The time picker on the iPhone's alarm app isn't circular, it's just a long list

https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1n5lztw/the_time_picker_on_the_iphones_alarm_app_isnt/

93•oidar•2h ago

Comments

kadoban•1h ago

That's just a solid hack to avoid having to have a custom widget. Well done, random engineer.

egorfine•1h ago

And we didn't find out for over a decade.

Speaking of practical solutions, right?

650•1h ago

Technically aren't the CPU cycles required to make it circular (via logic) a tradeoff to a list of 500 numbers stored statically (small size)

SoftTalker•1h ago

Yep something that years ago would have been worth the memory savings but now memory is cheap and even the CPU cycles are a non-issue: it's about what was faster for the developer to implement.

whateveracct•1h ago

Feels like an API that was backed by lazy cons lists like Haskell's would give you actual circular lists for free here.

joecool1029•1h ago

What a good smartphone alarm app looked like over 10 years ago: https://nition.momentstudio.co.nz/2014/08/the-nokia-n9-alarm...

Discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19597253

Kwpolska•50m ago

Google’s Clock app seems to do most of the things: sliders on main screen, circular time picker (though I’m not exactly a fan), and a toast notification with the time until the alarm fires. The only thing missing are the every day/never options.

anotherhue•46m ago

If we perfect the design we'll be out of the job!

ahartmetz•38m ago

A good smartphone, really. Crying shame that Nokia gave up just when they had the best product in a long time.

losvedir•2m ago

The Android clock app is pretty solid and looks something like that.

As a switcher to iPhone earlier this year, so many UI quirks drive me utterly bonkers. Can't stand these slow rotating dials, and for alarms specifically, I miss the confirmation that Android shows you "going off in 12 hours" or whatever, to make sure you didn't get the AM/PM or day of the week wrong.

But mostly, these numeric spinners are just terrible. In the Hilton app I have to put my kids ages all the time and it drives me crazy spinning the stupid little things to set their ages. Sigh.

I don't know how iOS got this reputation as magical and delightful and intuitive. I'm ready to go back to my Pixel, I think.

arjvik•1h ago

If you’re reading this on your iPhone, go to the alarm app, press the + button in the Alarms tab, and try to scroll to the top or bottom of the time picker

stirlo•1h ago

I wonder if this is because the code was just never looked at again after it was written or if it actually survived rewrites?

Back in the day the iPhone was notorious for messing up alarm timezones and failing to activate with DST changes… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-01-03/alarm-failure-leaves-...

yreg•44m ago

This is unrelated to timezones or Clock.app

The limitation comes from the UIPickerView system level UI component. I have a similar "bug" in my app.

busymom0•1h ago

The time picker is implemented using a UIPickerView.

Tutorial for "UIPickerView - Loop the data" involves "simply create a picker view with a large enough number of repeating rows that the user will likely never reach the end".

I guess Apple didn't think OP would reach the end.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26063039/uipickerview-lo...

firesteelrain•19m ago

I think you could fake it by automatically snapping the user back to the middle when they reach the top or bottom. Still not “infinite scroll”

thakoppno•54m ago

Anyone done the tedious work of figuring out the list length?

Just wondering how they determined the length was enough? Was it constrained by a datatype or just an assumption on user behavior?

unsnap_biceps•48m ago

The time selector in a new calendar event is another case where it's a long list, not circular.

eviks•42m ago

If only they took it as a hint that the whole linear-circular design is bad as it removes any predictable fixed points... But no, let's do bad hacks instead

jahnu•24m ago

In case anyone else hasn’t discovered this, you can long press on the digits to bring up keyboard entry.

I hate that I had to find that by accident.

godelski•16m ago

One of the things I find most interesting is that the implementation for the Timer is distant from the Alarm. In the alarm you can roll over on the minute but you can't on the timer. Why these aren't implemented similarly is beyond me. Same with why it isn't circular.

Sounds like junk code that's adding unnecessary complexity.

ayhanfuat•7m ago

Reminded me all the hacks we had to use to emulate loops in Excel formulas. Good times.

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