

First bug of 2011: iOS alarms not going off? - Bud
http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/12/31/reports.of.alarm.issues.continue.to.plague.ios.4/

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ihodes
This cost me a couple hours of work this morning, and put me in a generally
bad mood. I need to wake up and be alert (driving 12 hours in inclement
weather) at 5 tomorrow, and sleeping in a few hours messes that up royally.

These are the kind of bugs that screw with people's trust, along with messed
up calendars and call-dropping. This is _not_ okay, and should not have
happened.

~~~
runjake
But it does happen.

More complexity == likely more bugs.

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bretpiatt
"The workaround for this new bug is to set all standalone alarms to recurring
after midnight. Tests done by 9to5Mac indicate that the bug will correct
itself on January 3rd, but until then readers are advised not to solely rely
on alarms set on devices using iOS 4.x."

What, "..the bug will correct itself.."? Color me confused but how do you end
up with a "self healing 48 hour bug"? Anyone able to provide some clarity?

~~~
aston
The Zune had a similar self-healing bug at the end of 2008. There was a
fencepost error that resolved itself once the internal calendar code no longer
thought it was the 366th day of the year. So, basically, a one day bug.

[http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/zune-news/38143-cause-
zune-...](http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/zune-news/38143-cause-
zune-30-leapyear-problem-isolated.html)

Obviously this isn't the same bug, but it's fun to see the broken code and
speculate about similar sorts logic errors that could lead to this working
like normal in a couple days.

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jonknee
It's really surprising to me that there is another alarm bug. This isn't
exactly a tricky subject and should be easy testable.

~~~
xenophanes
If date and timezone related code seems simple/easy to you then you're using
libraries! It's messy and easy to mess up!

~~~
jonknee
And Apple isn't using libraries? Also, the time/date has been correct, just
the alarm app failing to activate on time.

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chrisolsen
It doesn't seem like it is just iOS. I noticed an issue in my conky display
this morning.

You should be able to see the bug on a *nix box with:

> date '+%m-%d-%G' # shows up as 01-01-2010

where as the following works fine.

>date '+%m-%d-%y' # 01-01-2011

I guess it's not really a bug since %G is the year of ISO week number, but it
would be easy for something like this to go unnoticed until the invalid date
pops up.

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beej71
Android: We are all ready to win, just as we are born knowing only life. It is
defeat that you must learn to prepare for.

iPhone: I don't waste my time with it. When it comes, I won't even notice.

Android: Oh? How so?

iPhone: I'll be too busy lookin' goood.

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kmfrk
Has anything like this happened on Android? I'm an iPhone user, but there are
some really facepalm-stupid bugs on iOS that takes away from the platform's
image as something polished and perfected.

~~~
nodata
Yep. Android 2.0 (I think) has a bug where alarms will be delayed while the
phone's cpu is in sleep mode. This can mean they go off up to an hour late.

