daylight savings time
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Nest thermostat isn't smart enough to figure out British Summer Time
The Nest Learning Thermostat is supposed to be super-smart, automatically learning your preferences and creating custom schedules to match. Unfortunately, British Summer Time (BST) is a concept that seems to be beyond its current level of intelligence. As The Next Web reports, a wealth of Nest users noticed over the weekend that their thermostats hadn't adjusted properly. While the internal clock had changed automatically, their personal heating schedules continued to operate on Greenwich Mean Time. It's a small and largely insignificant bug, but we suspect more than a few adopters were frustrated when they woke up to a freezing home on Sunday morning. After all, this is a device that's supposed to be perceptive -- observing BST should be easy-peasy for a company like Nest.
iOS daylight savings time bug strikes again
Several TUAW readers have reported that iOS 7 features a Daylight Saving Time bug that could cause the Calendar app to show the wrong "current time" line in Day view. The bug was first noticed this weekend here in the UK when British Summer Time officially ended at 2AM Sunday morning. Though iOS 7 devices did indeed roll back the clocks automatically as they were supposed to, when users open the Calendar app and look at Day view the current time line appears one hour after the actual time -- even though it displays the right time. For example, in the image above you'll notice that the red current time line reads 9:18 PM (which is correct), but it appears one hour later than it should (18 minutes past the grey 10PM time line). This isn't the first time Apple has had DST bugs in iOS. Back in 2010 a different bug caused alarms to go off an hour early. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Apple's iPhone / iPod touch daylight saving time woes continue
If a broken clock is right twice a day, Apple's is off twice a year these days -- once each time Daylight Savings Time needs to be calculated in territories that depend on it. iPhone and iPod touch users are reporting on Twitter and the official Apple forums that the Clock app is been demonstrating all kinds of erratic behavior -- regardless of phone model or AT&T / Verizon pedigree -- with some alarms going off early, others late, and plenty of others working perfectly. Amusingly, still others report that DST adjustments occurred in places that don't recognize DST at all: "My iPhone 4 had the wrong time this morning - in Phoenix," reports user M Gnu, "We don't do DST, but iPhone apparently thinks otherwise." Since DST went into effect on Sunday in the US, many didn't notice issues until this morning, but even eagle-eyed iPhone owners could have a nasty surprise as one Engadget reader reports: "My iPhone 3GS changed time correctly yesterday, but for some reason over night it reverted back an hour, thus leaving me an hour late for work." There doesn't seem to be a single easy fix, but affected users report a variety of ideas might work -- restarting the device, changing the Time and Date setting away from Automatic, calling the iPhone with another phone, or turning on and off Airplane Mode. How's your iDevice hanging? Let us know below. %Poll-61642%[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Breakfast Topic: What time do you raid?
Daylight Saving Time is over! Set your clocks back one hour. It's that time again! Daylight saving time is going away on us again. Here's a big reminder to all you folks who deal with daylight saving to set your clocks back one hour. Yay! Free hour! So the question remains -- what time do you raid? Personally, I'm a weekday raider, around 7:30 p.m. my time over on the east coast. We usually raid for a solid two to three hours, depending on the flow of the night, successes and failures, and progression attempts. All in all, it seems to be a good block of time. Are you a weekday raider or a weekend warrior? Early or late? Are you a raider who runs with a team from another time zone or country and has to accommodate some pretty crazy hours? Let's hear about it! %Poll-55398%
PSA: Apple's iPhone may not wake you up on time tomorrow morning (update: Monday)
Apple is warning iPhone users that the daylight savings time glitch that plagued Europe affects US iPhones too, meaning you'll wake up an hour late if you rely on the Clock app built into the device. Though Apple representatives say there's a permanent fix in the works, it's not due until iOS 4.2, so the company suggests you set a new alarm today if you want to rise on time. Since the bug apparently only affects certain repeating alarms, you can create a new one-time alarm (i.e. with the repeat option set to "never") instead, and the iPhone clock will take care of the rest. Don't be the gal or guy blaming your tardiness on failed technology, folks, when it's this easy to be able to point the finger at traffic, family, or spontaneous bouts of dance fever instead. Update: Did we say tomorrow morning? It's actually Monday when the bug will strike, meaning you'll have to deal with Daylight Savings related hijinx two days in a row. Good luck getting to work on time. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
iPhone DST bug causing alarms to fail across Europe (updated)
An iPhone bug already seen when Australia switched between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time a few weeks ago has now hit Europe. Twitter just lit up with reports of recurring iPhone alarms going off an hour later than usual. So even though the iOS clock changed correctly over the weekend, the alarm did not. Thing is, according to a ZDNet Australia report from more than three weeks ago, Apple acknowledged the bug with a promise to fix it with a software update. So why wasn't it rolled out in time to avoid this mess in Europe? Let's see if Apple fixes it before North America makes the switch on November 7th, otherwise, you've been warned. Update: Deleting and re-adding the alarms will NOT fix the issue. We've now tested a number of scenarios under iOS 4.1 on European iPhone 4 and 3GS devices for ourselves. The bug (demoed on video after the break by Roman) appears when using a repeating alarm for anything other than "every day." So for example, your alarm will go off an hour late if it's set for "weekdays," or "weekends," or every "Monday." The following alarms are not affected by the bug: An alarm that doesn't repeat (repeat set to "never") An alarm set to repeat "every day" You can test yourself by creating a repeating alarm (but not every day) to go off one minute in the future and 59 minutes in the past. Update 2: Some US readers are now waking up to alarms reportedly going off an hour early. [Thanks, David O. and Matthieu Di B.]
