What’s the most important iPhone feature? Based on the impact when it goes wrong, there’s a solid argument for the alarm clock. But even now, after countless billions of successful alarm experiences, it turns out that the feature retains the ability to surprise.
Try editing an alarm on your phone. The time field is based on two rolling number pickers, one for hours and another for minutes. These appear to be on an infinite loop: flick your finger upwards on the hour and it’ll speed up past 23 and through to 00, 01 and so on. Likewise flicking down on the minute picker will go past 00 and down through 59, 58 and so on.
It’s circular, right? It just goes round and round.
Wrong.
This weekend an eagle-eyed X user noticed that the alarm time picker isn’t circular at all. It’s a finite list. It just seems infinite because it’s really long.
I tested this out and can confirm the claim. If you’re interested, the hours list starts with an 01 and ends, slightly randomly, with a 16 when using the 24-hour clock and a 4 on the 12-hour clock, while the minutes list runs from 00 to 39 (with many, many full cycles in between). It took me roughly 30 swipes to get from the beginning to the end of each list.
Why did Apple design the picker in this way? It’s probably just more efficient from a programming point of view because the app only has to remember a scripted set of numbers rather than having to perform a looping action. Or maybe Apple was wondering how long it would take someone to get to the end of the list.
Are there any more Easter eggs like this to be discovered in iOS? Probably. For instance, how far into the future does Calendar go? I can confirm it goes as far as the year 6888 (which is a leap year, if you’re interested, and has Christmas falling on a Saturday) and a tireless Redditor once made it to the year 10005; but does it carry on generating new month cards ad infinitum? If I keep scrolling will I eventually spot an entry for “heat death of the universe”? Who knows.
David Price / Foundry
Author: David Price, Editor, Macworld
David has been writing about technology for well over two decades, and got on board the Apple hype train when covering the original iPhone launch in 2007. He is an enthusiastic Apple Watch evangelist and feels that the HomePod is misunderstood.