a likely scenario if your description of him as an idiot is anything to go by), thus his keychain is still protected by the old password. Changing the login password this way leaves the keychain locked with the old password as a security measure. Otherwise it is always the same as the login password (and is changed if you change your password the normal way). 5 seconds on google would tell you (or him) what his options are here.

If he used the migration assistant to move his account over and the keychain did not move, this is the reason why. I have never had any problem with the migration assistant, despite using it many times with several different accounts, including a couple set up in non-standard ways (like home folder being on different volume, and various other 'not set up in the textbook way' accounts that you might expect to "trip up" the migration tool.

Also, I'm not seeing the correlation between a dumb computer user buying things without looking at the specs and the invalidation of "it just works". At no point does Apple state that "it just works" is a substitute for actually looking at the specifications of what you're buying. The 27" monitor has a spec sheet and lists the system requirements necessary - just like any other computer monitor from any other manufacturer.

Re:Apple

[Mr Bubble]

That has nothing to do with Apple. That has to do with reading the specs and knowing your machine and its capabilities. Apple makes things easier, but you still have to have something of a clue.

unreliable

[mschaffer]

The point is that the iOS time routines are unreliable. You need a redundant clock/alarm that doesn't run on iOS.

Re:unreliable

[gnasher719]

The point is that the iOS time routines are unreliable. You need a redundant clock/alarm that doesn't run on iOS.

I am sure you can give us an example where the iOS time routines don't work as advertised.

Re:unreliable

[LucidBeast]

I for one thank Steve though I never use alarm clock this makes me consider changing my habits. iPhone alarms were advertised to work like magic and be magical and by magic all iPhone owners got extra snooze while other phone owners had to drag their hung over butts into work. Only question is who the heck works on new years day. Come on guys don't you have unions for this kind of thing.

Re:unreliable

[kge]

Just some of the people who work on new years day: Medical personel, policemen, firemen, traindrivers, pilots and so on and so on...

Re:unreliable

[scdeimos]

I am sure you can give us an example where the iOS time routines don't work as advertised.

Here's a well-travelled and documented bug, which still hasn't been fixed: try editing a Contact entry to add a birth date for someone 77 years (I think) or older - good luck finding it in the calendar!

The three outcomes I've seen for this include:

1. Contact appears in the birthday calendar, but with the wrong birth date.
2. The correct birth date appears in the birthday calendar, but with some other contact's name against it (wtf?).
3. Neither the contact nor their birth date appear in the birthday calendar at all.

Apple's date and time code needs review and TFA just demonstrates another example.

Re:unreliable

[Anonymous Coward]

People who do real work like that aren't in Apple's target demographic.

Re:unreliable

[DJRumpy]

I just did this without issue. I also edited it to 1940, again with no problem. I also added a birthday for someone in 1851. No problem. Is there some documentation of this bug?

Re:unreliable

[imthesponge]

Would you not buy an iPhone because of it? If you'd still buy it, then it's not a concern for Apple.

Re:unreliable

[Anonymous Coward]

> I am sure you can give us an example where the iOS time routines don't work as advertised.

RTFA, you fag.

Re:unreliable

[scdeimos]

I just repeated the experiment on both my iPhone 3GS and my fiancée's iPhone 4.

My mother was born on 9-Nov-1930 and if I store that birth date for her contact entry she doesn't appear in the calendar. Change the year to 1931 or 1932 and she still doesn't appear. Change the year to 1933 or later and she does.

This issue is known to Apple... do I need to link a Google query for you as well?

Re:unreliable

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The point is that the iOS time routines are unreliable. You need a redundant clock/alarm that doesn't run on iOS.

I haven't met one yet that was reliable. We can partly thank a monkey in office that changed the DST.

No alarm? Thank god!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I bought my girlfriend an iPhone, and the damn thing seems to set off the alarm at random times.

However, when I look at that thing, my Nokia N95 looks like crap in comparison. I'm no Apple fanboy, but I am really impressed with that thing.

Time routines aren't "sexy"

[mschaffer]

Don't be surprised that this keeps happening. Writing reliable software as mundane as the clock routines just isn't going to impress anyone. Everyone assumes that the existing, broken & untested date time routines works fine. We all know what happens when you make an assumption...

My girlfriend wasn't impressed, sleeping in, and..

[uofitorn]

Really? Is that what really happened?

Iron-clad reason to be late.

[geekmux]

"...My girlfriend wasn't impressed, sleeping in, and I wasn't either, having to race her to work!"

So for once in your life, you have an iron-clad excuse as to why you were late to work (posted on Slashdot, confirmed by vendor), and you're bitching?

