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It is incredibly difficult to get "time" features right, especially recurring alarm/timer features. Daylight savings time only makes it much, much harder. All 3
by yellowbkpk 16y ago
It is incredibly difficult to get "time" features right, especially recurring alarm/timer features. Daylight savings time only makes it much, much harder. All 3 companies I've worked for have had relatively serious issues with time, time zone, and DST. The most serious being patient monitoring devices that did the "wrong thing" with timezones. All other devices on the network had to account for the problem because years and years of work had gone into validation on the code for this device. Instead of fixing it at the source, the company spent years of developer time working around it at the other end.
Time is hard, so I'm not surprised Apple got it wrong. Thankfully, it's a relatively small usecase.
- borism 16y agoAmazingly Linux and other Unixes (yeah, OSX too) "get" time quite well. Maybe Apple over-optimized iOS?
- yellowbkpk 16y agoAs difficult as it is to implement time correctly in the OS, I imagine the timer/alarm apps that Apple wrote don't use any OS features (beyond the "what time is it?" API) so all of the issues usually arise in application code.
- mmt 16y agoThe OS itself may, but apps don't always. The 2:30-localtime problem has been an awkward one for cron in the past.
- sorbus 16y agoHaving an alarm go off at the right time is a relatively small usecase? That's a bit surprising, as alarms seem like a pretty basic feature.