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Apple fails to correct New Year alarm bug
New Year’s Eve fault still causing mayhem among Apple iPhone users
The New Year return to work has not been going smoothly for Apple users, many of who have turned up late or missed transport connections after another iPhone malfunction that has seen alarms fail to go off on devices.
Apple fans are less than impressed by the latest iPhone fail, which emerged on New Year’s Eve, and have made their frustration known on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
After the first round of complaints, the company insisted that the problem would be fixed in time for the start of the week. But many people claimed that they had been let down by their devices on Monday and again today. The problem was reported to be occurring on iPods as well as iPhones.
The bug, which has been blamed on the iPhone 4 operating system, appears to cancel only one-off alarms. But that has not stopped it catching plenty of people out.
The topic has even been given its own hashtag on Twitter - #iphonealarmbug. Sueannlove tweeted on the site: "My iPhone alarm didn't work again. Time to dig out old school alarm clock." And on Tuesday Steve Dickerson wrote: "Hopefully Apple has got the alarm bug fixed. My iPhone failed to wake me this morning.”
It is not the first time Apple has run into trouble with its iPhone alarms. There were problems when the clocks went back earlier in the year and pre-programmed alarms failed to take the time change into account.
Experts do not expect the problem to damage Apple sales or its share price, but it does appear to give an insight into how thoroughly the company overhauls its software for each new launch.
Kyle Wiens, of the Apple repair site iFixit, said: "It turns out the date code is not very stable," he said. "With iOS, Apple is completely reinventing the wheel, and a bug in something so basic shows that Apple is having to do a lot of foundational work over again, that they're really going back and rewriting a lot of stuff from scratch." ·
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Diary Update 25/12/2010 - Fantastic News just got my new iPhone from Santa, V V excited.
Diary Update 26/12/2010 - great phone but appear to have to hold it upside down to get a reception, other than that great. V Excited.
Diary Update 27/12/2010 - enjoying scanning the web with my new iPhone - but it won't display any Flash content which is used by almost all websites - bit disappointing. No longer excited.
Diary update 4/1/2011 - alarm didn't work , slept in and was late for work. Called the expensive Apple support line and a man from the other side of the world told me to download the patch. V sore arm from holding phone backwards, upside down and standing on a chair in the garden to get a reception. Have downloaded the 26MB patch from Apple should be fine tomorrow. Not so excited anymore.
Diary Update 5/1/2011 - AAAGH alarm didn't work again! late again and have lost my job. Will be returning this piece of cr*p to Santa and will buy something reliable and functional - Android or standard mobile phone. Brassed off.
Note to diary - don't buy things that are a triumph of style over functionality & usability..
Well done Apple; the Millennium Bug eleven years late!