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Some Apple Watch Series 4 Models Are Frequently Crashing and Rebooting Due to a Daylight Saving Time Bug (macrumors.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-hard-could-it-be dept.

Some Apple Watch Series 4 owners in Australia experienced crashes and reboots on Saturday due to a bug that surfaced because of the daylight saving time change. From a report: According to Reddit users hit by the Apple Watch bug, the root of the problem appears to be the Infograph Modular face's Activity complication, which displays a timeline graph with hourly data for the user's Move calories, Exercise minutes, and Stand hours. When daylight saving time (DST) lops an hour off the typical 24-hour day, the Activity complication is apparently unable to compute the change and draw the timeline graph with only 23 hours, which throws the Apple Watch into an endless reboot loop until the battery runs out.

110 comments

  1. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Apple Watch has plenty of bugs in it I can imagine not just this one

  2. Whoopsie by war4peace · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One more reason to do away with that monstrosity called DST”.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    1. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Won't solve the bug. The other way to trigger this is moving between timezones, since the Apple Watch's fitness stuff will always consider the start of the day to be midnight in whatever timezone you were originally in and the end of the day to be midnight of whatever timezone you're currently in. Travel east and that shortens the day, travel west and it lengthens the day. (It's honestly rather annoying and stupid, and for some dumb reason, Apple removed the ability to turn off fitness notifications for a day. It's now all or nothing.)

    2. Re: Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it can't handle 23 hours due to a DST switch, why would you assume it can handle leap seconds, or leap days?

    3. Re: Whoopsie by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I didn't say it won't resolve all bugs, I implied there will be less hassle developing applications which need to take care of a gazillion exceptions and what-ifs.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    4. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apple should have pulled a creimer and blame ACs for their problems.

    5. Re:Whoopsie by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, this is a reason to keep DST. So we can easily see and laugh at the incompetent programmers.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I make a living pointing out to businesses that claim "open 24h" that they were only open 23h on March 11, and threatening to sue. Please don't remove my livelihood!

    7. Re:Whoopsie by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But you'd rather these people who can't use long-established timezone libraries, handling protocols and data formats did things like monitor your heart rate and ran your car instead?

      The problem here is not DST or the complexity of it... if that were the case the banking industry, Internet, phones, etc. would fall over at the same time because of the same problems.

      The problem is that someone at Apple doesn't understand how to handle dates properly despite there being long-established libraries for exactly that. And they didn't bother to check (i.e. test) adequately enough before releasing millions of dollars of mass-market products.

      The problem is lax development and testing. Not the complexity of handling something that billions of devices owned by billions of people around the world handle every year just fine.

    8. Re:Whoopsie by war4peace · · Score: 1

      No, I understand that. In no case was I making a point to save Apple's incompetence. It's just that DST shouldn't exist anymore.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    9. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just that DST shouldn't exist anymore.

      Although it will still exist on historical dates so you'll still need to handle it. Scrapping it just adds even more complexity into the DST calculations. And DST calculations have a lot in common with timezone calculations, so you're also going to need to perform those calculations there as well. It might be simpler for people day-to-day but doesn't help programmers at all. Unless you're writing something simple/naive enough to be used in a single location, never touch historical data, and assume DST will never be brought back again.

    10. Re:Whoopsie by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      One more reason to do away with that monstrosity called DST”.

      Hear, Hear!

    11. Re:Whoopsie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, from one point of view you are right.

      However, as I worked quite a long time in the energy business: DST is a pain in the ass. Not only because of programmers making mistakes (I would not call that incompetent ... what again are the rules for a leap year? Are you sure you know them all? It is only 2 rules, though, or 3, depending how you count)

      Mistakes are also made in the requirements/business analysis. And if a programmer says: "uh, that does not look right" often he gets stared down and challenged: who are you to know better than me.

      Regarding "energy business": You have every day a kind of spread cheat with 24 hours as columns down. For every power plant you have 4 rows, planned power production for every quarter hour.

      Two days of the year are an exception. One day has 23 columns, one has 25.

      Then again if you e.g. want to sent power from Germany to France or to Poland, you have to prepare a "schedule" for your grid feed in, 24h ahead (erm, 23h? 24h? 25h?).

      The grid operator is working his grid, similar as pointed out above, with 24h columns and his balancing/reserve power plants according to the schedule. But: two times in the year the schedule has not 24 but 25 or 23 columns.

