[kennethmac2000]

The iPod 1.2 clock is horrendously implemented. For three reasons, in order of importance:

(i) You can't set it to be 24 hour. It doesn't even show AM or PM, which presumably makes this bad design even for a 12 hour clock fan, but the lack of a 24 hour option seems to me to be yet another example of arrogant US-centric software design.

(ii) Daylight saving time isn't set automatically from the combination of the time zone and date. Come on Apple! How cheap is this!?

(iii) The clock isn't set automatically when you sync with your computer. There are rumours of this facility being available for people using Jaguar and, if that is the case, then it's not such a major issue, but it would still have been nice if it did it under 10.1 as well.

[GORDYmac]

As much as I hate to join "pity parties," I have one:

(iv) Why not show the currently playing song on the clock screen?

We're never satisfied...

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
The iPod 1.2 clock is horrendously implemented. For three reasons, in order of importance:

(i) You can't set it to be 24 hour. It doesn't even show AM or PM, which presumably makes this bad design even for a 12 hour clock fan, but the lack of a 24 hour option seems to me to be yet another example of arrogant US-centric software design.

(ii) Daylight saving time isn't set automatically from the combination of the time zone and date. Come on Apple! How cheap is this!?

(iii) The clock isn't set automatically when you sync with your computer. There are rumours of this facility being available for people using Jaguar and, if that is the case, then it's not such a major issue, but it would still have been nice if it did it under 10.1 as well.

1) I guess it's a bit US-Centric. I'll go with you on that one but stating whether it's AM or PM? If you're looking at the clock and you don't know whether it's day or night you have bigger problems. I never understood that complaint.

2) Yeah, that should be there.

3) Agree again. Maybe in the next version.

[slider]

Um, the clock? I forgot it had a clock, I usually look at my watch or phone or car radio or on the wall or my computer or other computer. Since this is really just an MP3 player, isn't everything else just an extra? It also has no radio, GPS, Palm interface, voice recording, auto-toilet flusher, personal alarm, fork, knife and there is no spoon. Sorry, poking a little fun, but seriously, I only bought this for the MP3, I hate radio (commercials), and things like iCal syncing are an extra, not the reason I personally bought it.

[zurek106]

Originally posted by slider:
Um, the clock? I forgot it had a clock, I usually look at my watch or phone or car radio or on the wall or my computer or other computer. Since this is really just an MP3 player, isn't everything else just an extra? It also has no radio, GPS, Palm interface, voice recording, auto-toilet flusher, personal alarm, fork, knife and there is no spoon. Sorry, poking a little fun, but seriously, I only bought this for the MP3, I hate radio (commercials), and things like iCal syncing are an extra, not the reason I personally bought it.

Spending $500 for an MP3 player, these features better work well and seamlessly. Until apple adds more features I still feel kinda ripped off spending this amount of money for a portable music player!

[slider]

I can understand that, of course I couldn't justify spending $500 on a 5GB, or a 10GB MP3 player, although others felt they had to have it when it came out and felt the price was fair. I feel the ten gigger falls in line, with what I think is right for the price, it's right for me. Well once again what's my point, if you feel spending $500 on a 20GB MP3 player is too much, then maybe it is. If what you need is a clock, calendar, and address book, then perhaps you are using the wrong handheld device. These features are nice to have, but again, not why I bought the iPod.

[Nexus5]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
The iPod 1.2 clock is horrendously implemented. For three reasons, in order of importance:

(i) You can't set it to be 24 hour. It doesn't even show AM or PM, which presumably makes this bad design even for a 12 hour clock fan, but the lack of a 24 hour option seems to me to be yet another example of arrogant US-centric software design.

Yes. It is embarrassing! Instead of coding a crappy game they should better be able to code a 24 hour clock.
Every 10$ digital clock from the drugstore around the corner has this "feature".

nexus5

[phobos]

Sorry kennethmac but where do you live? In a cave so you need to know if it's day or night? Like the other guy who said it first I can't really understand that complaint.
Other complaint are good enough.
I would prefer also if we could see the clock on the top of the screen so you can see the time immedetiatly and not searching on the extras menu

[Evangellydonut]

Originally posted by phobos:
Sorry kennethmac but where do you live? In a cave so you need to know if it's day or night? Like the other guy who said it first I can't really understand that complaint.

Dude, back off! There are plenty of people living in Alaska or other places close to the poles, and they get like 1 hour sun or 1 hour moon depending on the season! shows someone's ignorant!

[phobos]

That was very impolite of me I know but it's a common complaint.If he lives in alaska then o.k but he says he lives in U.K. So I'm not that crazy.
Anyway just to let the conversation roll on the subject and not on another forgive my bad manners.

