How my iPhone made me miss my first flight of the year | Hacker News Reader

How my iPhone made me miss my first flight of the year

helmutgranda.com

79 pointshelmutgranda67 comments

While I do use my mobile's alarm app often, I've always been hesitant to use it as my -only- alarm. There are too many things that could go wrong when compared to a good ol' alarm clock.

When I need to catch those 6am flights, I set multiple alarms on my alarm clock, as well as my phone. Always have a backup.

He did have a backup, but it was another iPhone. Lesson learned I suppose.

This is a lot like data backups. Your data isn't really backed up unless it's on at least 2 different kinds of media, and also somewhere offsite.

Using another iPhone for the alarm is the equivalent of putting keeping your backups in the same server rack and having the data centre burn down.

I hear you, ironically my "backup" was my wife's iPhone and mine is charging at night before trips so that it doesn't run out of juice.

I have had so many problems with alarms and alerts not sounding on a variety of mobile devices, going back many years, that I don't rely on them for anything important. Hotel wake-up call service has always been my backup when traveling.

So true, I guess that is why there are still 800/900 number services that will perform the wake up call in 2011.

http://www.wakeupservice.com/ http://www.wakemeup.com/ etc...

Excellent link. at $2 a call is well worth it.

Why not use twilio and create an alarm at fraction of the cost? I've been meaning to try them out, maybe i`ll write the script when I get some time.

There are ten times as many issues that can go wrong with twillio compared to your iphone alarm clock.

If you have a landline then there's a chance that your telephone exchange has an automatic wake-up call service. You just dial something like * 55*HHMM# and it calls you back at HH:MM.

I've had hotel wake up calls NOT happen. For really-must-wake-up-on-time situations, you need to diversify: phone + hotel + a tiny clock.

I wonder if this is a bug in general? Hotel wakeup calls are done by automated services these days, atleast for every hotel I've stayed in for the last 10 years.

If you think hotel wakeup calls are unreliable and they all use the same wakeup call software then the problem may be in the code.

You can use google calendar to send you an SMS message at a specific date/time, assuming you're willing to trust that level of functionality of your phone.

It may be because I write (sometimes buggy) code for a living, but I always expect my iPhone alarm to fail. It never has, but the idea of having a second iPhone alarm as a backup is laughable.

Once is a fluke, but twice is a pattern:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/11/01/iphone-alarm-bug-wake...

Apple is going to have to restore faith in the clock app like Google needs to restore faith in Android's SMS app.

What is wrong with Android's SMS app? I don't want to start another Google VS Apple thread, I honestly haven't noticed anything.

Valid question. There is a bug in the Android SMS app that sends your text to unintended recipients. See:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/31/android-still-has-horribl...

http://www.bgr.com/2010/12/31/android-bug-that-sends-sms-mes...

Interesting. I get mail addressed to people with GMail addresses that are similar to mine (gaustin vs. g.austin). I sometimes wonder if other people get emails addressed to me...

Don't worry: both these addresses are yours! See the first item in this help page:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10313...

It could be because G. Austin is a fairly common first initial and last name. I'm pwelch@gmail.com and every damn P. Welch in the world thinks they have my email address.

Not what the OP was complaining about but the big issue I've run into is that large threads bring it to an absolute crawl. Get over a couple of hundred messages in a thread and it gets slow; at around 800 or so it'd take several seconds to load a thread and would cause the phone to hang entirely on occasion. This is on a G2, so it's not like the hardware's underpowered.

The only thing I can figure is that it loads the entire thread into memory when it's opened rather than just displaying what's visible. Fairly annoying either way.

Does anyone have a theory to explain the bug [1]?

[1] Any non-recurring iPhone alarm between January 1 and 3 will not go off

That's weird, because my alarm went off this morning at 5:30 AM and was non-recurring. Does the bug afflict only a particular software version? I'm on 4.1 on an iPhone 4.

I haven't seen any official report from Apple, but if you follow the thread link below you can see most people report 4.2.1

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2702635

My phone, 4.2.1, woke me up at 06:53 with a non-recurring alarm this morning. The alarm was set after 00:01 on Jan 1st.

A backup that uses the same mechanism is worse than no backup at all, since it gives you a false sense of security.

Not really, since iPhones can run out of batteries, one could get turned off reflexively, they could break down during the night, etc. There are plenty of reasons to use two iPhone alarms over one that do add security.

It was an aphorism, but I'll grant you that.

But a backup that would take the same effort (a $10 alarm clock) using entirely different hardware and software would be significantly more robust than just using another iphone.

The 747 has two sets of controls and four completely redundant hydraulic systems for the control surfaces, rather than two controls for a common hydraulic system. In the cockpit it looks the same, but the backend is far safer.

Two iphones share all their software and hardware. Any bug in either would affect both. Additionally, they're both connected to the internet. If they both get a SMS of death, or if AT&T's NTP server decides to tell everything that connects to it that it's January 1st, 1970, 12:00AM, or if someone with a warrant tells them to remotely shut down both phones, etc etc etc. In contrast, the only thing I can think that would take out both a cell phone and a clock radio would be an EMP, or an explosion in the same room.

> In contrast, the only thing I can think that would take out both a cell phone and a clock radio would be an EMP, or an explosion in the same room.

Perhaps more likely: the phone is close to discharged and a blackout happens. Both devices run out of power before morning.

Of course your point still stands.

Maybe that's the reason my wife's new WakeMate (she got it yesterday) didn't wake her up this morning either? She's like "this thing sucks!" but maybe it's Apple's fault then?

No, IIUC, the WakeMate app's got its own alarm. This only applies to Apple's built-in clock.

