Very weird to frame this as "lying" and "fake" when it's just using .round() instead of .floor()
To be fair, it would be an extremely boring thing to write about without all the misleading hyperbole.
Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
51–60 of 83 posts
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#52Seems like a bit of a reverse Occam's razor to explain that when the timer is at 0.501 it shows 1 and when its 0.499 it shows 0, is due to a fake secondary timer running with a 500ms offset that is rounded down, instead of just saying "the display is rounded to the nearest whole number".
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#53Round half up is the typical expectation for most people in rounding to the nearest whole value. It isn't displaying a "fake" time, it's rounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding#Round_half_up Edit: Note, Round Half Up != Round half away from zero but that isn't important for this scenario :D
Round half up is a reasonable thing to do with many data types, but it's not something that's typically done with time. Any sensible time handling solution will truncate instead of rounding. Which is not to call apple's timer nonsensical. I agree with the author that it's a nicer experience, but I think it's likely an intentional decision to make the display look better, not a consequence of naive rounding.
> Any sensible time handling solution will truncate instead of rounding.
It's not a "handling of time" its just a display. And its extremely sensible to round to the nearest displayable number instead of rounding up or down, because this minimizes the error in the displayed number. And that's what you are interested in, conveying as accurately as possible what the current time is.
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#54I've never seen something so confusing. I've been (and quite frankly still am) seriously considering this is a big prank that's going over my head. The author even mentions that because time goes up and countdowns go down, rounding down is confusing. Wouldn't the logical conclusion be that you needed to round up? Wouldn't rounding up be the most logical option ANYWAY? If someone counts me down, I expect them to say "…
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Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correctly rounding to the nearest second is exactly the behaviour that I expect from a timer. It's not "fake".
Exactly. Seems like the author is suggesting a timer with 4.9 seconds left should tell you it has 4 seconds left instead of 5. Not sure why anyone would think this. The tidbit about it displaying 1 even if there is 0.01 left is interesting though. Makes sense.
reddit works like this if you get downvoted and only get to post every 10 minutes. it tells you you have to wait 1 more minute, and then a minute later it tells you you have to wait 59 more seconds, very counterintuitive. gets me every time when I have a post typed out and it's putting me on timeout for going against the grain (like e.g. suggesting that mob justice is bad)
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#56I've never seen something so confusing. I've been (and quite frankly still am) seriously considering this is a big prank that's going over my head. The author even mentions that because time goes up and countdowns go down, rounding down is confusing. Wouldn't the logical conclusion be that you needed to round up? Wouldn't rounding up be the most logical option ANYWAY? If someone counts me down, I expect them to say "…
[deleted]
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#57I'm I alone in thinking the new timer app UI sucks? The old app where it used a spinner to set an alerm time and where I had N alarms that I could edit was simple and easy to use.
The new app where hour and minutes are separate text fields and where you can't edit an alarm you can only delete old ones and create new ones is utterly unintuitive to me and much slower and more error prone than the old one. Clicking in the hour or minute section is a much smaller target. Editing sucks. I want to set an alarm for 10:00 and it defaults to showing the current time 09:33 so I click the 09 and type 1000 but it only edits the 09 to 10. The 33 stays and I have to click the other side and enter 00.
To be snarky it's like some UX designer from Google went to Apple. This is not a UX I'd expect from Apple.
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Seems like the author is suggesting a timer with 4.9 seconds left should tell you it has 4 seconds left instead of 5. Not sure why anyone would think this. The tidbit about it displaying 1 even if there is 0.01 left is interesting though. Makes sense.
reddit works like this if you get downvoted and only get to post every 10 minutes. it tells you you have to wait 1 more minute, and then a minute later it tells you you have to wait 59 more seconds, very counterintuitive. gets me every time when I have a post typed out and it's putting me on timeout for going against the grain (like e.g. suggesting that mob justice is bad)
> reddit works like this if you get downvoted and only get to post every 10 minutes.
Oh, so that's why it's telling me to wait... I always wondered that whenever I got into an argument with someone.
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#59Everyone is saying "rounding, duh" but that a bit unfair IMO You should show each integer value second for, ideally, one second (in the case with no display for fractional seconds). So the question is: exactly what rage of time to cover? The poster expected that for second N, it would be: [N,N+1) But Apple seems to do: [N-0.5, N+0.5) I think the Apple behavior makes perfect sense when you are displaying the current t…
Well you have 6 numbers and only 5 seconds to show them in. You could show 0 only when the timer has fully completed. I think either rounding up, or rounding to the closest integer is fine. The authors expectation of always rounding down is the only option I would never expect.
I think people have different expectations for:
"What time is it now?"
vs
"How much time is left?"
Re: Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
#60I'm I alone in thinking the new timer app UI sucks? The old app where it used a spinner to set an alerm time and where I had N alarms that I could edit was simple and easy to use. The new app where hour and minutes are separate text fields and where you can't edit an alarm you can only delete old ones and create new ones is utterly unintuitive to me and much slower and more error prone than the old one. Clicking in t…
I just ask Siri to "set an alarm for...", much less painful.