LONDON (AFP) - – Scores of British iPhone 4 users said they were late for work on Monday after a software bug meant the alarm on the Apple device failed to adjust when the country's clocks changed.
Hundreds of angry comments were posted on microblogging website Twitter about the apparent glitch, which happened even though the rest of the phone's features updated the time automatically.
"Well done Apple -- you've made me decide I need to use a proper alarm clock rather than relying on my iPhone," one user tweeted.
"Stupid iPhone alarm clock went off an hour late. What a great start to the week," said another.
Britain put its clocks back by one hour on Sunday from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time.
There was no immediate response from Apple.
But the tech giant said last month that a software patch was being developed when Australian iPhone users had similar problems -- though their alarms went off an hour early as the country was switching to daylight saving time.
The latest fault can apparently be avoided by using one-off alarms instead of pre-set daily wake-up calls.
The iPhone 4 suffered a turbulent launch after problems with its antenna, while the launch of the white version was recently postponed again until next year.
But Apple has described the iPhone 4 as its most successful product launch ever, with more than three million sold in the first three weeks after its debut.
Apple said last week that it sold 14.1 million iPhones during the latest quarter, up 91 percent from a year ago.
The frustration from the people can be understand as such situation is avoidable. Being late for work may affect many. Millions of dollars can be earned or lost in 1 hour. Impression of the employees who are late for work maybe affected from the boss. To avoid such situation, they can set their alarm using an alarm clock rather than relying on mobile phones. Technology may be at the peak but certainly not totally reliable. Apple should also be partly responsible for such incidents as they can pre-test the device on the phone before launching such application.
ReplyDeleteBoo Weisheng.
I think that after reading this, i feel that it is a little worrying on the way people are over-dependent on technology these days. However, i do understand their frustration as it is often hard to blame technology for their lateness for work to their bosses and that hour lost can be utilised efficiently in the office instead.
ReplyDeleteWhile i think Apple should bear some responsibility in this case because after all, it was their softwares that caused these chaos, people should learn not to be overly-dependent on technology so much that when something goes wrong in their day, they blame everything on it knowing full well that technology isn't always 100% reliable and there are times where things like this happens.
After reading the article, I would have to agree with some of the above comments. We, humans are too dependent on technology. Something like this could have been avoided if people were not too dependent on their phones in the first place.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that nowadays people cannot live without their phone. Some would almost agree that losing a phone is like losing a part of them. A phone is no longer just a phone. It is now a camera, a video recorder, a music player, an organiser, etc.
People should understand that all technology has its flaws, even the iphone. In actual fact, there are reviews online that shows how iphone is flawed but people still buy them. So why in the first place do people still feel the need to use a flawed object?
Both party are at fault in this case.
ReplyDeleteAs a big firm, Macintosh should not be making such minor defect because many people are using their products. However i personally felt that the victims are to blame for their over reliance on iphone 4 and it is understandable that even the best device or software can suffer defects once in the while and thus the people should'nt push all the blame to Macintosh, it just ain't fair, also i feel like they are over reacting.
-michael