iOS 4.1 Daylight Saving Time Bug Strikes Europe

[DTphonehome]

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You just wake up an hour earlier or an hour later than usual. Not a big deal.

Do you even have a job?

 

[rowley]

Found out about this morning.

Woke at 6 instead of 5:30, when the alarm was supposed to go off.

A fix would be good.

 

[Love]

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*moves to Saskatchewan*

 

[fxtech]

Pfft! What kind of reasonable thinking is that?!?

Think different!

 

[zorinlynx]

Okay seriously Apple, WTF?

Basic unit testing should have found this bug, and it should have been fixed long before release.

The alarm is a critical function of any phone these days. People depend on these to be on time for work, appointments, and so on.

This rampant unreliability in cel phone alarms is why I still use my 1984 vintage Panasonic clock radio to wake up every morning. Not only is it so loud I'd only sleep through it if I were dead, but it keeps PERFECT time (over months it doesn't even lose a minute) and doesn't care about DST or even what date it is.

 

[solaar]

I just turned the alarm off and then back on again yesterday after the switch, it works fine now.

 

[flopticalcube]

I'm in rare full sympathy with Apple's developers on this one.

DST bugs, especially with Congress meddling for American users, cause more trouble than the so-called Y2K problem ever did.

I could not disagree more. DST has been with us since the dawn of computing and it's a fairly trivial problem to solve. Y2K was a once only event with issues riddled throughout code bases with very little regularity and with many unknown results. The scale of the two problems does not even come close to being similar.

 

[umag]

I Did woke up an hour later but went to school normally.
I only realized I was late entering the school, Lol.
That was rather annoying.

Fix the bug.

 

[MSUSpartan]

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Do you even have a job?

Oh I thought we were here to protect Apple. I read above some guy wanted to get rid of DST all together, I mean this really is the last straw isn't it?

 

[AtHomeBoy_2000]

But the clocks will look so beautiful!

But they will be over priced and not very customizable.

 

[Ferry888]

The bigger Apple gets, the more they start to behave like Microsoft. Buggy, slow, such an update should be top priorty.

 

[Folkabuss]

I have a handful of reoccuring alarms every day. I fixed this issue by simply restarting the phone.
/Jacob

Correction: Not so! It was one of the non-repeating alarms that worked. Sorry about that!

 

[ltcol266845]

My alarm went off an hour early today - and I'm in the USA.

Same here. Was super confused at 5:15am...

 

[Dreyesbo]

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Mexico, where the DST just changed too, was affected as well. (Just woken up late because of it)

 

[nixiemaiden]

Apple isn't the only one who has issues with DST. I don't get what is so difficult about this but I had the same problem with my HTC phone a couple of years ago. It changed all of my calendar appointments and alarms when the time changed. Seems to be a very common problem that people just don't think about when debugging their software.

 

[OllyW]

I have a handful of reoccuring alarms every day. I fixed this issue by simply restarting the phone.
/Jacob

Nope, doesn't fix it for me.

 

[kdarling]

I could not disagree more. DST has been with us since the dawn of computing and it's a fairly trivial problem to solve. Y2K was a once only event with issues riddled throughout code bases with very little regularity and with many unknown results. The scale of the two problems does not even come close to being similar.

And I disagree back

As you said, Y2K was a one-time problem. And while I agree that it could've caused more problems than a simple DST bug can, it did not, for various reasons.

DST changes, on the other hand, occur twice a year, every year. Worse, changes do not use hardcoded dates, but must be calculated each time. This means that twice a year there's a chance that poorly written and tested "trivial" code can go wrong.

The evidence for this possibility is right in front of us today. The sheer fact that a DST bug is causing worldwide problems with a heavily financed and popular device, means de facto that DST is more of a problem than Y2K was... because it's an ongoing possibility of error.

And that's with a system that's updated fairly often. When Congress meddled a few years ago and expanded DST, they put at risk the code that was already in thousands of embedded systems that might never get updated.

 

[Kelmon]

Time Machine Issues? What time Machine issues?

10.2/10.3/10.4/10.5 was stable from the moment I got it [launch on all occasions], and so was 10.6.