That is sad, when you really think about it. Sad.

Re:Iron-clad reason to be late.

[zippthorne]

If she's working on New Year's, it's probably in some kind of customer-facing job in one of the many industries that lends itself to small ownership or sole proprietorship.

If she's late for work and owns the business, that means she doesn't open on time, and in the best case scenario she's just hurried to get the pre-opening stuff done in time to open the doors. In the worst case, she not only loses customers that day, but she loses them permanently.

Re:Iron-clad reason to be late.

[Anonymous Coward]

If she's working on New Year's, it's probably in some kind of customer-facing job in one of the many industries that lends itself to small ownership or sole proprietorship.

Just because Submitter got some is no reason to call her a hooker. She could be a nurse, a doctor, a policewoman, etc. Maybe even naughty versions of above.

Re:Iron-clad reason to be late.

[Anonymous Coward]

Make me late once, shame on Apple. Make me late twice, shame on me for not going out and buying a $10 alarm clock. Yeah I know it's not as shiny but it doesn't suffer from utterly bizzare alarm clock bugs that even the cheapo $15 cell phones don't seem to suffer from.

Re:Iron-clad reason to be late.

[tgd]

Generally speaking there are two kinds of jobs -- the kind that no one is going to complain if you're late, or the kind that doesn't give a shit why you're late.

Busy Morning?

[gafisher]

We've gotta nap for that!

Re:Busy Morning?

[Gadget_Guy]

Oh please, somebody mod that one up! Nice one.

Steve Jobs comments on the situation...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're holding it wrong".

Redundancy, redundancy, reduncancy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Llike with building services do _not_ trust any single device not to fail.

Instead use any two different type wake-up devices whenever it's important to get up at certain time. If it isn't that important then any single device will do the job usually.

Re:Redundancy, redundancy, reduncancy ...

[Cro Magnon]

I have 3 wakeup devices. My clock radio wakes me up, my wristwatch tells me to get off FB/gmail/whatever I'm wasting time with, and my iPhone tells me to get out the door.

Didn't they do this last year?

[Arancaytar]

Though last year they failed to charge the battery for some reason.

With the first being Saturday...

[DigitalReverend]

and the 2nd being Sunday, I am actually surprised how many people have crappy jobs that hey had to get up for on the weekends.

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[21mhz]

+1

Moreover, shouldn't January 1 be a public holiday or something, like it is here in the lazy-ass Europe?

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[thegarbz]

Actually we can out-lazy all of you. If a public holiday in our wonderful country falls on a weekend it's automatically moved to the next weekday. Saturday the 1st was like every other Saturday where most of the people in the city weren't working. Many of the shops though chose to stay closed. Monday on the other hand is a public holiday. Same happened with Christmas Day and Boxing Day. I'm off from work for 11 days and am only taking 3 days annual leave :-)

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[phoenix321]

There are uncounted numbers of extremely crappy jobs where people get up for on the weekends. Especially in aviation, power generation, medical and law enforcement. Pilots, policemen, doctors, nurses, power plant managers - all extremely crappy?

Not to mention people needing to get up to reach the flight to their extremely expensive vacation.

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[Totenglocke]

I've had to work all weekend. Thanks for reminding me of my crappy job and why I'm in grad school.....

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[Totenglocke]

Yes but in Europe when a holiday falls on a weekend, they just take a whole week off..... ;-)

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[Culture20]

There are uncounted numbers of extremely crappy jobs where people get up for on the weekends. Especially in aviation, power generation, medical and law enforcement. Pilots, policemen, doctors, nurses, power plant managers -

And the on-call iPhone Alarm app devs (this weekend at least).

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention people needing to get up to reach the flight to their extremely expensive vacation.

And not to mention the millions of minimum-wage peons who have to work in the stores and restaurants that are so busy with customers who have the day off.

I always feel a twinge of guilt when I patronize stores and restaurants on holidays. I appreciate that they're open, but I suspect most of the employees would prefer to get the holiday off.

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe that is the bug he is complaining about, she wasn't supposed to go to work until Tuesday. Hey it just works, works so well it keeps you working even when your'e on holiday.

Typed from my Macbook Air.

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[phoenix321]

If you feel a twinge of guilt when you allow good, honest and diligent people to work and earn a living from your money, feel again.

Without anyone patronizing these restaurants and stores on weekends, those workers would earn less or even nothing.

Tip well and respect their efforts.

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tips? Why aren't they compensated by their employers!

Re:With the first being Saturday...