      One unix idiot ... idiot because I considered him a friend, until he started bullying me in some jobs ... once said: "it is so easy! Just schedule everything in UT!" What he did not grasp is: everything is scheduled in UTC. But you nevertheless want one day in the year to see your whole day as a 25h day, and the other day in the year you want to see your whole day as a 23h day ...

      It is quite important that my French or my Polish power company friends agrees that we are at 2:00A or 2:00B at night for a power feed into the grid.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    12. Re:Whoopsie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 0

      if that were the case the banking industry, Internet, phones, etc. would fall over at the same time because of the same problems.

      I wold dare to say: at least the banking industry is completely uneffeced by DST, and I'm pretty sure phone companies and internet companies are neither.

      And they didn't bother to check (i.e. test) adequately enough before releasing millions of dollars of mass-market products.
      Checking/testing for time bugs is a pain in the ass. If you have a solution you are a millionaire over night, literally.

      The problem is lax development and testing.
      No it is not. It is the unimaginable complexity in a simple problem. With your outrageous claims you failed into the same trap.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    13. Re: Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You still need to handle all that stuff because history. Abolishing DST only means that future events are slightly less complicated to handle. Past events are still complicated therefore all events must tolerate that kind of complexity.

    14. Re: Whoopsie by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      OK, that's fine, but if daylight savings time throws your os into an endless reboot loop something is wrong with your head.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    15. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it is not. It is the unimaginable complexity in a simple problem. With your outrageous claims you failed into the same trap.

      It may or may not be depending on how your system/application interaction. In your own issue (described in your other post), your system/application needs to interact with external system. As a result, it is not as easy as one would think per your claim. However, Apple watch is more or less deal with its own close system (including apps). Thus, it should be a lax development and testing.

    16. Re: Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except how do you send a device into a boot loop because it couldn't render a simple graph?

      I can understand having the ui miss render things, display 0s or even annoy with error pop ups...

      I mean...

      For i = 1 to 24
            Display bar graph for hour (i)

      Should not render the device useless

    17. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you need to handle it in historical data?

      We don't switch to the Julian calendar when describing history from the time when it was the standard for example.

      For most use cases it will probably be fine to not handle DST in historical data, and use cases which have an answer to that question will presumably already be using a system robust enough to handle discontinuing DST as DST changes often enough that any successful system has to be capable of it.

      It can still be a good idea to end DST to prevent future system from having to care about it, even if some subset of existing systems will have to retain the legacy behavior to handle their historical data until the curent system reaches EOL.

    18. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One more reason to do away with that monstrosity called DST”.

      One more reason to do away with that monstrosity called Apple.

      There, FTFY.

    19. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone who rolls their own timezone/DST code is a moron.

      Unfortunately some of us actually have to write those libraries and keep the data they rely on up to date. The time library world is full of constantly changing requirements, surprisingly ambiguous rules and annoyingly arbitrary exceptions. Do your part by nudging legislatures towards sensible choices.

    20. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fucking idiot. Lets change the world so apple can have easier time programming.

    21. Re: Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Embedded design's a bitch

    22. Re:Whoopsie by Comrade+Ogilvy · · Score: 1

      One unix idiot ... idiot because I considered him a friend, until he started bullying me in some jobs ... once said: "it is so easy! Just schedule everything in UT!" What he did not grasp is: everything is scheduled in UTC. But you nevertheless want one day in the year to see your whole day as a 25h day, and the other day in the year you want to see your whole day as a 23h day ...

      What makes time extra difficult is that so many people assume that time is easy. And because people mistakenly assume it is easy, even very very smart people whom you would probably say are reasonably careful will get it wrong surprisingly often. Having a big brain and making a good guess is not good enough here.

    23. Re:Whoopsie by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      It's a problem to be sure, and I've stumbled into it several times in the past at different companies. Logic says to just use UTC and simplify it all, then convert to local time only when necessary to display the time. But in reality, the customers and product managers want local time and they don't really understand that some days have 23 hours and some have 25.

      Twice a year at one job I had to write up a summary of what would happen with data collection that straddled a time change. Every single time it seems people forgot the previous email and started panicking when a customer would ask that question. At a different job we had a customer's site straddle time zones, and yet "by design" we only used local time instead of UTC because the designer thought local time was simpler. There are a lot of simpler embedded systems out there that assume only local time, some of which don't have the capability to update the DST rules or move to other countries without a full firmware update. I know of one gas meter that artificially adds or subtracts an hourly reading to account for DST such that every day has 24 hours... For such a simple and well known problem, I'm amazed at how badly it's handled.

