We wouldn’t think many aspects of iPhone user interface design could be more straightforward than the time picker in the alarm function – but it appears we would be wrong …
Macworld spotted a tweet by someone who found that neither hours nor minutes are loops, but are instead very long lists with a definite end.
When the hour passes 23 (or 11pm if you’re that way inclined) and returns to 00, it isn’t actually returning to zero, it’s moving on to a new one. Similarly, when the minutes pass from 59 to zero.
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, 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.
The site speculates that this just may be a more efficient way to program it, but if anyone has any better theories, please let us know in the comments!
This isn’t the end of the discoveries waiting to be made in Apple’s pickers. The question of how far into the future the calendar goes currently lies beyond the limits of present-day scientific knowledge. Macworld’s David Price went as far as the year 6888, while a Redditor went as far as 10005, but neither reached the end.
Is there an end? Is there a final hidden calendar entry? The world awaits a fearless explorer to reveal the truth.
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