Apple support discussion:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2702635

My son has type one diabetes and is on an insulin pump. Because of this I have to check his blood sugar levels every two hours at night. I rely heavily on my iPhone 4 alarm. Last night went to bed with all my alarms set as usual. None of them went off. I woke up at 8 am in a panic not knowing what I'd find in my sons room. Thankfully he hadn't gone low in the night and died. Instead he was extremely high, which is also bad but not fatal in the short term. But still carries health problems.

My first thought was how irresponsible it is to rely on a consumer gadget for something life critical. But then I wondered, is there is any such thing as mission critical alarm clock that this person could find and afford? Can the average layperseon be expected to understand how various gadgets are prone to fail at such simple tasks? We rely on so many non-industrial grade things to not incidentally kill us: shoes, doorknobs, bubblegum, faucets, etc. Maybe it's reasonable to think of a virtual alarm clock in the same way, especially on a device that tries so hard to look and feel like an elementary object rather than a complex machine.

This is my point. I take responsibility for not waking up when I was supposed to but from different items listed what is a item that you can fully relay on? I agree on setting multiple alarms in my case but do we have to or how about the testimonial listed above, I can't imagine going all my life having to set 2 or more alarms for everything.

I use a windup mechanical alarm clock for critical wakeups. I've had batteries fail on battery clocks, and the power go out on plugin clocks. The windup ones have never failed me.

Anecdote. A mechanical clock has dozens of moving parts, and is powered by a large, fragile, spring. I wouldn't trust it for anything critical, (which "waking up on time" isn't) but then again, I wouldn't trust any single alarm.

In response to the guy behind you: I did some googling for high-reliability alarm clocks, and didn't find anything relevant. Designing one would be amusing, in the standard vein of engineering humor. (Ha ha, isn't this horribly over-designed.) Redundant power supplies! Integral UPS! Three rad-hard microcontrollers which vote on the correct time! Two displays, in case a LED segment on one fails, and gives you the impression of the wrong time! Costs $5000, and weighs 40 pounds!

Out of curiosity, how many of you depend on an alarm to wake you up? I don't think I've used one in over 2 years.

I would bet most do on a normal day, and nearly all do when they have to wake up at 3:30am after going to sleep at 2am.

All of us with sleep apnea do.

I'm not sure that's true. I have sleep apnea and I've never used an alarm on a daily basis in my entire life. I've only been using a CPAP for about 2 years... but neither before nor after have I ever needed an alarm. I simply go to bed when my body is tired... and I sleep until I'm not tired. It usually means, for me, I sleep from about 9:30 p.m. - 5:00 a.m. and work 7-3...

Prior to using a CPAP I wouldn't expect sleep apnea folks to need an alarm because they'd already be waking up pretty frequently.. after the CPAP machine I'd expect it to be super easy to just go to sleep when tired and wake up when you wake up...

and before you say, "I have to be up at X o clock and if I slept until I was done sleeping I wouldn't be able to do it" .. I call hogwash... If you purposefully go to sleep early a few nights you can control your 'well rested' time until you get it to the right point.. and after using an alarm for a few weeks should be able to remove it and let your body wake you up... as long as you will listen to your body when you are tired.

I think this previous post talks about this type of sleep ( "free running sleep"?)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=673726

Not day-to-day but whenever I have a morning meeting that I might not wake up for or--alas more commonly--an early morning flight. If it's important and especially if it's very early, I set 2 alarms, one of which isn't "roll over and hit off" distance from the bed. I agree with those that don't depend on their phone's alarm for anything that's critical. When traveling I'll always use either the room alarm or the wakeup service if I have to get up early for something important.

I have to say I ditched my daily wake up alarm 10 years ago and I've been much happier since. I used to wake up annoyed every day because of the alarm--It is such a significant difference in life to not wake up grumpy every single day.

Now I only set an alarm if I have a very special early morning appointment.

I think most people do, not needing one is rather unusual, though presumably quite nice.

With the exception of "Can't miss, must catch International Flights to Australia" and one "Stayed out late drinking and have to give a major customer presentation in a strange city in precisely 4 1/2 hours" - I haven't used an alarm in 6 years. There are a lot of people, particularly after you turn 30, that basically wake up after 6 or 7 hours of sleep, and, as long as you went to bed with a personal mandate to be somewhere at a particular time, have relatively little difficulty getting up.

This is very, very, very different from when I was younger, when _every morning_ waking up was like some sleep deprivation torture - it physically hurt to get up, and I would have done everything to get a bit more sleep.

I used to fantasize about how wonderful it would have been to go to sleep in my school classroom, and then just wake up and start working.

And then I went to work at Netscape in 1996, 25% of the people had little sleeping bags and mattresses under their desk - and yes, it was wonderful. :-)

Left to my own devices I would wake up only when I get hungry for lunch.

If a person or alarm doesn't wake me up, I often will not wake up naturally. At all. One time I went to bed at midnight on Friday and didn't wake up until Monday morning at 1 am. Waking up for me feels like coming up from being deep under water in a lake. Sometimes the lake is frozen over: when the alarm is going off I get close to enough to waking be aware but get trapped under the "ice" and can't make the transition fully out of sleep.

Conversely I have great difficulty falling asleep before 3 am. My diurnal cycle isn't just late, it is 100% reversed: daylight makes me sleepy and darkness keeps.me awake.

I had a sleep study and they said I do not have narcolepsy because I took 11 minutes to enter REM sleep and the cutoff for diagnosis is 10 minutes. However, they also expect you to "sleep" between 8pm and 4am for the study. Wtf? I'd like to see the doctors who think that constitues a reasonable time for a study try sleeping at mid afternoon, see if they can sleep normally that far outside their cycle times.