    24. Re:Whoopsie by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I would not call that incompetent ... what again are the rules for a leap year? Are you sure you know them all? It is only 2 rules, though, or 3, depending how you count

      I agree it's not incompetent. Incompetent is an understatement; it's retarded.

      I knew the rules when I was about 10.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    25. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hear, Hear!!!

    26. Re:Whoopsie by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      The snag is that the real world wants local time. Introducing UTC makes some things siimpler, but it also means you need to be converting time for some operations. For example, there are real world business needs for knowing what the daily power usage was starting at 12:00AM local time, they don't really care about what this means in a neighboring state or country. Meanwhile there may be an operations manager panicking because he thinks billing software will screw up if they feed in 25 hours in a single day.

      It's a lot like metric vs imperial; metric makes more sense but some countries are still not 100% metric because it's difficult to migrate. And migrating away from time zones and DST is amazingly hard to do, even if some programmers think otherwise.

    27. Re:Whoopsie by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I had to do some of this, as there was no built in library that did this. There were some helpers in a small C library but ti was somewhat bulky so I trimmed some of this down, and also had to interface to the onboard real time chip which had its own quirks.

    28. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if you support removing it, obviously others disagree and you lost in the relevant decision-making process.

      It is highly illogical to still believe it "shouldn't exist anymore," even if you think that removing it would be a great idea.

    29. Re:Whoopsie by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      If they didn't lock the door on your then you don't have a case.

    30. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It makes me a little embarrassed that just last night I was complaining about the low quality of data structures that embedded systems employ, and the fact that it leaves programmers flying by the seat of their pants in regards to both security and reliability.

      "They" can't even get dates right, I have to stop complaining and just build more of my own devices.

    31. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy fuck i have seen some head spinning apologies for apple here but this one is fucking stupid

      maybe apple should study this site if its having problems with leap years; https://www.mathsisfun.com/leap-years.html

    32. Re: Whoopsie by jrumney · · Score: 2

      Typical junior software developer response: change the world to make the programmer's life easier.

    33. Re:Whoopsie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People have been calling for the death of daylight savings since Apple was making shitty black and white screens. It helps nobody and accomplishes nothing.

      >but muh farme-

      Chickens don't even have a concept of time.

    34. Re:Whoopsie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Meanwhile there may be an operations manager panicking because he thinks billing software will screw up if they feed in 25 hours in a single day.
      That is one of the points why "time problems" are not trivial, even if they look like that.

      In my experience (in software engineering) basically everything that looks trivial on the first glance gets pretty quickly quite complex.

      And migrating away from time zones and DST is amazingly hard to do, even if some programmers think otherwise.
      Exactly.

      I first stumbled over the complexity of "time" when I did a project in the university. It was actually a pure database problem, but I'm not sure if it was in an SQL database or a graph DB. (We had several problems to solve and used both versions of DBs, I just don't remember which for which).

      Anyway, you have to plan flight crews. Restrictions are the ratings of the crew, every pilot or cabin crew is only "capable/allowed" to be a crew member on two plane types. Then comes flight times. Is a flight not longer than 6h, the same crew can take the next flight (typical a return flight) 12h later. If the flight is longer than 6h but less than 10h, the flight crew can be scheduled 24h after landing for the next flight. Is the flight longer, it is 32h or 36h. (*)

      Now, the problem starts: how long is a flight when you depart local time 12:00PM and arrive local time 16:00PM but flew 4 time zones to the east. How does it look if you fly to the west?

      At that time the times where stored as strings in the DB. And an extra column told you if you gained a day or lost a day.

      That is just simple math, not that complicated, but 75% of the students did not grasp the problem with timezones and flight direction.

      (*) Those numbers I just made up, no idea how they actually are, that was nearly 25 years ago, that I had that stuff.
      Now imagine you fly from a non DST time zone into one with DST, or timezones that have their DST at different times in the year. Well, that is not so complicated as the times are always local time ... I don't remember if the actually scheduled "flight duration" was in the DB ... I think it was not, because that was the core problem.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    35. Re:Whoopsie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      So did I,

      but I would wager 95% of the people on the planet don't.

