iPhone Wants To Hang On To the Old Year

pdclarry writes "Users of the iPhone have noticed that it is showing December 31, 2007, even where it is already the new year. There have been a number of reports confirming the problem: Bug in Clock, Problem with New Year: My Clock — shows wrong year, Worldclock went wrong for "tomorrow" items."

Communication bug with GSM network?

[Baricom (763970)]

That's a pretty egregious bug. One would think that somebody should have caught it in testing.

On the other hand, the clock is set by the phone network, correct? (I don't own an iPhone but my non-iPhone does this, so I feel like this is a safe assumption.) If that's the case, maybe the code to read the year part of the network time has a bug.

I wonder if this means that the 1.1.3 firmware is going to come out sooner, or be delayed. A invalid date could potentially break a lot of functionality.

Re:

[Guido del Confuso (80037)]

It's not really an invalid date problem, but an incorrect conversion problem. If it's like every other Unix system (and there's no reason to believe it's not) the date and time are stored internally as an integer and converted on the fly to whatever format is required for display. However, when comparing two dates, the unconverted date (possibly plus or minus any adjustments for time zones) is used.

Re:

[Reaperducer (871695)]

Like the others, my phone's World Clock function is showing 07/12/31 in Hong Kong and London.

And I guess this is a feature, not a bug, but it shows that the date in my current time zone is "Today." Well, that's not all that helpful if I don't know what today's date is, is it?

Re:

[wdr1 (31310)]

The general time/date/etc. is correct. It seems to manifest in "world clocks" only (at least for me).

Re:Communication bug with GSM network?

[ribond (149811)]

That's a pretty egregious bug. One would think that somebody should have caught it in testing.

They're expecting you to buy a new ipod/iphone/iWhatever each year. Why should the date change? That's the 2007 model!

Confirmed!

[sg3000 (87992)]

I just checked my iPhone, and the world clock says New Delhi is 2007/12/31, rather than 2008/01/01. The regular calendar that handles appointments is unaffected since all my appointments are showing up in 2008 correctly.

I assume that this surprise (not bug) in the world clock is because the iPhone is so cool that we will no longer be advancing years beyond the year 2007. 2007 will be henceforth referred to the "year of our iPhone". Changing from our current B.C./A.D. [wikipedia.org] system to this now A.i.P. calendar system is the real news.

Happy Year 1 A.i.P. everyone!

Re:Confirmed!

[secolactico (519805)]

Happy Year 1 A.i.P. everyone!

Wait... shouldn't it be 2 A.i.P.? I mean, since the year formerly known as 2007 is now 1 A.i.P. not 0 A.i.P. right?

I can already hear the discussions 100 years from now as to when does the next century really start...

Re:Confirmed!

[Ambiguous Coward (205751)]

I'm not so sure...I mean, A.i.P. stands for *After* iPhone, right? So 2007 was *during* the coming of the iPhone. It's sort of like counting from negative to positive. We say ..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ..., rather than ..., -2, -1, 1, 2, ...

This way, 2007 is simply the central point from which you count outwards. Anything prior is negative (clearly, since there was no iPhone...how could anything be *positive* in such a state? It's a wonder we survived those dark ages) and anything after is positive (because we have the iPhone! The time of enlightenment has arrived!)

At least with the iPhone, we're much more likely to witness a second coming...and a third, fourth, fifth, and so on, ad nauseam. Go Apple! :P

-G

Re:

[tverbeek (457094)]

A.i.P. stands for *After* iPhone, right?

No. Just like "A.D." doesn't stand for "After Death" (as I was told in elementary school).

The "A." stands for "Anno", Latin for "Year". "A.iP." stands for "Year of Our iPhone".

Re:

[Ambiguous Coward (205751)]

Ah. I was victim of the same educational offense. It never made sense to me, anyhow, since it would imply a missing gap of 20-30 years, since Before Christ would be before he was born, and After Death would be some time later. Anyhow, I still stand by my reasoning that yes, there *is* a year zero. Otherwise, the math just don't add up none. :P

-G

Re:Confirmed!

[Anomolous Cowturd (190524)]

Programmers everywhere are dreading the unpredictable "second coming bug".

Re:

[mce (509)]

Math-wise there is a year 0 only if your reference point lasts a year. But the birth of Christ didn't take a year, just a few hours (or a single second if you consider that we generally say that someone was born on YYYMMDD at hh:mm, irrespective of labour). Therefore, in Christian/western historical counting there is no - and has never been - a year 0. Year 1 AD starts at the moment of his birth (being the first year after his birth), Year -1 AD stops at that very same momment (being the last year before i

Re:Confirmed!

[aussie_a (778472)]

At least with the iPhone, we're much more likely to witness a second coming...and a third, fourth, fifth, and so on, ad nauseam.

