4 ms·
Syncing clocks is surprisingly difficult. On top of that you have to get the message to all the devices that there even is a timer, this might be delivered afte
by usrn 4y ago
Syncing clocks is surprisingly difficult. On top of that you have to get the message to all the devices that there even is a timer, this might be delivered after the timer expires. I don't think you could do this in a way where people could rely on it. You already have caldav which can sync your agenda, I think that's probably the closest you'll get.
There's a sibling comment that mentions HomeKit timers. I'd bet those are living on some remote machine and you're only able to check them but they behave very differently from local timers.
- MBCook 4y agoAll the devices are already synced to an NTP server. I don’t need millisecond accuracy here.
- 9dev 4y agoWhere's the trouble in dispatching a message for all devices connected to a given Apple ID, those devices checking whether the timer is in the past (and silently discarding it in that case), and setting a local timer to the desired target time? As a sibling commenter said, this isn't about millisecond precision, but making sure the timer telling me to take the cake out of the oven I set on the tablet in the kitchen will ring on my phone.
- appletrotter 4y agoAll we need is a start timestamp and access to the current timestamp. If we can improve the accuracy of the 'current' timestamp by hosting it on a remote server, so be it. But I doubt that's necessary. How much do you think the clocks on computers drift between syncs? I would wager if I isolated my laptop and phone from any networks, they'd continue to show the same time for quite a while.