[phoenix321]

They are compensated by their employers. But people complained about feeling guilty by buying goods and services from people on holidays. Tipping well works quite okay in not only relieving that guilt but increasing the profit those workers gain from working these shifts.

Feeling guilty about having more money and a better life than someone else is usually unwarranted, because having more money usually means having made wiser choices or other sacrifices, but in any case there's no easier way to relieve than that.

have kids

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a reliable alarm clock, have kids

Re:have kids

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

Basset hounds.

More reliable and less work.

Mine does.

[guytoronto]

"the alarm will not ring if the power is out at the time of the alarm."

Mine does. It's an irritating high-pitched beeping, but it still goes off. Maybe you just have a crappy alarm clock.

Re:Mine does.

[dgatwood]

Mine does. It's an irritating high-pitched beeping, but it still goes off.

Dude, that's your UPS. My UPS wakes me up every power failure, too. Bloody annoying.

lame

[hubertf]

just that.
There was enough time to fix this an several other updates were pushed out since this happened last,
so i'm not impressed by the job Apple does here.

  - Hubert

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

so i'm not impressed by the job Apple does here.

Am I the only one who read that as "by the Jobs Apple does here." ?

never used mobile alarm

[onlinepharmacyguru]

until i read read this i wasn't know about my iphone alarm as i never used it.

hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes... alarm clocks usually have a single alarm time and don't work well for multiple people - I want to keep napping if my wife's alarm rings first and vice versa !!! :)

how to win the lottery

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[thegarbz]

Unfortunately I am getting this vibe more and more from Apple's latest offering. Their earlier iPhone was great, and their new iPhone's glassy facade gives me a woody every time I see it. But there seems to be one critical problem after another with this one.

Are they the new Microsoft? Is this the Vista of the iPhones?

Over it

[neolithicau87]

Apple make good phones. Their other stuff I don't really care about.

The fact my expensive new phone can't even manage to keep the time, twice this fucking year now (last one was when daylight savings came into effect), is really irritating to me. Last time I checked, clocks were pretty important. Alarms are also important. The alarm stays on but doesn't trigger. I don't even understand how this could happen on something as basic as a year change.

We're way past Y2K to be having this kind of crap happen.

Oh, and I do work one of the aforementioned 'shit jobs' that requires me to be at work by 8am on a Sunday morning (this marks the second time my phones made me late now). Guess I should buy a $10 alarm clock that can actually keep the time better than my $800+ phone.

Re:Over it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Guess I should buy a $10 alarm clock that can actually keep the time better than my $800+ phone."

or just get *any* other phone. there are many nice devices to choose from.

Macy's

[Brandonski]

I'm certain that the Macy's display case was deeply impacted by your "girlfriend's" tardiness.
.
.
BTW: Buying your plastic GF an iPhone is really over-the-top geekiness.

Communication

[Fulminata]

If only Apple had access to some sort of communication device to alert its users that there was a problem...

Seriously, a non-functioning alarm is a pretty serious problem, why no alert from AT&T?

Re:Communication

[imthesponge]

Because you'd be foolish to count on your $500 toy to actually work when you need it. It's like making your dinner with an Easy-Bake Oven.

Speak for your self...

[denzacar]

And no friggin' daylight savings.

I like the fact that in the summer, the dawn doesn't start to break at 4 in the morning. Or that it gets dark later than during the spring/fall/winter.

Re:Speak for your self...

[Paradise Pete]

I like the fact that in the summer, the dawn doesn't start to break at 4 in the morning.

Are you saying that even with DST dawn breaks at 5am? Where do you live? Greenland?

Re:Speak for your self...

[zach_the_lizard]

That's not really a good reason to continuously adjust our clocks.

Re:Speak for your self...

[Hognoxious]

That's not really a good reason to continuously adjust our clocks.

I don't. I adjust them twice a year, to keep in step with everyone else.

Re:Speak for your self...

[nullifi]

Do what I do: Refuse to accept DST. I just set my alarms one hour early or later. I don't go to work at 8am, I go to work at 7am. It's odd, and freaks people out when they ask me what time it is. On the other hand, they kind of stop asking me what time it is.

Re:To Quote the Doctor!

[cbiltcliffe]

What?

How the heck does Dr. Seuss get modded troll?!?!

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[imthesponge]

"It doesn't work, but it sure looks sexy"

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucker. Never buy Gen A.
Original iPhone was Gen A.

iPhone 3G was Gen A.
iPhone 3GS was Gen B.
iPhone 4 is Gen A.

In short, wait for the next one.

Cell phone as alarm

[tkprit]

I used cell as alarm mainly because of power outages, but really the idea of having fewer gadgets doing more work makes sense to me.

