It was just two months ago that I noted that there was a bug in the iPhone's Clock app that resulted in alarms going off at the wrong time after Daylight Saving Time ended. This past weekend, you may have noticed that the alarm in the Clock app was once again having problems after a significant date event, this time after the shift from 2010 to 2011. As I noticed when my alarm did not go off on Sunday morning (fortunately I was already awake), any nonrepeating alarm simply would not work. Several iPhone J.D. readers wrote me to report similar problems.
Apple told the New York Times that the alarm function is supposed to start working again starting today. That's great to hear, but for the countless people who (like me) depend upon an iPhone as an alarm clock, these two problems within only two months raise doubts about whether the Clock app can be trusted in the future. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball stated (noting the obvious): "the alarm system in iOS is in need of a good code auditing."
I suspect that I'll continue to use the Clock app and give the alarm function one more chance, but the next time that we have a significant date event, you can be sure that I'll set a backup alarm. The problem is guessing when that next event might be. Groundhog Day on February 2? Chinese New Year on February 3? Mardi Gras on March 8? March 13 when Daylight Saving Time starts again? Flag Day on June 14? I might need to set a lot of backup alarms.
