iOS 6: Do Not Disturb mode stays on after scheduled time

[wonderzombie]

Always fun: http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programm.... HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4128208.

Calendar/time stuff is really, really hard. That's not an excuse for Apple in particular, just that the pitfalls are many and varied to the point where even smart people will screw it up.

I imagine one reason it doesn't seem so hard at first glance is because time and the calendar, in our lived experience, is relatively simple.

[ChuckMcM]

I find it fascinating that it doesn't work between 1/1/13 and 1/6/13 but claims it will start working on 1/7/13. What is different about the 7th than the 6th?

[osiemens]

It's a not entirely uncommon bug having to do with the naming of the first week of the year. Perhaps it's even as deep as NSCalendar, but I can't check that right now. ref: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1106943/nscalendar-first-...

[kijeda]

I noticed a bug in another tool today, caused by the week-of-the-year value returned by strftime() returning '00' until the 6th. Possibly related?

[MrHus]

I fixed the same bug today, it happens when using YYYY instead of yyyy as a dateformat. YYYY is the year of the week the day falls in.

[Derander]

It seems significant that this is exactly one week later.

[bdash]

The 7th is the first day of the second week of the year.

[nsoldiac]

Maybe they're pushing an update on the 7th

[ConstantineXVI]

I have a hard time (ow) having much anger over time-related bugs these days. Seems the only real way of getting the calendar more programmer-friendly is to switch the world over to Unix time.

[rmc]

But then we need to do something special for leap seconds. Despite what lots of people think, Unix time is not the number of seconds since 1st Jan 1970, since it doesn't include the 30ish leap seconds that have been added since then.

[masklinn]

> Seems the only real way of getting the calendar more programmer-friendly is to switch the world over to Unix time.

As others have noted, it'll break during leap seconds where a full second repeats and unix time "conveniently" forgets about it ever existing.

[chimeracoder]

I'm amazed by how many applications don't do this (and, similarly, how many languages make it difficult just to get a simple UNIX timestamp). It's far and away the easiest medium to work with, even if you only use it as a pivot format[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_language

[lipnitsk]

At least the alarm still works.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/01/apple_admits_new_y...

[jpxxx]

Literally triggered the day they released an advertisement touting the feature. Embarrassing for anyone, inexcusable for Apple.

[ksmiley]

Reminds me of the Zune leap year bug that got some press four years ago [1]. A Zune running during 11:59 PM, Dec 31, 2008 would freeze when the clock ticked over to Jan 1.

Even the response to the problem is similar. Microsoft says, wait until the 2nd and the problem will resolve itself. Apple says, wait until the 7th and the problem will resolve itself.

[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/156240/microsoft_zune_failure...

[nodata]

Sorry to shoehorn this in: a lot of people use Do Not Disturb mode because they miss calls because they forget to turn off mute.

iPhones need timed mute like Shush! on Android [1] - press mute: it asks "how long?"

Going into the cinema? Mute for two hours. Meeting? An hour.

1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.publicobje...

[CamperBob2]

The biggest favor Apple could do their users is simply to provide a silent ringtone option, so that users can leave their ringer turned off while 'whitelisting' the appropriate contacts.

It's simply staggering that this has apparently never occurred to anyone at Apple. The cheapest feature phone in a bubble package at Radio Shack supports silent ringtones -- or at least it did a few years ago -- but with the iPhone, the user has to record or purchase a track with several seconds of silence and create one manually.

[mung]

Could have been spun as a feature. Apple believes you should be on a break during this time of the year so DND stays on until the 7th. Because we believe in choice, you can still switch it off manually.

Okay maybe not.

[smackfu]

When I turn mine off, it knows it isn't supposed to start until 11 PM. Then when I turn it on, it immediately goes on.

So maybe it's using 11 PM yesterday as the trigger instead of 11 PM today.

[DHowett]

Turning it on via the switch overrides the Schedule setting. It's not using the prior 11PM, it's using your expressed desire for it to be on.

[Gertig]

So glad it was this because I was starting to wonder if my 18 month old son was playing a prank on me.

[jontro]

Noticed this yesterday, it is odd that apple does not catch bugs like this in their qa process.

[kemiller]

Calendar-based stuff is absurdly difficult to get right. Even if you have something that seems to work you likely have a hidden error somewhere. That's not really an excuse -- edge conditions like DST on/off, and end-of-year should be first on your test list. But calendars suck to work with.

[josegonzalez]

Programming is hard. Likely they didn't have a test for every possible date.

[leephillips]

Odd, but not new:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4916627

[sourc3]

Same here! After missing three calls, I was wondering if I had turned this on by mistake. Glad to see it on front page of HN :)