      Now we could argue that most software developers belong to the upper range of IQ and skills, but I still would bet 50% of all software developers don't know the rules.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    36. Re:Whoopsie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      What makes time extra difficult is that so many people assume that time is easy.
      Exactly!

      And because people mistakenly assume it is easy, even very very smart people whom you would probably say are reasonably careful will get it wrong surprisingly often.
      Yeah, somewhere is a web site with all the "misconceptions about time", they also have some other topics, like the misconceptions of "Names of Humans".

      Ah, found them:
      https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010...
      https://infiniteundo.com/post/...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    37. Re:Whoopsie by Comrade+Ogilvy · · Score: 1

      Thank you, those are awesome.

      I like this one: "People have names."
      I would find it hard to believe that anyone has no name at all, but I can easily imagine everyone in the immediate family disagreeing what the name is.

      Apparently in the Middle East, it is common to refer to someone by personal relation. So in one context I might be "Bin Muhammad" which means "We all know that Muhammed guy (not to be confused with the other 9 Muhammeds we mutually know), and this is his son". And in another context, the same person would be "Abu Hossein" which is "we all know that particular Hossein and this is his father". And, of course, this person does have a personal name, but may or may not have a "family/last" name.

      And I like this one: "Ok, but the duration of one minute on the system clock will be pretty close to the duration of one minute on most other clocks."
      It would almost be cheating to invoke VMs, but how completely insane an OS running on a resourced starved VM can easily be underestimated. (And, asking the OS on the VM how it is doing may give complete nonsense.)

    38. Re: Whoopsie by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I'm not a developer.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    39. Re:Whoopsie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      One confusing part about names are: they can change, the simplest case is marriage.

      Now I worked on a software for planning and organizing schools. Classes, students/pupils and teachers.
      A school year consists of classes like 5a, 5b, 5c and 6a, 6b, 6c and so on. Depending on the grade as in 5th versus 6th grade, a class has a set of courses/topics. Obviously in Germany minimum 2 different religious courses, often more (as islam and judaism is now mandatory in schools for students of that religion, years ago only protestants and catholics had mandatory religion classes in school).

      E.g. 5th grade has "natural science" and 6th grade has physics and chemistry instead.

      So, what happens at the end of a school year is: you copy the whole roster of topics. So 5a of the year 2018 becomes an empty 5a for the year 2019. Same for 6a etc.

      Then you promote the students from the 5a/2018 classes to 6a/2019 (supposed they passed). You assign teachers to the classes. If they had an english teacher in 5a who can teach 6a, he likely sticks with the class. For physics and chemistry you have to pick one.

      Now back to the topic of names. For some reason (in the software I was working on) we had a bad glitch when a teacher changed his name. Creating a new school year (see above: first we copy the empty roaster of grades versus topics, then we assign - copies of - teachers) leaded to duplication of the master teacher instance.

      Anyway: if you look back on your paper copies of your report card/school report, you obviously see the old names of your teachers. Now you lose your records and request replacements/duplicates. Will they have the original names or the actual names after (several?) marriage(s)?

      Then again: that problem is now solved in the software. However students stay in "high school" (Gymnasium) till grade 13. So many of them easy are 18 or 19. If one repeated a grade, even 20. That means: one could marry in 12th grade, actually like a teacher, in the middle of the school year ...

      So Mrs Smith in 11th grade is now Mrs Miller in 12th grade ...

      Stuff like this could be easily modeled with the temporal extensions modern databases have, but no one is using them ...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  3. So jealous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The €20 watch on my wrist has been going for 5 years and it's never done anything as exciting as crashing and rebooting.

    1. Re: So jealous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You donâ(TM)t buy a new watch from Apple every year? What are you, crazy?

    2. Re:So jealous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The €20 watch on my wrist has been going for 5 years and it's never done anything as exciting as crashing and rebooting.

      Because you pretend that having to set the time by hand isn't the same as crashing and rebooting.

    3. Re:So jealous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That not how real watches work.

  4. Re:Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Finkle brewster.

  5. time space & circumstance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to our surroundings & nearby co-travelers..

  6. It just works by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

    It just works...mostly

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    1. Re:It just works by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Apple seems to have a problem handling time. Recall that they had problems with alarms not working a few times near the start of the year, and a soft brick issue if the clock was reset to 1970.