The one time I invested in a batt backup alarm, I wasn't smart enough to put it on surge protector, and lightening whacked the whole thing. (My fault, not alarm/batt backup.)

But my cell alarm's never failed me yet.

(Then again, it's not apple.)

Apple didn't think it was important-you shouldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple didn't think it was important-you shouldn't either.

Clearly, if you paid for an Apple product, you are used to being told what to think.
"It's wonderful." It just works - sometimes.
"There aren't any security issues." Once Apple gets around to patching them 2 yrs later.
"It isn't overpriced, it is high quality hardware" After you pay $1800 for a $750 laptop.

The fact that they can't seem to get clocks and alarms correct just shows how bad their development and QA teams are. This is simple stuff folks. Testing boundary conditions is a fairly well known thing. You test end of year, leap year and time changes too. At least other companies do, even if Apple doesn't.

Someone needs to get fired over this. Actually - 5 people need to be fired.
1) the guy that wrote the code
2) the guy who reviewed the code
3) the guy who's testing missed these trivial errors in the code
4) The boss of the developers
5) The boss of the QA team

If this were FLOSS software, the fix would have been released a few hours later on the first day of the problem.

Nice job Apple. Making something trivial look really hard.

BTW, I do not like Apple, if you couldn't tell.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Graff]

Their earlier iPhone was great, and their new iPhone's glassy facade gives me a woody every time I see it. But there seems to be one critical problem after another with this one.

Personally I think it's mostly the media having a field day blowing things out of proportion. I have the new iPhone, both my sisters have one, my brother-in-law has one and none of us have had anywhere near the problems that are being reported in the media. Sure, there's been a few minor glitches here and there but nearly EVERY device has those. We certainly haven't experienced any problems that were major enough to stop us from using the iPhone or consider switching to another device.

Redundancy

[RogerWilco]

This is why, when I have something important, like a airplane flight, I always make sure to set multiple alarms. I mean on different devices. I usually use the iPhone for my alarms, but on important cases I add at least my old mechanical wind-up alarm clock. No power or battery or software requirements still makes that the most reliable, if you have something like an airplane flight or job interview.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[ian_from_brisbane]

I bought my girlfriend an iPhone, and the damn thing seems to set off the alarm at random times.

Well then why don't you just tell her not to?

related?

[steveaustin1971]

My android phone alarm didn't go off this morning either... then I see articles about the iphone alarm bugs... any other android users have issues today?

Re:related?

[jo_ham]

Yes, and they tried to text you about it but for some reason you didn't get them.

44 32'24"N 18 40'12"E

[denzacar]

Actually, dawn breaks even earlier at times. With DST even.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Anonymous Coward]

"It doesn't work, but it sure looks sexy"

Sounds like my wife.

iOS 4.x

[certsoft]

Good thing I'm still on version 1.02, my one-time alarm yesterday morning worked fine.

Re:44 32'24"N 18 40'12"E

[iammani]

Does the one hour really make a difference for you?

Redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

Like anything important in life, it's good to build in some redundancy. In this case, have two alarm clocks!

Re:44 32'24"N 18 40'12"E

[denzacar]

Sure it does if it starts to dawn at 4 in the morning. Or 3:30.

If you are supposed to get up at 7 or even 8, that is the difference between being half asleep for the last two hours of sleeping and being already wide awake an hour before you need to get up.

And if your daily rituals depend on being at a certain place at 8 or 9 (and not earlier) and staying there until 16 or 17 (and maybe later) - that hour of sleep MAY be somewhat important to you.

WoW too?

[Anonymous Coward]

The WoW authentication servers broke at about the same time, maybe the Horde has Android and were awake and ready, but the Alliance were still asleep! Or maybe the same guy who wrote the alarm code, wrote the code for the authentication daemon.

Re: iron-clad shmyron-clad

[Eyezen]

I don't care what alarm you use...just get your ass to work.

just works

[Anonymous Coward]

this is what the fanboi's keep telling me but i just don't see it.

I use a real alarm clock

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been able to completely convert to relying on my phone for time. It works great for scheduling, task management, and reminders, but I've been hard pressed to use it as a watch or alarm clock where clocks and watches are available.

I have 2 clocks in my bedroom. One is a big analog clock on the wall because it looks nice and is big so easily readable from wherever in the room (even the hall). I also have an alarm clock next to my bed that has an alarm type I've never seen in any other alarm clock (crescendo alarm, starts quiet then gets loud, works great with snooze when you don't want a blasting alarm waking the whole damn house). If I want to know the time at home, chances are I'm looking for a wall clock first. Even when I'm at a computer, I look at the wall clock mounted on the wall in front of me.

