“Y2K this is not. There are no worries that planes will fall from the sky. Yet when Europeans turned their clocks back during the wee hours Monday in accordance with the end of daylight-saving time, iPhones hiccuped,” Adam Satariano reports for Bloomberg Businessweek.
“The phone’s primary clock, which is synced with a server somewhere in the cloud, recorded the time change just fine. So-called recurrent alarms, those set by users to sound at the same time on given days, did not,” Satariano reports. “Those who relied on their phones to wake them at, say, 6:45 every weekday ended up snoozing until 7:45.”
“The software bug has its roots in the Congress. In 2005, legislators amended the Uniform Time Act to extend daylight-saving time, starting in 2007. The change, intended to prolong the number of daylight hours and thus conserve energy, means Americans move their clocks back a week later than Europeans do. The recurrent alarm feature in the latest iPhone software didn’t account for the discrepancy,” Satariano reports. “After Sunday, when the United States ends its prolonged daylight-saving time, the clocks of the DST-observing world will be in sync again, and the problem should be moot. Until March, that is, when DST begins again.”
“Natalie Harrison, an Apple spokeswoman, says the company is aware of the issue. Harrison told CNN that iPhone users in the United States must also remember to delete and then reset their phone’s alarm clock – otherwise they may be an hour late for work on Monday morning,” Satariano reports. “The company says it will deliver a fix along with a scheduled software update this month.”
Read more in the full article here.
What time is it? Apple 30?
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who would expect their alarms to change with the DST change? Not me! People. The time changes not your alarm times! I changed my alarms to reflect DST didn’t everybody do the same.
Buy a alarm clock and quit using your phone.. that is just asking for something bad to happen.. like that battery dies.. or it goes off an hour late!
well, i am not worried. already 4.2!
Thanks, George!
@steve
What are you talking about, you still want your alarm to go off at say 6am whether it’s day light saving or not. You should not need to adjust your alarms as they should go off when your phone says 6am, which automatically adjusts
How about release 4.2 (et al) already?
Congress did this to save money.. We would all theoretically turn on our morning lights an hour earlier – later in the Fall during our morning routine.
As a software developer I can tell you the first year this law went into place it cost hundreds of millions of dollars in IT software changes. It was almost as big as Y2K. Good for my business, but easily offsetting any savings to our electric grid. Al Gore is smiling somewhere in his private jet (blasting jet fuel exhaust).
@Mark,
Exactly. It’s almost as if the alarm clock on the iPhone has its own internal clock that isn’t changed when the main clock is. Weird.
@iJah420
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“What time is it? Apple 30?”
I live in Canada. What time is that in metric?
I still really don’t get how these went off an hour late, rather than an hour early:
When the clocks go back, it means that 24 hours after yesterday’s ‘6:45’ is today’s ‘5:45’.
Does this mean the iPhone is over-compensating (double-compensating)?
@Tarzan89,
If the alarm clock app keeps its own internal clock that isn’t updated (as I surmised in my post above), the alarm clock would go off an hour late.
@Mark
this daylight savings time thing has always confused me. I know you spring forward and fall back but when do you get an extra hour of sleep and why are all my smoke alarms going off?
@Cubert
No, it’d be early:
Alarm clock clock: 1:59 am – phone clock 1:59 am
Alarm clock clock: 2am – phone clock: 1am
ACC: 3am – PC: 2am
ACC: 6:45am – PC: 5:45am
*alarm goes off*
N’est-ce pas?
I don’t get why so many people hate DST. I for one like the extra hour of sun in the evenings, not wasted in the early morning hours.
I personally hate falling back to the standard time. It is always depressing to leave work ~5-6 and it be dark already (in SF) once the clocks go back.
The issue for the iPhone that the internal clock probably run on GMT. Whatever your time zone is, the clock displayed is adjusted. Same thing for DST and standard time.
Since Apple are saying to delete and reset your alarms after the time change, I bet it refers to GMT and the relative time difference. The software does not automatically reflect the time changes with the end of DST.
Clearly the alarm should work off the current local time especailly for those who travel a lot.
BTW I much prefer my iPhone as an alarm. I have a iHome next to my bed and it is a pain to set up compared to the phone. Now I just use it for charging and let the phone wake me up.
@GBs-
In 2005 the Congress was Republican, so somehow I don’t think Al Gore made them do it. And if he did there was that Dubya fellow with the power of the veto to stop such shenanigans. Also not a Democrat.
It doesn’t matter what party is in charge. When gov’t get involved, everything gets screwed up!
@Tarzan69
This sure is a confusing affair. I’m with you. This is the third press report I’ve seen of alarms going off “an hour late”. I think this is technical nonsense. Here’s how I see it in my mind:—
Imagine you have two old-fashoned alarm clocks. Both are set (before the change-over) to the same time and on both clocks, an alarm is set for 0600 next morning.
Some hours later, after the change, (you’ve stayed awake to test this theory) both clocks read 0559. Because the change has occurred, you re-set ONE of the clocks to show the new correct time, which is now 0459
One minute later the alarm on the other clock — the one showing the incorrect time — goes off. But, on the clock you re-set to show the new correct time, the alarm goes off an hour later, when you wanted it to go off.
The bug on the iPhone apparently is triggering the alarm when the phone internals thinks it’s still on yesterday’s time even though the display is showing the correct time.
To me, that means the alarm is going off an hour EARLY.
@Cubert, you didn’t think it through carefully enough.
Before the change, the phone says 0200 and the alarm goes off at (say) 0600.
Next day, at 0200 the phone re-sets itself to 0100 but, because of the bug, the alarm still goes off when it thinks it is 0600 but it’s now really 0500.
As Cubert hypothesizes, if the phone has its own internal clock, after the change the phone declares that it’s 0600 (which is correct) but the internal clock declares that it’s 0700 (which is incorrect) and the alarm would’ve gone off an hour ago.
Oops @Cuthbert, I typed my note, then did a total make-over. The bottom section starting “@Cuthbert” should’ve been deleted. Sorry.
all of which would be moot if the iPhone actually did sync to your computer’s clock, or an NTP time server, which, so far, it don’t.
Tarzan69 et al,
After a few more cups of coffee my brain is now functioning properly and I see your point.
Just don’t call me Cuthbert.
So if I need to get up on Sunday morning at 6am in the US – what time should I set my iPhone alarm to??
A software bug that has its “roots in Congress”???
Well, if you want to play that game, it has its roots in the Arabic and Babylonian numbering system and the fact that the earth turns on its axis.
I call BS on this guy’s reasoning. If the bug was due to a change in the DST dates in the USA, why did this same bug occur here in Australia which did not change the starting weekend of the start of DST this year?