      I'd love to know where these problems are coming from. Are they using their own internal time handling library code? Because these issues are fairly unique to Apple, they don't affect the underlying BSD operating system that iOS is built on or any of the open source libraries preferred by Google.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:It just works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      rhetorical question, right? you seem to already know the answer, or at a minimum kow they aren't using the standard libraries due to these bugs being apple specific, and not specific to bsd's.

      apple always has to be different.

    3. Re:It just works by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I'd love to know where these problems are coming from.

      Quota fillers.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Why now? by Not-a-Neg · · Score: 1, Informative

    DST doesn't end until November 4th.

    --
    -==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
    1. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone will probably mock you, pointing out that this is happening because DST starts and ends at different times around the world, but you're right. DST doesn't end until November 4th in California, so this won't be solved until November 5th when suddenly Apple discovers the bug. A patch will then be released by December.

      Because as Apple Maps proves - if it works in California, Apple doesn't really care if it doesn't work anywhere else, they're still going with it. Because whatever QA they do, they only do it in California, and ignoring any issue that doesn't happen there.

    2. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australia's DST period is different than America's you xenophobe 'murican luddite!
      "Cairo, that's in ... Egypt"

    3. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australia

    4. Re:Why now? by denbesten · · Score: 4, Informative

      DST doesn't end until November 4th.

      From TFA, "Some Apple Watch Series 4 owners in Australia". Australia DST started on Oct 7th. It will not end until April 7, 2019.

    5. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GAWD AND MODDED +1 INSIGHTFUL!?!?!

    6. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well in that case, this particular bug actually might not get fixed until March 2019, because when DST ends in November for the US, that will produce a single 25 hour day, not a single 23 hour day.

      I know, took me a minute to remember that in Australia, they are entering summer time, not leaving it.

    7. Re:Why now? by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Funny

      DST doesn't end until November 4th.

      Let me guess, you are an Apple developer?

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    8. Re:Why now? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Ha. We were coding some of this up to convert times from a third party device into UTC. I gave the appropriate hints and advice to the developer, but at some point in implementing it he came and asked "please tell me we don't have to support Australia!"

      (and no, pre-existing libraries were no help)

    9. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DST doesn't end until November 4th.

      The problem was the START of DST, when the day has 23 hours. We don't yet know what will happen to the devices at the END of DST, when the day has 25 hours - perhaps the devices will crash in an exciting new way?

      Thank you for your delightful illustration of the US attitude of "doesn't everyone do things the same as us?" (or should that be "the same as US?" :-) ).

  8. even the richest company can't get time change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    even the richest company can't get time change right, let's get rid of time change

    1. Re: even the richest company can't get time change by jecowa · · Score: 1

      With the passage of this bill, henseforth it shall always be 4:20.

      --
      my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
  9. "when daylight saving time" wait, what? by rickb928 · · Score: 1

    Apple Watch Series 4 was introduced in September this year. DST doesn't change until November.

    How is this already a problem? Testing?

    Oh, wait. Apple doesn't actually test stuff, but somewhere in the rest of the world someone does...

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    1. Re:"when daylight saving time" wait, what? by DigitAl56K · · Score: 1

      What is really bizarre is that Apple seems to see no end to humiliating DST/time-based bugs. You would think they would have standard libraries/development guides/mandatory test cases related to this stuff by now.

    2. Re: "when daylight saving time" wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you RTFA with your wheaties this morning or just did you pass go and take the bullet train to the comments? TFA clearly says Australia.

    3. Re:"when daylight saving time" wait, what? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      DST in Europe ends last WE of October ... just in case you are wondering where the bugs come from.

      Uh, and if you don't know how software is tested I would refrain from stupid statements like "Oh, wait. Apple doesn't actually test stuff, but somewhere in the rest of the world someone does..."

      Last time I made an omelet, I burned it on one side. How would testing prevent me from burning it? It does not. The only test I can make is: put it on the plate for the customer and realize: oh, it is burned.

      For time related problems it is often the case that you are in the same situation: I can only test at the time when the time is ... or how exactly do _you moron_ test an App on an iWatch shifting time around for every time zone, every DST and prevent the watch from seeing GPS time? Yeah, can be done, ist actually not that hard, but why do you idiot claim that Apple is not testing its OS?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    4. Re:"when daylight saving time" wait, what? by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Apparently DST ends in Australia this past weekend. Three different change dates I know now, thanks gang.

      Um, I do actually know how software can be tested, but forgot the /s flag for you.

      And just for future reference, when I burn an omelette I often realize it before it comes out of the pan. But that's just me. I actually flip it once more before I slide it out of the pan. Easy test, and the plate is avoided.