[SupahCoolX]

I was seriously SHOCKED when I turned on my freshly-updated iPod to find it set to like January 2001 at 8am. It's just a major (but simple) oversight.
The other issues listed don't really bother me, but the non-syncing time really surprised me.

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by Evangellydonut:

Dude, back off! There are plenty of people living in Alaska or other places close to the poles, and they get like 1 hour sun or 1 hour moon depending on the season! shows someone's ignorant!

Again, if you don't know approximately what half of the day you are awake in then you've got bigger problems than missing an AM/PM designation on the iPod. No matter how light it is outside. If you been awake for a few hours and have no clue...well. And if you just wake up are you gonna grab your iPod first and sort thru the menus? I don't think so.

To repeat someone else, this is a music palyer first. Everything else is extra.

This is a silly conversation.

[Evangellydonut]

Originally posted by vmpaul:


Again, if you don't know approximately what half of the day you are awake in then you've got bigger problems than missing an AM/PM designation on the iPod. No matter how light it is outside. If you been awake for a few hours and have no clue...well. And if you just wake up are you gonna grab your iPod first and sort thru the menus? I don't think so.

To repeat someone else, this is a music palyer first. Everything else is extra.

This is a silly conversation.

to continue this silly conversation...
I guess you just haven't had hard classes in college...'cuz of the EE class I've taken, I had to pull 2x all nighters for them (stayed up 49 hours straight)...good thing I don't have to do that too often...but I did have to pull all nighters back-to-back-to-back, and after a while, you'd be surprised how well you can tell between 6:30 am and 6:30 pm...especially if you have to work in the sub-basement of some EE lab where you don't see the light of day...(I only left the lab like 5 times during that 49 hours...all for meal (once was back to my room to do documentation & shower after 36 hours)

Then again, maybe .01% of the population have to pull that kind of crazy schedule, and .01% of population lives in Alaska (or around there), and 1% of the population owns an iPod...8,000,000,000 * 0.0001 * 0.0001 * 0.01 = 0.8 of a person! >_< but it's theoretically possible! (ignoring the fact that electronics are not too likely to function correctly under extreme conditions) (actually, if you you can't really differentiate day & night by the outside light at where you live, it's probably MUCH more likely that you are gonna have a crazy schedule for that reason...)

Back on topic...considering iPod has no speaker of its own yet has an alarm function with the calander, guess it'll have to beep through the headphone...wonder how many people are gonna be pissed off when their iPod didn't vibrate/ring in their pocket when it's "suppose to"
I guess putting in a clock is a start...some Engineer probably spent like 10 minutes to throw it in and thought it was useful for his purpose without a 2nd thought...but since it's now implemented, it'll only improve with the next firmware release!

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by Evangellydonut:

to continue this silly conversation...
I guess you just haven't had hard classes in college...'cuz of the EE class I've taken,

Oh yes I did. All-nighters once a week for my whole senior year. Never back-to-back-to-back though. My sympathies...

Then again, maybe .01% of the population have to pull that kind of crazy schedule, and .01% of population lives in Alaska (or around there), and 1% of the population owns an iPod...8,000,000,000 * 0.0001 * 0.0001 * 0.01 = 0.8 of a person! >_< but it's theoretically possible!

I thnk you made my point.

I'm not trying to be a troll. Just seems we're starting to complain about mouse nuts now.

[elzinat]

it truly seems silly to think of the iPod as a time piece. the clock is only there because calendar features are sort of silly without it--when you open the calendar it defaults the cursor to the current day, and implementing alarms without a clock would be beyond even apple's engineers.
that said, it does seem remarkably unclever that it doesn't auto-synch date and time with your computer. can anyone with X.2/iSynch/iCal tell us whether it synchs time when you synch your calendar?

[johnnygs]

Originally posted by zurek106:


Spending $500 for an MP3 player, these features better work well and seamlessly. Until apple adds more features I still feel kinda ripped off spending this amount of money for a portable music player!

THEN DON'T BUY IT!

*Sheesh people*

There are plenty of feature poor small memory pieces of cr@p out there, get one of them and quitcherbellyakin.

[slider]

One a total aside

You know I just can't seem to pull all nighters, I am completely useless the next day. I mean I can't think, I'd stare at a problem and it would just stare back at me, simple ones too. I also now I girl who got a degree from Harvard at 15 (I know it's hard to believe), but see can function all week with one hour of sleep a night, (no it's true and no she does not have an "S" on her chest). Some people are just wired differently, I really wish I could pull'em.

Anyways, about the clock, I'm sure it's just a firmware fix, perhaps even for iCal. What if for some reason you don't want it to sync the time with your Mac?

