iPhone glitch gets US fanbois up on wrong side of bed

Get your kludgy alarm-bug workaround here

US-based iPhone users who rely on their handset's alarm clock got a rude awakening on Monday unless they took precautions against a glitch that failed to account for a time change that set clocks back one hour over the weekend.

The glitch, introduced in iOS 4, was the biggest assault in recent memory to the it-just-works mantra famously advanced by Apple's marketing machine. It caused recurring weekday alarms for the iPhone to ring one hour late on Monday unless users followed a kludgy set of instructions Apple recommended while a permanent fix is put in place.

The workaround involves deleting all recurring alarms and creating new ones. Users were also advised to create a one-time alarm for Monday morning, although at time of writing that time had come and gone for most of the world's population.

The bug hit UK-based iPhone users last week and also surfaced in September in Australia and New Zealand.

The glitch will be fixed in the forthcoming iOS 4.2, an Apple spokeswoman told CNN. ®