I may do this to my iPhone 4
I am tired and I am grumpy. And it’s my iPhone’s fault! Yes, folks, as if losing an hour’s sleep due to daylight savings isn’t bad enough, how about losing another hour just for good measure? It seems that Apple have borked something with the alarm clock and despite the clock on my iPhone being correctly set, the alarm I had scheduled for 5:55am went off at 4:55am this morning, which is basically 3:55am until my body clock adjusts. Unfortunately my tired brain didn’t spot the critical flaw in the Matrix and now I’m seriously hacked off. But the plot thickens upon further investigation…
At first I thought that there must be a system-wide issue causing all alarms to go off an hour early, so to test the theory at 5:42am this morning I set an alarm for 6:43am expecting it to go off an hour early. 5:43am came and went with no alarm. I then set an alarm for 5:45am and it went off at the right time!
To be completely thorough I then tried the same setup again but this time with it set to repeat daily. This time, the alarm did go off an hour earlier than it was set for. So it seems we can narrow this issue down to repeating alarms only. But for how long? Forever? Until the US comes out of daylight savings? Until iOS 4.2? Until iOS 5?!
In the four years that I have been using an iOS device as an alarm clock, this is the first time that I have seen this happen. Since it happened immediately after daylight savings I can only guess that this somehow involves timezones and Apple’s somewhat flippant attitude to how not getting them right affects users outside of the United States. For example, the issue where birthdays entered into contacts appear one day late is well known and has remained unfixed since what seems like the dawn of time.
But then that doesn’t explain why it would only affect repeating alarms, so now I am thoroughly confused. I don’t know if my alarm will go off at the right time tomorrow and I don’t know if I will, in my sleep-induced haze, forget to double-check the time when it goes off tomorrow morning and wake up an hour early yet again, thus falling into a nightmarish unbreakable cycle that slowly eats away at what little of my sanity remains!
If you’re thinking “user error” (you cynic!) think again. After I tweeted my annoyance this morning and asked if anybody else had been caught out, I was flooded with replies from others who had also been affected:
Grumpy people!
And if you’re still not convinced or believe in mass stupidity, here’s a quick video we threw together showing a recurring alarm set for 8:53am going off at 7:53am:
If anyone knows any more about this than we do (such as how to fix it!) go ahead and share in the comments. Also, let us know if this has affected anybody using an iPod touch, iPad, or any device running iOS 3.x.x.
If this does continue then I would suggest everybody submit feedback to Apple.
Now, where’s the coffee…?
My weekday alarm on my iPhone 4 was set for 5:45 but went off at 5:15!! Weird as it was only half an hour early. I did have a 6:15 alarm but it was turned off. I’m not impressed. I’ve deleted all the alarms and created a new one in the hope that it will solve the problem.
(brydon has made 9 comments)
A cheap and nasty fix, change your location to Noumea (Who do not have DST) manually adjust the time to NZ time and you are back in business….
Rob
(RobC has made 1 comment)
It’s happened to me too
I’ve set an alarm for everyday settings and it went off an hour early today. Very frustrating… I really do hope Apple will fix this issue very soon. It’s not nice thinking that my alarm might not go off in the morning and I’ll be late to work =/
(reniflorentina has made 1 comment)
What a smart workaround, RobC! You have found a second hometown for us! @ RobC:
(Lee has made 7 comments)
Sadly it has caught me out twice now
Slow learner
4.30am is not fun.
So do I just set the alarm an hour later? Not sure I can trust it now.
(huntfish has made 11 comments)
I second the suggestion that everyone just file an error report. (I remember that, a few years ago, the Mac OS didn’t adjust for the new New Zealand Daylight Savings time properly either, and it took ages for a software update to fix it.) The more people complaining, the better …
(suburban_ennui has made 74 comments)
I too have the same issue on my 3Gs waking me me up an hour early yesterday.
I know that there is also another problem with the birthdays in the address book on the iPhone. If you put a correct date in it will defult to a day/ two before. I’m not referring to the entry in the iCal. Since then i never enter any birthdays in the address book under the name of individuals instead i just enter into iCal that way i know my phone syncs to the MobilMe, iPhone & Mac all are the same. This has been an issue for a very long time any idea if there is a fix for it? you would expect this to have been a basic fix before the iOs4 rolled out. Come one Steve get off you back side and get the Job done right.
(alopes has made 70 comments)
I had a feeling that it would do the same this morning and have set all my alarms an hour later … worked like a charm … not a good fix though!!
It really does get me thinking if they can’t fix something so simple quickly then what is the point of having an Iphone.
(fstgtr has made 2 comments)
I use sleep cycle (great app) so it didn’t effect me
(JDog7001 has made 12 comments)
I did the same as RobC but chose Sydney, now changing it to Noumea (then again the Aussies never bombed a ship in our ports), I also turned off Time Zone Support in the mail settings temporarily too.
(GNZT has made 1 comment)
fstgtr wrote:
Yeah I have been trialing that this morning and it seems to work, hopefully they tell us if they fix it or I will be late for work
(huntfish has made 11 comments)
Might be fixed on 3rd of October when Aussie is starting daylight saving too!
They probably don’t have a separate setting for New Zealand!!!
(Tulip has made 35 comments)
@ Tulip:
I’m pretty sure they have a setting for New Zealand, in fact I guarantee it. My iPhone 3G (OS 3.1.3) made the switch just fine, and the alarms are working correctly. While they could have used an older library for NZ summertime calculations (i.e. before we changed to the last Sunday of September instead of the first Sunday in October), they wouldn’t have deleted the NZ entry altogether. I know NZ gets shafted over some things but Apple aren’t that bad.
And besides, single alarms are working fine, it’s just the repeating ones, so yeah, the separate setting for New Zealand is definitely there.
(Craig has made 57 comments)
Work around for all of you Kiwis, Set Date & Time > Time Zone to Pago Pago, Samoa then adjust date to your current date. For now, it should fix the issue yet call Apple to report your issue.
(fakewiki8 has made 5 comments)
fakewiki8 wrote:
Uhh you’re half right… They are 24 hours behind, Thus you need to change it to Nuku’alofa, Tonga as they observe GMT13+ all year round.
(LukeChandler has made 3 comments)
Yep mine’s stuffed too! Random alarms seem to work ok on the same day, but the recurring ones I have programmed or ones that go off after going through midnight seem to be borked. Nuts.
(Stabernz has made 1 comment)
@ RobC: Just set time zone to Tonga, they are GMT 13+
(LukeChandler has made 3 comments)
@LukeChandler: Good thing you get the idea.
(fakewiki8 has made 5 comments)
Addtionaly to the alarm going off an hour early, has anyone else had the issue where the alarm doesn’t sound at all some days, like mondays?! Wonder how long it would have taken to fix this bug in an android O.S. I’ll find out soon enough, I’ve had enough of how restrictive my iphone is, and this bug is just ridiculous for a company with apples resource. I’m getting an HTC Desire to replace it.
(callumb has made 1 comment)
It’s affecting the Aussies as well since they put their clocks forward last Sunday. More info on The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/05/iphone_daylight_saving/
(Robert Larsen has made 16 comments)