I use to wear a watch all the time, but now I don't. Pretty much the only thing my phone has replaced in terms of being a time reference is my watch when I'm not near anything readily visible.

As for my phone being great for reminders, it is not my primary system for providing reminders. My schedules, tasks, etc, are synchronized with all of my computers. Not only will my phone alert me, but depending on the type of reminder and the importance, I'll get a popup on my computer, email, and/or text message. This is something that is important enough to me that I can't allow for a single point of failure. Of course, this can require a small amount of extra work and people these days are so lazy that it's not worth it to them to exert that extra effort to make sure it works.

With all that said, my Android phone has not failed me to date. Sure, it's had problems, I'm not saying it's better than iOS because iOS does have some advantages. However, it has never failed me, personally, and that experience will keep me loyal to Android.

Constantly?

[denzacar]

I thought it only happens twice a year.

You have to adjust your wardrobe more times a year than that - and that doesn't get you more sleep time. And better too, as it gets you more "dark time" in the morning during half a year.
And me... well... me, I like sleepin'...

There is no reason for them to test it properly

[thetoadwarrior]

This part of the problem with the fact software companies aren't held responsible for any fuck up they make. There is no incentive at all to test properly or even code properly.

It's not as if companies like Microsoft and Apple are poor and can't afford the best. They just don't want it and there is no benefit in doing it right the first time. They can push out something broken and no one really cares so they can patch it when they feel like it.

Software companies get away with a lot more than producers of physical products. I think that needs to change.

Re:There is no reason for them to test it properly

[/dev/trash]

How bout using hardware then? I know radical.

Re:44 32'24"N 18 40'12"E

[Man On Pink Corner]

It does in the northern latitudes of the US, anyway. Just as we start to lose our evening daylight hours in the fall, along comes the DST change to rob yet another hour of usable light.

It's not the stupidest damn thing ever, but it's gotta be in the top 100, somewhere.

Girlfriend? Shyeah right...

[jamrock]

My girlfriend wasn't impressed, sleeping in, and I wasn't either, having to race her to work!"

Unless the submitter is a lesbian I call shenanigans.

Steve 2:2-3

[initialE]

By the 365th day Steve had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then Steve blessed the 366th day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 27" monitor has a spec sheet and lists the system requirements necessary - just like any other computer monitor from any other manufacturer.

But don't you find it strange that the only line of monitors which a manufacturer sells does not have any connectivity options for sub-2 year old (and certainly not cheap) laptops that the SAME manufacturer made?

Re:Hmm...

[jo_ham]

No, why should it be compatible with a "sub-2 year old" laptop from the same manufacturer if the graphics card can't support it? A 27" LCD needs a reasonably powerful card to drive it effectively, and the base level Macbook from 2 years ago cannot do that.

Dell sells giant screens too, and also laptops from 2 years ago that can't drive them.

Your anti-Apple bias is making you say silly things, and look for conspiracies where none exist.

Re:Hmm...

[adolf]

I find your commentary strange and otherworldly.

My six-year-old Dell laptop can deliver 2560x1440 to an external display just fine, provided that the display has a VGA input. It's got nothing to do with how "powerful" the card is.

Single-link DVI and HDMI are generally limited to 1920x1200, whereas DisplayPort simply has more bandwidth available -- a lot more, in fact.

But being equipped with a DisplayPort connector doesn't mean that it's a powerful card -- it just means that it's got a DisplayPort connector. These are neither particularly new, at this point, nor particularly interesting (unless you're in an Apple universe where connectors change in incompatible fashions all the time*).

*: My PC has two dual-link DVI outputs, and can also deliver video over component, composite, or S-Video without hackery. I can plug DVI, HDMI, or VGA displays in with ease, using cheap and completely passive adapters, and drive whatever sort of display at native resolution. This connectivity is perfectly sufficient in my world, and isn't uncommon.

The Apple world sounds a whole lot more confusing for something that's supposed to be simpler. And nevermind this other abomination.

Re:Hmm...

[jo_ham]

I mean exactly what I say - that the graphics chip on the 2 year old Macbook is incapable of driving the 27" display, even if you can adapt the mini-DVI port into a displayport / minidisplayport found on the new monitor.

The Intel X3100 just doesn't have the power to drive it, since it's not actually a proper GPU, just an integrated graphics chip sharing the main memory:

from here: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP5

Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory3

Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

While the 27" display can be driven at non-native resolutions of 1920x1080 and 12880x720, it's not going to look good unless you're feeding it 1080 or 720p video content, which is clearly what the non-native resolutions were designed for.