      Oh, and if GPS time is such a problem, oh, wait, what? /sarcasm.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    5. Re:"when daylight saving time" wait, what? by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      DST changes at different times in different countries. The November change in the US is particular to a relatively recent act of congress; many countries follow the US lead but also many do not.

    6. Re:"when daylight saving time" wait, what? by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Yep, you need ability to test the device; which means ability to turn off time synching with NTP or servers or a way to use special testing servers, stick it on a closed network, etc. I have had QA tell me "but if I change time on the device it will screw up all my other tests!", but that's just how it is so schedule extra testing time.

    7. Re:"when daylight saving time" wait, what? by jrumney · · Score: 1

      Apparently DST ends in Australia this past weekend.

      Ahem. It began this past weekend. On devices that support timezones properly, it will end in April next year. On other devices, it may end on Dec 31, or it may just have failed to begin, as date > dst.end_date == true already.

      And woe to you if you live further East in New Zealand, where the impossibility of being 13 hours ahead of GMT just began.

  10. Testing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A product I worked on in the mid-1990s experienced problems when switching between daylight saving time and standard time. The only reason we noticed the problem before we shipped is that the test cycle happened over the time change.

    Moral of the story: Always, always, always explicitly test for time changes on any product which uses time of day. I'm surprised Apple apparently still hasn't figured this out.

    1. Re:Testing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apple doesnt even QA their hardware; why would you think they would pay attention to their software

  11. Oh for fucking crying out loud... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every stinking year, apple has SOME kind of problem with daylight saving time, on SOME device, SOMEWHERE in the world. And it's been happening year after year after year, for almost two decades now.

    You'd think that after all this time, they'd get their shit together and fix this once and for all.

    What the hell is wrong with software developpement today ?

    1. Re:Oh for fucking crying out loud... by tsqr · · Score: 1

      What the hell is wrong with software developpement today ?

      It's being done by Apple?

    2. Re:Oh for fucking crying out loud... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Contrary to what the apple cultists claim here; apple is not a software company. They suck at software

  12. Thank GOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not a Y2K bug.

    1. Re:Thank GOD by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, they're already planning their Y2K38 bugs.

  13. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    The Apple Watch has plenty of bugs in it I can imagine not just this one

    Citation, please.

  14. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    The Apple Watch has plenty of bugs in it I can imagine not just this one

    Citation, please.

    Learn to internet, son. I found this link on the first page of search results for "apple watch bug list". When you figure out how to use google, you can stop asking so many stupid questions.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  15. The same thing happens w/ Linux on some devices by nickwinlund77 · · Score: 1

    The same thing happens to Linux using Oracle VM. You have to run sudo ntpdate -s [ntp server] or ntpd -q when using Linux virtualization sometimes because there is clock skew or an internal error. Until one changes the date to the current time on their Linux machine they cannot browse the Web because of security certificate issues complaining about the wrong date.

    1. Re:The same thing happens w/ Linux on some devices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does that even work? Linux and SSL use UTC internally, so unless someone did something stupid* like setting the system clock to use local time instead of UTC, DST doesn't matter.

      Also, SSL not working isn't nearly as bad as a reboot cycle due to a userspace crash. Seriously, what the hell?

      *Linux only supports this for dual booting with Windows.

    2. Re:The same thing happens w/ Linux on some devices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TLS certificates have an time range where they are good and no longer good. If the clock on the system is incorrect, you'd have this issues, regardless of platform.

      It still doesn't send the operating system into a reboot.

  16. Re:Professor Fritzen Posten by Pikoro · · Score: 1

    Einhorn is Finkle. Finkle is Einhorn.

    --
    "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
  17. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Apple Watch has plenty of bugs in it I can imagine not just this one

    Citation, please.

    Learn to internet, son. I found this link on the first page of search results for "apple watch bug list". When you figure out how to use google, you can stop asking so many stupid questions.

    He said please. Sheesh.

  18. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    battery swells to the point that the screen pops out of the watch.
    Apple Watch won’t connect to LTE.
    No iPhone connection error.
    the digital crown on the Apple Watch is unresponsive.
    Glitch: Bluetooth won’t connect or frequently disconnects.
    Annoyance: Poor battery life: "Battery life is definitely one of the main weaknesses of the Apple Watch, but it should generally still get you through the day before needing a refuel. If you find that your Apple Watch battery is draining suspiciously fast, then you may have a problem."
    Problem: Apple Watch won’t charge.
    Glitch: Apps crashing or freezing.
    Problem: Apple Watch isn’t tracking activity.
    Issue: Apple Watch won’t turn on.
    Annoyance: Notifications don’t appear on Apple Watch
    Problem: Apple Watch won’t update
    Annoyance: Lines on display

    need more?