I didn't know the iPhone's vibration function was so strong!

Re:Confirmed!

[The One and Only (691315)]

There are two kinds of people in the world: (1) Those who start their arrays from 1 and (1) Those who start their arrays from 0.

Re:

[The_reformant (777653)]

There are two kinds of people in the world: (1) Those who start their arrays from 1 and (1) Those who start their arrays from 0.

You forgot ("table") Those who use associative arrays

Re:

[mattwarden (699984)]

Unfortunately the iPhone uses 1 digit to store the year in order to save space.

Time to brush off your Usenet calendars...

[argent (18001)]

You know, the ones where September 1993 continued through February 9, 2005.

Not a bug

[CokeBear (16811)]

Its designed only to last until the end of 2007.
Now that it is 2008, you need to buy a new one.

Re:

[Carewolf (581105)]

Sad, but true

Y2K finally hits!!

[elrous0 (869638)]

And they said I was crazy for stockpiling all that food!

Re:Y2K finally hits!!

[rednip (186217)]

Y2K finally hits!!...And they said I was crazy for stockpiling all that food!

If you need to have any more 8 year old food, my fridge is an excellent source.

Re:

[Jugalator (259273)]

And they said I was crazy for stockpiling all that food!

Score: 4 Insightful? It's funny, but come on... Hmm, a call for more meta moderation, I guess. I'll be on my way there.

1.1.3

[gutnor (872759)]

I guess that we now know for sure 1 of the features of the new firmware 1.1.3.
Compatibility with 2008 !

Re:

[attemptedgoalie (634133)]

1.1.3 is already in testing. Nobody uses the date on their phone anyway, so they'll just wait for 1.1.3.1. :-)

Re:

[attemptedgoalie (634133)]

The stuff I've read says that 1.1.3 is going to be fairly substantial.

Supposedly you're going to be able to move icons on the iPhone's "desktop", set icons for favorite websites, etc.

But no, no Flash. Which makes no sense. For the people worried about battery life / CPU power, they could make Flash an opt-in setting.

Re:

[djh101010 (656795)]

The stuff I've read says that 1.1.3 is going to be fairly substantial.

Supposedly you're going to be able to move icons on the iPhone's "desktop", set icons for favorite websites, etc.

Ah, as I can more or less do today with "smbprefs" and "customize".

But no, no Flash. Which makes no sense. For the people worried about battery life / CPU power, they could make Flash an opt-in setting.

No flash, no upgrade, far as I'm concerned. Custom icons were solved months ago by the hacker community. Same with moving icons around on the screen. If that's all they've got for 1.1.3, I'll wait for Flash. Got a source for that info, by the way? I'd love to read it.

Re:

[jaredmauch (633928)]

I for one hope flash never comes to the iPhone. I'm tired of reading everyone beg to have crappy battery life. I appreciate you saying it should be opt out but I suspect most other folks asking for it are not understanding the true impact of their wish on hardware rev 1.

Re:

[djh101010 (656795)]

Then again, it's not like you can just swap the battery when its flat (like every other phone ever made), so I guess your point has a little merit.

Odd, I was never able to find out how to swap out the battery on my Treo 600, which the iPhone replaced for me. I'm thinking that's because it couldn't be, what with there being no batter hatch. That said, there was probably a similar option as we have with the iPhone where I can send it to Apple for 50 or 60 bucks and get it swapped out, or third parties for significantly less. But, I understand, AC's like spreading FUD, or perhaps FUD-spreaders prefer to post as ACs. Either way, you're wrong.

Occam's Razor, people!

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

I'm a little disappointed. No one seems to be considering the possibility that the OTHER clocks are wrong, and the iPhone (er, I mean, and iPhone) is right?

I mean, come on, which is more likely, that some central time authority everyone is syncing to had a glitch, or that an Apple product was in some way imperfect?

Think about it.

The "difficult" clock algorithm...

[gweihir (88907)]

Like this problem has never been solved before...

What kind of incompetents write this software? It is not even that you have to solve this for yourself. Just take a day to research solutions. And then test it. Hint: The tests should include new year, end of February in a leap year. Run this for the next 100 years or so (simulated, of course) and avoid embarassment.

Seriouly, those responsible shoud be fired with a perfomance review that prevents them from ever writing software for others again.

Hey, my phone says 12/31 too!

[rob1980 (941751)]

Oh wait, it's only 830. nm.

iPod Touch screwed up also...

[Aphrika (756248)]

Well, it seemed to be ok, until I go into the clock application and all the dates read 08/01/01.

System settings say 1 January 2008, so I assume it's a display error. At least it rolled over into 2008 though which is what I thought the main article said was the problem. Odd really, as you'd expect such as basic issue to be caught in testing.