iOS alarms broken for New Zealand users after Daylight Saving
We just started Daylight Saving Time in New Zealand yesterday. Since then, many iOS users here have experienced what's probably one of the weirdest bugs I've ever seen: our alarms are now going off an hour early. My iPhone's alarm woke me up at 5:50 in the morning today instead of 6:50, and it turns out I'm not the only one. In the iPhone's built-in Clock app, setting a recurring alarm will cause it to trigger an hour early every time if you're running iOS 4.1, iTunes 10.0.1, and live in a Southern Hemisphere country that's just gone over to Daylight Saving Time (which, for now at least, just means New Zealand). It's also been affecting US users in Indiana since late June because of the weird time zone situation in that state. For some reason, non-recurring alarms aren't affected; so far, changing recurring alarms to non-recurring is the only thing that's fixed the problem. Standard Time doesn't start in the US until November 7, which is right around the time that iOS 4.2 is supposed to come out. Since this bug is probably something that can only be addressed by an iOS update, and since a relatively small portion of iOS users will be affected, I won't be surprised at all if Apple sits on this bug until November and bundles the fix into iOS 4.2. Meanwhile, Australian iOS users in territories that observe DST will have something to look forward to: unless this gets fixed before October 3rd, their alarms are going to start going off an hour earlier, too.
Ora ilLegale clock tips to compensate for daylight savings time
Genius. Pure genius. In order to save us all from smashing buttons on our digital alarm clocks or stripping the gears in our analog ones, designer Denis Guidone has dreamed up this masterpiece. The Ora ilLegale clock boasts no numbers and is obviously missing a significant portion of its base; these two factoids enable it to become the easiest clock to adjust to changes in daylight savings... well, ever. The best part? We're told that it'll actually hit production soon, though there's no indiciation of just how pricey it'll be. Not like it matters -- you're totally buying one, and you know it.[Via Coolest-Gadgets]
School's failure to change clocks lands student 12-day stint in juvie
So even though the world didn't come to an end due to the earlier daylight-savings time changeover this year, one 15-year resident of Hempfield, PA certainly got burned by the supposed energy-conserving maneuver, as his school's inability or failure to change all of their clocks earned him 12 days in juvenile detention on charges of making a bomb threat. The story goes like this: For some reason sophomore Cody Webb decided to call the Hempfield Area High School delay hotline in the early morning hours of March 11 -- very close to the time we "sprang ahead" -- and claims to have hung up immediately after listening to the obvious "no delay" message. Well unfortunately for him, someone else called Hempfield that morning with a bomb threat, and because the phone system erroneously time-stamped that call as coming just minutes after Cody's, school and local law enforcement geniuses decided that they must have been made by the same person (despite one call showing up on caller ID while the other was blocked). Long story short, it took Cody's parents and their lawyer 12 days to get the honors student out of juvie; and while you would expect a public apology from everyone involved in this blunder after the facts came out, school officials are trying to pass the blame along to the state, which seems more concerned with covering its proverbial legal ass than making things right for the now-home-schooled Cody. Lessons learned? 1. Our schools need to devote more resources to teaching the nuances of telling time, and 2. Teenagers are clearly better off partying and causing mischief on a Saturday night than sitting at home on the phone.[Via Slashdot, photo courtesy of S.C. Spangler/Tribune-Review]
Daylight Saving Time update roundup!
Do DST Rule Change Blues have you down? Well buck up, kiddo -- we've got all (well, most) of the software patches you need to get the smartphone of your choice back into tip-top time-keeping shape right here. Though the changes -- which shift and lengthen the number of weeks we're pushed forward an hour -- should generally make us all happier, better, and more peaceful people, our phones stand to get a little confused about the situation without an update, and surprisingly, manufacturers seem to be doing a decent job in making sure those updates are available. As you find more, please add them in comments and we'll get 'em into the master list![Thanks to everyone who sent this in]Read - Windows MobileRead - BlackBerryRead - Palm OS
Treo 700w daylight savings time bug?
Nope, this ain't no April Fool's joke, people, this is the real deal: when everybody's clocks skip forward an hour for Daylight Savings Time this year (at 2:00AM on the first Sunday in April -- i.e. early tomorrow morning), your Treo 700w's calendar appointments may not. Like putting your WinMo phone in travel mode to another time zone, apparently a bug in the 700w may cause your appointments to time-shift back one hour -- so your noon appointment will stay put, so to speak, at 11:00AM. Palm's got some workarounds on their site so you shouldn't be too put out, so make sure you sort it out soon before Monday morning when you're an hour early to all your meetings. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if America would just get rid of DST -- Arizona, Hawaii, and portions of Indiana excepted, of course.[Via TreoCentral]
