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Comment by theDoug | Hacker News Reader

The areas Apple runs to add and improve (AR, 3D face emojis, lotta camera depth work) keep landing in stark contrast to basics like this for me.

I'm still waiting, for almost a decade now, to have two (or more) countdown timers run simultaneously without a 3rd party app. Cooking two items at once continues to fall behind on the Cupertino priority list to tracking dozens of World Clocks to the second.

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I usually just do, hey Siri, set alarm to x.

Then you can have as many alarms keeping track of your cooking as you want without touching your phone with your foodsy fingers.

If Siri understands you that is.

I agree with your point though, it’s kind of silly to focus on face emojis instead of letting two timers run simultaneously.

But then the clock app is littered with old alarms, like it's just beyond them to create a one time alarm that's deleted after it's done.

Me: "Siri create a one time alarm for 30 minutes" Siri: "The alarm is set for 1:05 AM" ...

It was 12:11AM at the time, seems it misinterpreted asking for a one time alarm as 1 o'clock and added five minutes to it.

"Delete all of my alarms"

I have to say this regularly to clean up the list. There's no other way to do this at once.

But I have a recurring alarm to wake me up each morning Mon-Thu, there is no way to say delete all alarms except the one I want to keep.

You could use the Bedtime as alarm clock. You can set it to specific days. Works well in my experience.

Or Apple could just fix the problem.

In the meantime I love my echo for timers. It just works.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t fix it. But using a workaround until they do is probably not a bad idea. I wouldn’t hold my breath for a quick fix seeing how this is less than ideal for 10 years already.

You can say "delete my inactive alarms" and Siri will not delete your recurring alarm.

By default, Android doesn't seem to keep my verbal alarms around. I like that.

Or "Hey Siri, directions to the nearest McDonald's." Then Siri responds, "Which local business? Tap the one you want."

I assume Apple sees the need to visit the App Store as a feature. I don't think this is going to change.

Operating systems have traditionally included the bare minimum to cover many popular use cases, but the included applications are rarely best of breed. TextEdit.app/Notepad.exe are lousy text editors, Calculator.app/Calc.exe are lousy calculators, and Chess.app/Winmine.exe are lousy computer games.

I've personally never needed two timers at once, and I can name a dozen other "basics" for me that I'm sure wouldn't be in your list. We like to complain when Apple doesn't include a feature (it's so basic!), and we also complain when Apple does (they're killing indie developers!). I think this is a good one for a third-party app. Unlike, say, keyboards, there's no real benefit I can see to this coming from Apple.

Absolutely; these are exhibition pieces, demo material. Apple even distributes (distributed?) TextEdit as sample code for the Cocoa text system. Chess too, as I recall.

The other day I had the opposite problem. I somehow managed to accidentally start two count down timers with the AOSP clock app (default android clock app) on my lineageos phone when trying to start one for timing a cooking thing. The first was not long enough, and I forgot to cancel it before starting the second.

Try "Shortcuts" it's an App (I believe owned by Apple now) that used to be called "Workflow." You'll for sure be able to set up an alarm called "My Second Timer" and set it to ask Siri to toggle the alarm on/off and use a variable for the number of minutes. Then you can use the "scripting" module to calculate current time + however many minutes to set the time to set the alarm when you trigger the event.

Not ideal to need a workaround like that but at least you can run two "timers" without clogging up your alarm settings.

I am still waiting for a way to turn off wifi and bluetooth in the control center.

The decision on making those buttons just disconnect was something I have a very hard time comprehending.

Not the same, but you can use Shortcuts to make a shortcut to turn off wifi completely in the notification centre widget area

I think the average customer doesn't really care. The information about the surrounding wifi APs is (ab)used to speed up the time to get a location fix. Time to location fix is important for the customer.

Apple claims battery life implications are a myth: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-12271

I believe reasoning behind it is that you might end up leaving those switches off and burning through your data plan/wondering why you AirPods no longer work.

I'm assuming you want times that count down instead of up, because otherwise you could use the existing clock app, and use "lap" as a stop for one timer, and a start for a second timer. Try it In analog mode

the idea is to have multiple timers with alarms running simultaneously e.g. if you're cooking dinner and have multiple items that will need attention at different times. the stock iOS clock app only supports one active timer. it's a small thing that'd be very handy and shouldn't be much trouble to implement.

Maybe you know, but Android handles this just fine.

I was Apple-only for probably 7 years but just got a Pixel 2. It's..nice.

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