Re:

[NateTech (50881)]

Ha. Hey guys, another newbie here thinks companies have time/budget/staff for this thing he calls "testing" again!

Didn't he get the memo? Only enough of this "testing" to be able to say it was done is ever accomplished anymore. Anything beyond that is a waste of resources that could be used getting the next crap-tacular product out the door.

Man I love Slashdot. Always good for a laugh.

Seen this before

[hawk (1151)]

I had a Tandy 102 for taking notes in law school. It actually decremented the year in 1988 . . .

hawk

Bug report entered

[edp (171151)]

I work at Apple, and I entered a bug report. I suspect the problem is merely a display error in World Clock, but, since it is affecting many people, I asked my manager to ensure the right people are notified quickly.

The problem does not seem to affect date displays outside of World Clock. For example, if you go into General settings, then Date & Time, turn off "Set Automatically," set the date to January 1, 2008, and then look at some recent calls in the phone, you will see they have correct dates. At least for me. If somebody observes otherwise, please let me know, and I will add it to the bug report.

Same here

[Samurai Cat! (15315)]

I'm in Atlanta (EST). I just threw up a couple of World Clocks (hadn't bothered with that prior to this), one for Denver, one for Honolulu. Both display the dates as "08/01/01" (nevermind it's still 12/31/07 in both time zones).

Not mine

[tgibbs (83782)]

Switched from Dec 07 to Jan 08 exactly on time.

Not ours either,

[ErikTheRed (162431)]

I checked mine (and my wife's) at about 1AM on Jan 1... they both rolled over just fine. Sounds like our SEP field [wikipedia.org] is working just fine.

Re:

[tgibbs (83782)]

Hmmm.... most other people would be breaking open champagne and kissing a loved one at midnight on New Years Eve.
But iPhone users are staring into their phones... I guess that says it all.

Actually, in the minutes before New Years Eve, most people are looking at their watch, waiting for the precise moment to crack open the champagne.

Like many iPhone owners, I no longer bother to carry a watch.

Read your contract

[DrXym (126579)]

Your 2 year contract only expires when the iPhone says it does.

Re:

[karnal (22275)]

Maybe it's converting to MM/YY/DD.

Re:

[rednip (186217)]

Maybe it's converting to MM/YY/DD.

Nope, just checked, my iPhone is showing "07/12/31" for those cities for whom the new year has arrived. No big deal, I don't use the world clock anyways, I even had to add a couple of cities to it just to check the bug. Personally, I'm much more concerned over the lack of stereo bluetooth.

Re:

[hedwards (940851)]

Probably, my razr does and I'm on the AT&T network, so it should. If I am not mistaken that applies to any GSM phone on the market, regardless of network.

But it is worth noting that AT&T hasn't hit 2008 yet, so if it's getting its date and time from that network, it shouldn't say anything other than 12/31/2007. Or some arrangement of that.

It could also be that Apple has the auto update feature turned off for some reason as well.

Re:

[geekboy642 (799087)]

Those two issues with software/runtime libraries being ported are completely irrelevant to a bug in a display module of a clock built in native code. Don't trust the first Google link you get if you don't understand the topic.

NSLU2

[headbulb (534102)]

I have a little nslu2 I have debian installed on. It runs a ARM processor.

I just check it's time Both date and hwclock are reporting wrong. I have it's clock set to utc.

Interesting bug, I will set the clock tomorrow to see if it happens again.

Re:

[Briareos (21163)]

Both date and hwclock report the right date for me on my NSLU2 running Debian, so something must be majorly wrong on your end.

Also, even if hwclock were to report a bad time why should it concern the date command which just reports the kernel's idea of the current date and time which is keeping its own time? Nevermind getting updated regularly via ntp?

Not that I'd think that the ARM CPUs in the NSLU2 and the iPhone would have the same RTC hardware, since that's not part of the CPU. Also, dates are calculate

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Parent is Myminicity spam. Publish IP, track down in meatspace, burn down house, buttrape mother. Wipe hands on pants, repeat.

Re:

[jacquesm (154384)]

you forgot the hang, drown, quarter and keel-haul bits...

Re:

[Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286)]

Yeah, but its even more confusing than that. 1582 is the date that one of the Popes( Greogory, hence Gregorian Calendar) decreed the calendars change. The protestant heathens refused as they didn't read about the time change in the bible, or int the wittings of martin Luther. So they kept the old Julian system until 1752. So there are dates that did exist in some countries that didn't in others, and there was a disagreement about the date between countries.

As per usual read the wiki Here [wikipedia.org]

After writin

Re:

[osssmkatz (734824)]

That's almost normal.. although early reports said it was "fixed" in Leopard. But on Tiger, the icon wouldn't update. (the actual image file). Pretty minor bug, unrelated to this problem, and if I do say so, I would rather not have my resources consumed with updating an image file.