As it stands right now, I stand by my original assertion that the Intel inbuilt X3100 as installed on the 2008 Macbook is not powerful enough to drive the 27" display at native resolution. Something that anyone looking to make a $999 purchase should really check out beforehand, which brings us back to the very original point of this particular thread, featuring some moron boss who somehow represents all Apple users because he makes purchasing decisions without checking specifications first.

The 2008 Macbook cannot drive a 27" display. Subsequent Macbooks, with more powerful graphics cards, can. There's no rocket science here. That 2008 Macbook can plug into HDMI, DVI, VGA, S-video, Composite and other connections also "with ease" just like your laptop (there are cheap, passive adapters for all of these). There is also a less cheap active adapter if you want to drive an old Apple display that uses ADC, although there aren;t many of those left any more (Apple has not sold an ADC based monitor in some time). I see you linked to those cheap and passive adapters that seem to be ok in your Dell world, but somehow "a whole lot more confusing" in the Apple world.

What's that word I'm looking for? Hypnocrate... no, Cryptohit? Hypocrite, that's it.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking idiot. The GMA X3100 has a fast enough RAMDAC to display 2048x1536 and shared memory has nothing to do with anything. The problem is the DVI connector. If it's not dual link, then 1920x1200 is the maximum you're going to get out of it.

Adolf was completely correct in what he said. You would be wise to listen to people who know more than you do.

Re:Hmm...

[adolf]

Thanks, AC.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[thegarbz]

A bug is a bug, that's not an issue. All devices have bugs, but when bugs appear in both fundamental and basic functions then it starts wreaking of crap quality control.

As some people have pointed out testing cases for timing applications including the end of the year is programming QA 101. I would just chuckle if this was the first time this has happened. But this is the second time a major bug has screwed around iPhone users in the alarm application. It stuffed up daylight savings time too, which makes me think if they didn't review the code then, what's going to happen on Feb 29th? The question is will they actually review the entire code this time or just patch this flaw.

Also alarms not going off in a device which the company is actively pushing at businesses isn't a minor annoyance either. Neither is calls dropping out when the iPhone is held with the left hand.

This isn't Apple bashing, this is observation and other companies aren't immune to this either. In fact I would rate the Android bug of sending SMSes to the wrong recipient more critical than an alarm problem, but then I don't rely on an alarm anyway. I set it every night but always seem to wake before it goes off.

One mans minor annoyance is another's showstopper. I'm buying a Galaxy S next week (decision predates this iPhone issue so don't think this bug had any bearing on it, but I also didn't change my mind when I read about the sms bug). I know plenty of people who would consider that a showstopper.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee - your four year old phone looks crap in comparison to the latest iphone. Who'd have thought it?

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the N95 is crap. A network unlocked iphone is over triple the price of a network unlocked N95.

Wait... what?

[denzacar]

Just as we start to lose our evening daylight hours in the fall, along comes the DST change to rob yet another hour of usable light.

One... THAT is not the DST. That is the "regular time" you are complaining about.
Two... If the DST was kept on the whole year round, the sun wouldn't rise 'till 8 or 9 in the morning in December-January.
And the night would keep on falling earlier and earlier anyway, all the way until the winter solstice when the day would start getting longer again - not that you would really notice the change until mid-February.

A fine thing that would be for the working people. Seeing sunlight only on weekends during most of the winter.

Re:Wait... what?

[Man On Pink Corner]

A fine thing that would be for the working people. Seeing sunlight only on weekends during most of the winter.

Um, that's exactly what happens now.

One... THAT is not the DST. That is the "regular time" you are complaining about.

Right; DST "saves" daylight only in the morning, not in the evenings when it's actually needed. Most people are more active in the evenings than in the mornings, when they're just trying to get to work.

Two... If the DST was kept on the whole year round, the sun wouldn't rise 'till 8 or 9 in the morning in December-January.

We lose light at both ends of the day, and an extra hour in the morning doesn't make much difference.

Re:Wait... what?

[Man On Pink Corner]

(Actually I'm still not phrasing that very well: I should say "Switching back to regular time in the fall gives us an extra hour of daylight in the morning, but we need it more in the afternoon during the winter, so it would be better if we just stayed on DST year-round.")

Re:Wait... what?

[denzacar]

So you are advocating Dodo Saving Time instead? I.e. Saving something that isn't there anymore.

See... In the spring, when the DST starts there are 13-14 hours of daytime. In the winter there are 9.

So, in the spring there IS something to be SAVED from being WASTED.
In the winter though... unless you want to shift the clock around 6 hours or so, or take up a night-time job - there is no other way you will get much use of such a small amount of daylight.