I don't know what you people with problems to do your equipment but I've never had any issues.

Not even the DST bug has hit me, plus I don't use iPhoto.

Nothing to complain about from me.

Personally speaking, 10.4 and 10.5 both gave me kernel panics on a relatively regular basis in their initial releases, particularly 10.4 which was so bad that I contemplated reverting back to 10.3. Eventually Apple fixed the problems but it took them a while.

And, just to be clear, I take excellent care of my Macs.

 

[OllyW]

When Congress meddled a few years ago and expanded DST, they put at risk the code that was already in thousands of embedded systems that might never get updated.

Why would Congress cause my alarm to go off one hour late here in the UK?

 

[iSamurai]

"we don't see DST taking off at this time"

I love your satire + pun


Steve: We'll be giving away free alarm clocks to those affected. This is all blown out of proportion.

 

[HLdan]

+1

Fail on Apple's part.

True, while this is in fact a fail on Apple's part, the complaining people on here need to adjust their internal clocks rather than rely on electronic gadgets. Blame yourself if you're not waking up on time.

 

[Inconsequential]

Personally speaking, 10.4 and 10.5 both gave me kernel panics on a relatively regular basis in their initial releases, particularly 10.4 which was so bad that I contemplated reverting back to 10.3. Eventually Apple fixed the problems but it took them a while.

And, just to be clear, I take excellent care of my Macs.

Which machine were you using 10.4/10.5 on?

10.2-10.5 - MDD G4 DP 867
10.4-10.6 - Mid 2007 MBP
10.5-10.6 - Mac Pro 2009/MacBook Pro 2010.

Only issue i've had was the audio bug with the MP but nothing major like file loss or KPs or something.

 

[flopticalcube]

And I disagree back

As you said, Y2K was a one-time problem. And while I agree that it could've caused more problems than a simple DST bug can, it did not.

DST changes occur twice a year, every year. Worse, changes do not use hardcoded dates, but must be calculated each time. This means that twice a year there's a chance that poorly written and tested "trivial" code can go wrong.

The evidence for this possibility is right in front of us today. The sheer fact that a DST bug is causing worldwide problems with a heavily financed and popular device, means de facto that DST is more of a problem than Y2K was.

And that's with a system that's updated fairly often. When Congress meddled a few years ago and expanded DST, they put at risk the code that was already in thousands of embedded systems that might never get updated.

The fact that y2k was a one off meant that no one properly coded for it in the first place. dst happens twice a year so it is something that programmers know they will be facing often. With y2k dates were being played with all over the code. Dst is usually calculated in one place.

The resources poured into fixing y2k were immense compared to what Apple has spent on ios and it's not a worldwide problem, it's an Apple problem. The fact that even simple devices can get it right points to sloppy programming on Apple's part. Congress has nothing to do with it as DST changes all over the globe and most places being affected are not even in the US. Even so, ios was developed after the changes. Apple should have tested this better. There simply is no other excuse.

 

[Full of Win]

I'm in rare full sympathy with Apple's developers on this one.

DST bugs, especially with Congress meddling for American users, cause more trouble than the so-called Y2K problem ever did.

That said, I'd sure hate to be in the shoes of the Apple iOS tester group right now.

And Apple corporate gets no slack at all for failing to put out a fix once it was known. That's just total disregard for their customers.

Cue the Apple apologist in 3...2...1... BLAST OFF

1. How do the US Congress changing DST affect users in the UK, Russia, Taiwan ect...? Please explain that to me.

2. The change to US DST was passed in 2005.... two years BEFORE the iPhone 1 shipped. Sure, if the change was made a month or two ago, but how can you pawn this off on Congress when the law change was done BEFORE, yes BEFORE the first version of the phone shipped? The answer is that you cannot. This was just sloppy programming on the part of Apple Consumer Electronics

The reason it was not fixed is becase Apple views us as their chattel, who will gladly eat any slop they put before us. They have absolutely no respect for us, if they did then an update would have been pushed weeks ago.

 

[tigres]

Mine went off on time today.