  19. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop being a fucking idiot with your stupid apple ass kissing "citation please" and do the research you should have done before you ran out and bought one of theses buggy pieces of crap.

  20. I blame... by midifarm · · Score: 1

    Indiana!

  21. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of course he does ; he is a stupid apple apologists.

  22. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    The Apple Watch has plenty of bugs in it I can imagine not just this one

    Citation, please.

    Learn to internet, son. I found this link on the first page of search results for "apple watch bug list". When you figure out how to use google, you can stop asking so many stupid questions.

    He said please. Sheesh.

    Thanks, AC!

    At least SOMEONE has manners, LOL!

  23. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Apple Watch has plenty of bugs in it I can imagine not just this one

    Citation, please.

    Learn to internet, son. I found this link on the first page of search results for "apple watch bug list". When you figure out how to use google, you can stop asking so many stupid questions.

    Unfortunately, the article you linked-to is NOT DATED, and the only reference to any date whatsoever was September 2017 and WatchOS 4.01; so there is no way to know for sure whether this is a list of already-addressed issues by the time WatchOS 5.0 (and the Apple Watch Series 4) came out a few weeks ago, or not.

    Hint: Already-Addressed issues are no longer called "issues".

    So, it seems that YOU are the one that needs to learn to internet.

  24. I knew it! by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Daylight 'saving' time is a bug in any sensible timekeeping system.

    This is a timely (ahem) topic in the EU, as we have recently decided to ditch the biannual idiocy for fixed timezones. The remaining problem is that member countries can decide on which timezone to use, which might not be the solar one. So proponents of DST are campaigning for year-round DST (solar + 1). To me that sounds even sillier than current DST changes -- if you're going to make it permanent, you might as well fix your working schedule instead of redefining time itself. ("I want to go to work 1 hour earlier, but I still want it to be 8 o'clock, so I'll just move the definition of 8 around until I'm satisfied.")

    Meanwhile, several European countries are already on a non-solar timezone in favour of Central European Time. It's an interestingly rational alternative to solar time, but for us Finns it would be the "solar - 1" zone, in direct opposition to the DST camp. So one can hope that we'll compromise on the solar zone.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    1. Re:I knew it! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      This is a timely (ahem) topic in the EU, as we have recently decided to ditch the biannual idiocy for fixed timezones.

      Well somebody proposed it. Nearly the same.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:I knew it! by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      It still leaves the bugs of having to support multiple time zones and local variants.

    3. Re:I knew it! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      you might as well fix your working schedule instead of redefining time itself

      This is a great idea. I suggest we pick a standardised metric around which we can align a widely different group of people, businesses, schools, and society as a whole. To make it easy we could divide it into segments called "hours" and so people remember how it works we could make the top most hour roughly the time when the sun is in the sky.

      This may just work!

      I want to go to work 1 hour earlier

      So do I but then who will take the kids to school?

      So one can hope that we'll compromise on the solar zone.

      Why? What's this obsession with aligning time so the sun is in the peak at noon rather than extending the usable light at the end of the work day?

    4. Re:I knew it! by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      What's this obsession with aligning time so the sun is in the peak at noon rather than extending the usable light at the end of the work day?

      You answered your own question. If you're interested in usable light, then it's nice to know where the sun is in its daily cycle. It's easier when the peak sun is an "origin" or "zero point" in the system of measures, not some arbitrary number.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    5. Re:I knew it! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      No I did not. The sun at its peak in the sky at noon is not usable light for the vast majority of people given the asymetric work day and the general approach to life that prioritises after work social life over anything that happens before work.

      So I ask you again, I want to maximise my usable time, why are you obsessed with the sun being at its high point at noon rather than being at its high point at 2pm which would suit the needs of society better? Noon is just as arbitrary as any other point in time.

      Unless you are wearing one of these: http://pandeiastudio.com/

    6. Re:I knew it! by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      why are you obsessed with the sun being at its high point at noon rather than being at its high point at 2pm which would suit the needs of society better? Noon is just as arbitrary as any other point in time.