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by slider:
One a total aside

You know I just can't seem to pull all nighters, I am completely useless the next day. I mean I can't think, I'd stare at a problem and it would just stare back at me, simple ones too. I also now I girl who got a degree from Harvard at 15 (I know it's hard to believe), but see can function all week with one hour of sleep a night, (no it's true and no she does not have an "S" on her chest). Some people are just wired differently, I really wish I could pull'em.

Anyways, about the clock, I'm sure it's just a firmware fix, perhaps even for iCal. What if for some reason you don't want it to sync the time with your Mac?

Add an item to the Clock menu called 'Sync with computer' with options On and Off.

[DNA man]

Originally posted by phobos:
That was very impolite of me I know but it's a common complaint.If he lives in alaska then o.k but he says he lives in U.K. So I'm not that crazy.
Anyway just to let the conversation roll on the subject and not on another forgive my bad manners.

If you live in Scotland (note Edinburgh is in the EAST of Scotland), in winter, you only have a couple of hours of daylight and if it is really cloudy, well, it's very dark! The further north and east you are in the UK, the shorter that days are in winter.

If you travel a heck of a lot through diffent time zones, knowing AM and PM in your 'home" can be very useful for phoning home etc. Now, wouldn't you use your iPOD a great deal on the road or on the plane? I wish apple would realise there is a whole lot more of the world out there!!! If they add a clock, make it a real clock.

[CubeWannaB]

I've got to add, the clock is also buggy. I updated my iPod right away, and it is now roughly three hours off! Am I the only one whose iPod can't keep good time?

Also, on the 24 hour time issue, this truly is sloppy programming. We've known for a while that the iPod firmware has had formatting commands for both 12 and 24 hour clocks and it appears Apple just didn't bother to use both. I'm also surprised no one has mentioned Military people - they need 24 hour clocks and dammit I think they deserve it!

[slider]

Well, you made me check, my clock is exactly were it should be.

[Raining Down in Texas]

Originally posted by CubeWannaB:
I've got to add, the clock is also buggy. I updated my iPod right away, and it is now roughly three hours off! Am I the only one whose iPod can't keep good time?

I found the same thing this morning - the clock on my iPod was 3 hours and 20 minutes off. I wonder if it loses time when the battery discharges all the way.

[slider]

Perhaps that's it, I have not let my iPod completely discharge, I guess there is no backup battery, I suppose an mp3 player wouldn't need one. I am starting to wonder if this is not the underlying reason for the lack of a more robust clock.

[talisker]

Originally posted by DNA man:


If you live in Scotland (note Edinburgh is in the EAST of Scotland), in winter, you only have a couple of hours of daylight and if it is really cloudy, well, it's very dark! The further north and east you are in the UK, the shorter that days are in winter.

You certainly get more than a couple of hours of daylight in the winter in Edinburgh. On 21 December (the shortest day),sunrise is at 0842, sunset at 1540, so more like 7 hours. Also, it's not true that the further east you are, the shorter the days. The sun will rise and set earlier the further east you are, but the day length will be the same.

[losta]

I didn't buy a clock, I bought a music player so I don't really care much about the clock.

I just wanted to say that being almost anywhere in the UK in the late fall through mid winter that days can be very gray for long periods of time. It often seems like the sun doesn't come up until after 10am.

[Blackcrayon]

That's funny... I just (FINALLY) got my 10gb ipod (new style) in the mail...

After the first sync with iTunes 3, the clock was synchronized on the ipod with my mac.. Just to be sure i then changed my mac time forward an hour.. Synced again.. iPod matched the new time (and date). Fixed my mac, synced, iPod matched the Mac again...

This is iTunes 3 running on 10.2 (dont have iCal or iSync).

[slider]

Well then it has something to do with Jaguar. Cool.

[jaxxe]

Originally posted by Blackcrayon:
After the first sync with iTunes 3, the clock was synchronized on the ipod with my mac.. Just to be sure i then changed my mac time forward an hour.. Synced again.. iPod matched the new time (and date). Fixed my mac, synced, iPod matched the Mac again...

This is iTunes 3 running on 10.2 (dont have iCal or iSync).

That's great to hear actually. I believe we can safely assume that Apple does know about this and plan to do something about it before the release of iCal, considering not everyone will upgrade to Jaguar. I have the distinct feeling that Apple rushed the 1.2 update out the door a wee bit too fast.

[mrchin]

Why feel ripped off? you bought it as an MP3 player. Now new features are added, and don't worry, they'll be fixed in time. Apple could have just waited another 3 months to release 1.2. So you'd still be stuck with no clock. Then, there'd be complaints about it not being available. If you can do better, go right ahead.

[daimoni]

.

[zac4mac]

Just loaded Jag-wire last night - as soon as the iPod connects, it sync's and sets the time correctly(as long as your computer's right). Still has pretty bad battery life, but with as many charging options as there are, I have no problem.

Zack