In fact, the way it is now IS the best possible use of it - people get some natural light as they are going to work, it wakes them up and it reduces the chance for a lot of them to fall asleep behind a wheel.
And it is not like you're gonna go onto long walks after work - sunlight or not. Everything is either frozen over, snowed over, slippery or wet and muddy.

Also, that morning shot of daylight reduces depression before being chained to your desk for the next 8-9 hours.
As such, it greatly reduces the chance for people to find themselves on the business end of a shotgun wielded by a colleague who "simply couldn't take it any more".

We lose light at both ends of the day, and an extra hour in the morning doesn't make much difference.

No. Daylight isn't gained or lost equally on both ends during the year.

After the winter solstice we are actually gaining daylight - but on the sunset end. At the same time, we are still losing daylight in the morning, only slower.
Then, after the spring equinox we start gaining a lot more MORNING light. Without DST it would dawn at 3:30 in the summer, and it would still get dark only after 8 PM.

That is why it is called Daylight SAVING Time.
There is an excess of daylight in the morning during the spring and summer months and it would be going to WASTE without DST.
And again, in the winter and fall there is no such "daylight surplus" to be saved. We are actually 3-4 hours short during those months.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Graff]

As some people have pointed out testing cases for timing applications including the end of the year is programming QA 101. I would just chuckle if this was the first time this has happened. But this is the second time a major bug has screwed around iPhone users in the alarm application. It stuffed up daylight savings time too, which makes me think if they didn't review the code then, what's going to happen on Feb 29th? The question is will they actually review the entire code this time or just patch this flaw.

As a programmer I can tell you that date and time calculations are among the most tricky ones that you have to do. It's so easy to get wrong with leap times (days, minutes, seconds, fractions of a second), time zones, local time adjustments, changing rules on how dates and times are calculated, various calendars, and so on. It's very easy for a tricky bug to get coded into the algorithms and to have it suddenly show up without much time to correct it.

Not that bugs, especially core ones in date and time functions, are acceptable. You do everything you can do to test the code and ferret them out. It's just one of those areas that bugs are likely since so many tricky rules are involved. I'm sure that Apple will try to locate the code that causes this bug and correct it. Hopefully that will be the end of the problems.

I agree that the Android SMS bug is also a bad flaw in a major function of a cell phone. Again, I'm sure that Android developers will do their best to correct it.

The fact is that modern computing devices are extremely complicated systems with tons of interacting components, many different developers, and plenty of potential for unintended side effects. You take your chances when you use such devices and it's up to each person to decide if they can live with any issues that pop up or if they want to take the chance on a different device. I've had a decent enough experience with the iOS devices that I can live with the bugs that have popped up so far, I don't think that it has that much higher or lower of a rate of bugs than similar devices by other developers.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[thegarbz]

As an embedded systems programmer I can tell you that date and time calculations are amongst the most well documented and easy to implement things I have done. I find programming a microcontroller to send a packet over a network far more difficult simply due to the fact that we have been using electronics for timekeeping since the transistor was invented. I would agree with you if we were in the late 80s but this is 2010, and a bug like this would be inexcusable.

Ultimately though this is beside the point. The phone never had a problem keeping time. The bugs were in the calendar / alarm apps which didn't come to terms with the fact that time may change slightly, and not with the underlying timekeeping code. Also of note is that iOS 3 wasn't affected. It sounds more like a lack of project cohesion between teams than anything. Especially the daylight savings issue a while back where recurring alarms would compensate for daylight savings despite the operating system already doing just that.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Anonymous Coward]

> then it starts wreaking of crap quality control.

And you're reeking havoc on the English language, moron.

Re:44 32'24"N 18 40'12"E

[thisisntme]

I've heard about this new invention, it lets you continue sleeping even when it is light outside, I think it is called curtains or something.

Fixed my ass. Its the 3rd and and it didn't work.

[Anonymous Coward]

For the third day in a row it hasn't worked. What a piece of shit.

Not Fixed

[guttentag]

I have two iPhones:

• A 16 GB iPhone 3G running iOS 3.1.3 (7E18) that I decided to keep for various backup reasons when I got my iPhone 4 (I do use it as a backup alarm, a gaming device so I can play iPhone games against friends who don't have iPhones, etc.).
• A 32 GB iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1 (8B117).

I have a variety of times set as non-repeating alarms in both phones, and I turn those alarms on as needed each night before going to sleep. There are few alarm clocks that come with a more irritating sound than the iPhone's "Alarm" sound, so this works for me. Until this year.

