Apple iPhone Alarm doesn't work In New Years 2011

Happy New Year everyone, I slept in rather late this morning. Which isn't too bad I suppose I had no appointments to be late for. I just assumed I had just slept through the alarm, Then I started reading on Twitter then there was in fact in a bug in the iPhone alarm.

Surely this is madness I thought, It can't be, something as simple as an alarm wont just stop working because its New Years. I mean its not like its Y2K or anything. An alarm is a relatively simple thing, if its the pre set time make noise.

if ( time = timeAlarmSet )
{
     makeNoise();
}

Granted the actually code is probably a little more involved, but an alarm is still a relatively simple function. I'm a software engineer so I have some knowledge on the subject. But I think what has happened here is that in an effort to be smart and awesome like all Apple products ( cause they always succeed right? ) Someone thought they should try something clever instead of just make the alarm simple as it should be, and just moving on to the next exciting part of iOS development.

So now the iPhone alarm wont work until the 3rd of January 2011, alarms set to recur will still work fine. But somewhere along the way a bug has crept in that makes single alarms a kind of moot point. I'm sure nothing major will happen because of this, just a lot of people sleeping in the next few days, a lot of people will be late for work, hopefully without any repercussions. But its something that was so totally avoidable, it makes the second  time that an oversight on something that should be very simple on Apple's part has resulted in great inconvenience.

Its just mind boggling to me as a producer and tester of software, that something like that get past testing, even more boggling is that it's from Apple and on devices with such crazy saturation. Its not like they aren't making money of this thing, or they have competition with similar market share. Granted I know making the alarm function may be boring compared to working on the Retina Display or FaceTime functions, but that is no excuse for this, you still have your job to. 

I just wanted to make people aware, for whatever good it will do for the next three days.

In closing I just want to put out there. Imagine what might have happened if Apple iOS (whatever version is was) was the majority of the market share when Y2K or the "millennium bug" happened. Probably nothing would have happened. But when this like events like this, and that can get through it gives me pause, and makes kinda grateful for Windows. Maybe not, but hopefully it makes someone think.

I'm not Apple bashing, just ranting. Apple is here to stay and provides useful technology and services. I still plan on using their products for the foreseeable future, Just getting this off my chest.

See you next time, and Happy New Year again, especially to those people who will not be woken up for three days.

IOS4 WARNING!

I just realised that after updating to iOS4 all images in my Camera Roll are gone! Ones I has in folders are fine, it was just the ones in Camera Roll! All my personal images gone. I still have the pictures I took of my Gundam Unicorn Model, for all that's worth!

Thought they were safe syncing them with my PC via iTunes, didn't think i'd need to back up the back up!

So anyway take heed before you update!

EDIT: Well apparently iTunes no longer keeps multiple backups! it used to but they took that functionality out, I guess they thought there software so infallible it wouldn't be needed right? I mean any software that offers back-up and restore functionality should keep multiple back up as default, for all the negligible space an iPhone backup file would take in this day and age of cheap storage its just down right appalling!

my grammar and spelling are probably atrocious in this post, but I cannot help that for it is fuelled by rage at finding no chance of restoring the old pics, since the most recent back up was of the newly updated iPhone sans my "precious memories" on the Camera Roll.

I know teething problems happen, and no long term harm is done, just would have liked a warning.

So prepare yourself if you haven't updated yet.

iOS4 on the good "old" iPhone 3GS

Yesterday I synced with my iTunes clicked update and some 300-odd megabytes later my phones OS was updated to version 4. Just wanted to share a few of my first views on the software.

As of June 21st in the year of our lord 2010, Steve Jobs opened the doors and loosed his new creation iPhone 4.0 along with a new OS, now re-branded as iOS4 instead if iPhoneOS. They apparently made the thing backwards compatibly (to varying degrees) with older version of the phone, which was nice of them. In this post ill share my first impression of this backwards compatibility.

Now at first glance the UI looks sharper and brighter, the first thing that catches the eye is now you get background wallpaper, It is quiet nice to now see my wife behind my application icons when I slide my "slide to unlock" bar. The new live  5x digital zoom is nice, up to about 2.5x then its not worth looking at.

I then noticed that the email client was a little slower checking my mail (G mail, IMAP) I chalked this up to all the new fangled updated they have done to the mail software business level encryption and the like, but then an overall sluggishness seemed to descend upon my phone. Its bearable but almost noticeably, after a few weeks I'll be used to it. I assume its to do with the iOS4 being optimised to the tech of iPhone 4. Its just got more power under the hood than the older models.

One slight annoyance was the App-specific location settings, after the update every App I opened asked me about location, but only once and never again.

App folders is very nice, you can have you can set up folder that contain Apps up to 12, give it name up to 13 characters. allowing for Up to 2,160 instead of 180 visible Apps.

The Multitasking is nice, you can now double click the home key to open up a slider bar with a list of your Apps to choose so you can switch back and forth, this will probably diminish performance on older models, iPhone 4.0 probably not since it was built for it. But its a nice little feature.

I'm not really sure but I think my battery is draining faster, but that may all be in my head.

Click here for a comprehensive list of features of iOS4.

There are many more features that I will have to sit down to examine and test out but haven't had a chance yet, These are just my first opinions after a day of normal use and are subject to change. 

Well anyway thanks for reading, you can check out my tweeter for my more up to that minute opinions.

See you next blog.

 - Rigas