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Apple's Next iOS Release to Include Fix for Daylight Saving Time Bug

CubusX said:
Guess the security hole will be closed along with this fix.
Click to expand...

Security hole?

If you are referring to latest exploit that allowed the Limera1n jailbreak to be released this weekend... that isn't a "security hole." It is vulnerability in the boot rom that can only be accessed via USB. There is nothing to fear unless you go around plugging your iPhone into random USB ports and you actually find someone trying to hack into your phone this way. What is does do is give us a GREAT jailbreak that Apple cannot prevent. Bootrom exploits can only be fixed with revised hardware.
 
tny said:
This is actually a very good question. The time and date libraries should all be system level stuff, not implemented differently for different apps.
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Odds are it has to do with how the information for recurring alarms is read in from its data store. Something is converting the saved time value incorrectly in the code path handling recurring alarms. (Not handling the standard/daylight savings time conversion, or unintentionally handling it twice.)
 
Why?

Why are things like this hardwired into the OS? With all of the private info Apple and its programs pass back and forth without our knowledge you would think they could simply download a list from some server somewhere once in a while that tells the OS when everyone goes on and off daylight savings time.
 
I wonder how large a bung it is going to take to fix the voice activation features. Prior to iOS 4.0 my 3GS seemed to understand me fine, now I might as well be talking Martian. So far the only solution seems to have been to set it to American and then fake an American accent, which is beyond the pale.
 
7031 said:
From what I can tell from the article, it only seems to affect people in New Zealand and Australia.
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Not to mention that there are third party alarm clock apps that handle this for the Aussies and the Kiwi's. I don't consider this much of an issue.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

The clock on my phone won't even sync with Apple's servers. It's set to manual at the moment. It's not that big of a deal. Luckily I was awake when the phone decided to live 6 hours in the future.
 
Solution: eliminate DST.

Can't stand it. Governments can't agree on when it should be, redefine it every few years, induce all kinds of stupid bugs, and cause billions to go thru contortions to little purpose.

"But we have more light in the evening!" So get up earlier. I want more light in the morning.

Noon = sun highest overhead. Redefining orbital mechanics to "gain an hour" is rank narcissism.

</rant>
 
7031 said:
I find it amazing that a bug like that wasn't fixed sooner. Surely it's quite simple to fix? Why wasn't it just released as a bug fix?
Click to expand...

You're asking this of a company that can't figure out how to do updates to the iOS without doing a 300-400 meg file, or iTunes without a 90-100 meg file?
 
What’s so wrong with waking up an hour early? You just keep hitting snooze until you think you are an hour late, but you are actually just on time.
 
ctdonath said:
Solution: eliminate DST.

Can't stand it. Governments can't agree on when it should be, redefine it every few years, induce all kinds of stupid bugs, and cause billions to go thru contortions to little purpose.

"But we have more light in the evening!" So get up earlier. I want more light in the morning.

Noon = sun highest overhead. Redefining orbital mechanics to "gain an hour" is rank narcissism.

</rant>
Click to expand...

Yes, DST is stupid. Plenty of studies around that it does not save what it's supposed to save.

Also, don't we all hate having to get up at 2 o'clock at night to change all the clocks in our houses?:)

How about people "effected" by this set their re-occurring alarms one hour later until it's fixed.
Would match the real time to get up .

Too easy?
 
My mother would approve of this bug. Better too early than too late, she'd say.
 
1080p said:
Security hole?

If you are referring to latest exploit that allowed the Limera1n jailbreak to be released this weekend... that isn't a "security hole." It is vulnerability in the boot rom that can only be accessed via USB. There is nothing to fear unless you go around plugging your iPhone into random USB ports and you actually find someone trying to hack into your phone this way. What is does do is give us a GREAT jailbreak that Apple cannot prevent. Bootrom exploits can only be fixed with revised hardware.
Click to expand...

The bootrom exploit cannot be fixed, but the security hole that allows Limera1n to be an untethered jailbreak will be fixed. Once that happens, people who upgrade will either have to use Limera1n as a tethered jailbreak, or will have to wait for another exploit to be found to make it untethered again.
 
Has there been a change in the time Australia switch to DST?

I'm a software developer in the UK dealing with customers in Australia, and they reported a bug to us last week regarding a clock showing the wrong time. On investigation, the third party service we're using to convert a city to a timezone is returning the wrong one for their Sydney location.

Further investigation led us to three other competing services, all of whom were also returning the same wrong timezone information.

Which makes me believe that this is a more widespread issue than just for Apple. Somebody somewhere has produced a data set for timezones that all these places are using that has incorrect information in it.
 
jent said:
Does anybody know why this affects only recurring alarms?
Click to expand...

Here is a guess. Let's say you have an alarm that goes off every day at 6AM. The calendar would first calculate each date of a recurrence, then add six hours from midnight for the alarm time. The problem is that daylight savings applies at 2AM, not midnight, so adding six hours to midnight actually gives you 5AM (on daylight savings dates) because of the time change at 2AM. The way to fix it is to start with something like 3AM on each recurrence, and calculate your alarm times from that time instead of midnight. Then you will always start on a time with daylight savings applied.

I have no clue why that would affect only certain areas. I can't see the code :D
 
Other clock issues in the states

Not sure if any one else has had this issue, but me and about 3 other iPhone users in my office had an issue with the clock on the iPhone 4 showing up as an hour early or an hour late. To fix the issue we had to take the phones of automatic setup.
 
It doesn't matter because my battery drains over night anyway, so there isn't enough power for the alarm to go off.
 
Hmm

All very well setting it an hour late, but I am damn sure this morning it did not go off at all. (Has been going off correctly so far though - am loosing faith in the clock app :O)

Hopefully they fix this + ring tone looping after answering the phone call :S

UPDATE: Today it went off at the right time, didn't change anything - so after 3 weeks or so it has corrected itself (for today at least...)
 
I don't blame Apple. DST bugs are notoriously hard to find ahead of time.

Every year I cringe because I know an old embedded system or app around the companies I work for is going to have some kind of DST error.

Especially since the US Congress decided a few years ago to make it start sooner and last longer. You'd have thought they'd have learned from the cost of preparing for Y2K, that they shouldn't go messing around with time.

Hmm. That sounded like a bad SciFi movie line.
 
New Zealander here who didn't have this bug, friends with iPhones also didnt get this bug.

To be fair, NZ did change when their daylight savings was meant to happen recently, I noticed since our overseas servers didn't adjust the times properly either.
 
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