On Jan 1, 2 and 3, the iPhone 3G worked as expected, but the iPhone 4 did not go off at all, even this morning, despite Apple's claim that the bug would fix itself. Out of curiosity, I created two new alarms, one repeating and the other not repeating, on the iPhone 4, and they both went off as expected. It seems you have to actually delete any alarms created before Jan 1 and recreate them if you want them to work.

I had an amusing moment on Sunday at 9:00 sitting in my office with my boss when one of my employees called and said he just woke up and had no idea why his alarm didn't wake him up:

Do you have an iPhone?
Yes...
Do you use it as an alarm clock?
Yes!
OK, it's not your fault, there's a bug in the operating system that caused a lot of people to oversleep yesterday and today, but it's going to fix itself tomorrow. Yes, really.

My boss, who also has an iPhone, but apparently uses his 5-year-old son as an alarm clock, just stared at me. I'm sure the same scene will play out today because the bug did not really fix itself. Even though I have a device that's not affected and I understand what's going on, this is still going to impact me because other people around me don't... and some of them were told by me that it would "fix itself" this morning. <SARCASM>This totally undermines my credibility... the next time someone is missing money from their paycheck and I tell them it will "fix itself," they're not going to believe me!</SARCASM>

Sure...

[denzacar]

That and the earplugs so you don't hear the birds chirping in the morning - and you don't have to get up at all as you won't hear the alarm in time to get to work anyway.

The planet and most of living things on it don't give a fuck about OUR way of measuring time.
Daylight Saving Time is US adapting to our ecosystem in order to get more out of the deal - not the other way around.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Anonymous Coward]

As an embedded systems programmer I can tell you that date and time calculations are amongst the most well documented and easy to implement things I have done.

You really don't have a clue about what you're talking about, do you? Yes, dealing with absolute time is trivial. Those of us who have to deal with human time don't have that luxury. The people keep changing it around, they add and remove randomly sized chunks of time on a whim and give extremely short notice, shuffle around when (or if) daylight saving times or other stupid shit like that happens, etc, etc.

The bug is still inexcusable because it should've been caught in testing, but anyone who has ever dealt with dates instead of tick-tock of seconds somewhere deep in a microprocessor that just needs to be internally consistent can tell you that these things are NOT easy to implement.

Re:No alarm? Thank god!

[Graff]

The phone never had a problem keeping time. The bugs were in the calendar / alarm apps which didn't come to terms with the fact that time may change slightly, and not with the underlying timekeeping code.

Well, the proper way to handle this is to use NSDate and NSCalendar along with the Event Kit Framework. If you use these classes then they should handle all of the time changes for you, rolling your own code to do this is definitely not a good idea because there are so many issues with time changes and calendar idiosyncrasies.

Basically it comes down to either the apps in question are doing the calculations on their own and there are errors in those calculations or the frameworks themselves have these bugs. I think it's likely that the bugs are in the frameworks because Apple is usually pretty good about using the proper frameworks rather than taking shortcuts.

By the way, here's an excellent write-up of some of the issues as well as examples of how to do these calculations in an iOS app.

Dalek is more reliable

[vorlich]

I have had various mobile phones since about 1999 that have replaced my wristwatch alarm clock and PDA - the next model will probably replace the tv. However, I do have the more reliable http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Dalek-Talking-Alarm-Clock/dp/B000F44POS (sadly for all Dalek fans, apparently not currently available.) which wakes me up every morning at 6 am with threats of imminent extermination.
Even if the Nokia has run out of juice the Dalek does its job. Turns off after ten minutes or so ( at least I think it does, it must threaten the neighbours every morning when we are on holiday cos, I always forget to turn off the alarm!).
There is of course no real way to defeat the Daleks.
Apart from stairs.

No magic fix...

[narcc]

Apparently, it will fix itself by January 3

Apparently not.

is this an argument for open source?

[ben0s]

Would switching ios to open source have caught this bug earlier? This bug is a huge one, since it is a critical system which is required to be 100% reliable with consequences affecting users on important things such as aeroplane trips. In my case I was lucky enough that my parents also set an alarm on their reliable alarm clock, I was wondering why mine didnt go off, but then again I remembered this bug occuring during day light savings time which was now meant to be fixed(i guess only for daylight savings not new years-lol). Obviously their TDD was lacking in this area. Being that Apple only makes money off their hardware, at least thats what they tell us. What is the crime in giving their platform to the community so that their hardware will feature the most reliable software due to communities involvement and bug fixing? I'm not very familiar with how much of android is actually open source but i suspect apple could be benefiting from a similar strategy.