I Expect Better From Apple

Yesterday, the alarm on my iPhone didn't go off to wake me (and my friend Aaron) up so that we could get up to get on the road after a wedding this weekend. My departure time wasn't so critical, but Aaron had a plane to catch. Luckily, I have an internal alarm that works pretty well. I just thought it was the strangest thing that my alarm didn't sound. I double (and triple) checked it and couldn't find anything wrong with the alarm settings.

Then this morning, Kristi had to get up early to get some work done. She wanted to get up between 3:30 and 4:00, but then her alarm didn't go off. Thanks again to my internal alarm, which woke me up at 4:05 so I could wake her up.

So for those that are counting, that's two alarms missed in two days on two different iPhones, both occurring after the new year rolled over. To me, that points to one thing: software glitch.

Then I found this this morning on AppleInsider:

Apple has confirmed an iOS bug where non-repeating alarms fail to ring on the first few days of the new year, recommending that users set recurring alarms until Jan. 3, when the alarms will resume working properly.

As various time zones entered the new year, reports began cropping up from iOS users whose one-time alarms had stopped functioning after the device's clock had ticked over to January 1, 2011. According to reports, the issue affects devices running the iOS 4.2.1, the latest version of iOS.

Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison responded to the reports by confirming to Macworld that Apple is aware of the problem. "We're aware of an issue related to non repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2," Harrison said. "Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3."

Guess what, Natalie? My wife's alarm didn't work on January 3.

Thanks, btw, Apple for letting everyone know about this before this occurred so that we could, you know, not set our iPhone alarms pointlessly and end up being late over the New Years weekend. If you knew about it ahead of time, you should have let us know that there might be glitch.

I expect this kind of shoddy crap from other companies, Apple, but not from you. I didn't buy a Zune, after all.