There were stories on the internet and twitter about iPhone alarms failing to go off as they should have, and about how many people overslept when they would have preferred to work.
iPhone alarms failed to work properly twice in the past month according to many iPhone mobile users. The first time round, Apple’s iPhones failed to take daylight saving time into account.
Micro blogging site Twitter was flooded with comments from users whose iPhone alarms had failed them. Apple responded with a statement in which it said the company was aware of the issue and that it was confined to the non recurring alarms set for January 1 and 2, and that it would likely resolve itself after that date.
So those, according to Apple, who had set recurring alarms for those dates would be fine and things would work fine January 3 onwards. Some users did confirm this and said their iPhone alarms were indeed working fine on January 3.
People took potshots at Apple following the complaints on Twitter because the company prides itself its ability to deliver a very good user experience and this image was somewhat hurt by its inability to manage something as basic as an alarm clock.
One thing is for sure, these problems don’t exist on a large scale at all. Most users have successfully set alarms, made calls, connected to the net etc. – the phone has in general worked well.
This isn’t the first time that the iPhone has been a topic of controversy though. Right at the time when the phone was going to be launched, there was a protest about the association between iPhone and AT&T, which was organised by Working Assets. It called to boycott the iPhone because Apple didn’t allow rival carriers to sell the device, which would have resulted in lower tariffs for end users.
Apple replied that AT&T had invested a lot in building a network and that the association between the two companies was justified.
In another controversy, it was reported that when the iPhone was gripped in a certain way, four to five signal bars disappeared from the phone in areas where signal is slightly weak. In a blog post, Apple gave a detailed response about the problem, saying one or more signal bars disappear in almost all phones when they are gripped in a certain way.
Apple pointed out a mistake in the way it displays signal strength in the iPhone saying that in some cases the iPhone displayed more signal bars than were trueApple also offered full refund to customers who were not happy with the iPhone, and happily for Apple not many people returned the phone.