      I tried to explain this with my 8 o'clock example earlier, so let me elaborate. Here the standard workday is 8 am to 4 pm, symmetric about the clock noon. But people wanted more light time after work, so they came up with DST. Now they still work 8am-4pm, but solar noon happens at 1 pm. My question is, couldn't they have shifted working hours into 7am-3pm instead? Because something has been shifted -- the relation between the Sun's cycle and their working hours. Of course, you get the same relational effect by changing the definition of clock time, but it seems confusing and unnecessary.

      As a physicist, I'm somewhat outraged that people are willing to change fundamental measurement systems for some personal benefit. We don't change the definition of 1 metre just because people are getting taller on average, for example. By keeping the fundamental measures fixed, we have some basis of measuring actual growth and change. I know that clock time isn't exactly an SI unit, but the principle is the same. If you want to know about light, you need to know where Sun is relative to actual, physical noon. You are then free to change your schedules depending on these natural phenomena.

      Back on the 8-16 workday, it's easy to imagine the following scenarios. As DST forces people to wake up 1 hour earlier relative to the sun, people start working 9-17 instead (8-16 in solar time). So they're back to their old schedules that were symmetric about the solar noon, but now they have a twisted sense of clock time.

      In another scenario, the 9-17 is regarded as a sign of laziness, and another hour of DST is introduced. Now 8 o'clock means 6 in solar time. You can imagine this cycle repeating a few times, until 8 o'clock is somewhere like the midnight. Because once you're separated from the natural, physical definitions of time, it's not anchored anywhere so it can end up in any random orientation.

      To me, it seems that people are hell-bent on starting their workday at 8am. It's as if there's something sacred about that fixed number 8. But it's not particularly sacred or fixed if they're willing to move the definition of 8am around.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    7. Re:I knew it! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      My question is, couldn't they have shifted working hours into 7am-3pm instead?

      Since we're going around in circles, sure some people could have shifted. Will the schools, the banks, the subcontractors, the delivery companies also shift? Or maybe it's just simpler to change the timezone, not have to have the entire world re schedule re adjust, and just face the fact that there is no technical or social reason that the day should be symetrical around a high sun at noon*.

      *And where I live it isn't. The sun is at its peak around 11 or 10 depending on DST.

  25. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If only your manners could make up for your nauseating love of apple and blind hatred of real tech companies

  26. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LOL what a fucking IDIOT

    SO buggy code that apple fixed DOESNT count as a bug.
    WFT kind of STUPID BLIND apple WORSHIPPER logic if that?
    You are a disgrace

  27. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Learn how to not be a cunt, twat.

  28. You had one job! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A watch that can't tell time right.
    Courage.

  29. It's not b DST bug by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    It's a Daylight Savings Time feature.

    Stop using Daylight Savings Time.

    Problem solved.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  30. Apple? AGAIN? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    You would think with the endless string of daylight savings time related problems that Apple has faced in the past they'd have a dedicated part of the QC now checking to see how every device operates at the day DST changes.

    1. Re:Apple? AGAIN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL that would assume a level of competence that apple just doesn't have.

  31. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sorry. I bought one. It literally is one of the most functional, polished and incredible pieces of tech I've used in a long time.

  32. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    LOL what a fucking IDIOT

    SO buggy code that apple fixed DOESNT count as a bug.
    WFT kind of STUPID BLIND apple WORSHIPPER logic if that?
    You are a disgrace

    Sure.

    Now, let's go back to Linux 0.09 and start adding up the bugs, shall we? Because that is EXACTLY the "standard" you are attempting to apply to WatchOS.

    And no, bugs in code that are FIXED are NO LONGER COUNT AS BUGS.

    Or has Linux been 100% bug-free since it was first foisted upon an unsuspecting world?

    Moron.

  33. Re: Professor Fritzen Posten by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    If only your manners could make up for your nauseating love of apple and blind hatred of real tech companies

    If you think Apple doesn't qualify as a "real tech company", then it is YOU that needs some attitude-adjustment.

    I've got a sledgehammer. Perhaps you should borrow it and attend some "Hitting yourself over the head" Classes at the Argument Clinic.

    And talk about "Nauseating": Your blind HATRED of all things Apple, because... Apple, is misplaced, immature, AND Nauseating.

    And good manners NEVER go out of style.

    Wanna borrow that sledgehammer, or should I bring it to you?