On Nov 1, 2018, at 10:41, Dave DeLong <timezones@davedelong.com> wrote:

iOS devices do OTA updates of the tzdb, but they require a device restart to take effect.

Good to know! I was not aware of this. Is there a way to determine which tzdb version a particular iOS device is using? Cheers! |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | | -- Cicero | |----------------------------------------------------------------------|

On Nov 1, 2018, at 10:48, Dave DeLong <fastmail@davedelong.com> wrote:

I’ve never seen this info available to application developers. It’s possible it’s buried somewhere in the legalese screens in the Settings app, but I don’t know for sure.

I’m not seeing it after a quick scan of the legalese, but in Settings->General->Date & Time I am seeing the following notice at the bottom of the screen: *** snip snip*** Updated time zone definitions are available and will be installed the next time iPhone restarts. *** snip snip *** So, when I go set my TZ to Africa/Casablanca, it tells me the time is 15:00 (UTC +0). Now we go power cycle… [… a couple minutes later …] After reboot, the phone now reports the time as 1603 [UTC +1], and the message in Settings->General->Date & Time is gone. Therefore, I conclude that the phone has now loaded the current tzdb. QED. I must say, very elegant work from Apple. Thank you Dave. Very educational! Cheers! |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | | -- Cicero | |----------------------------------------------------------------------|

On Thu 2018-11-01T11:51:24-0700 Deborah Goldsmith hath writ:

Here is the user-facing documentation for this feature:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206986 <https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206986>

Thanks. Paul Eggert just detailed the propagation of 2018g from the git repository to the Ubuntu on his desktop. Is there somewhere an in-depth whitepaper that describes the process by which Apple device time zone information is gathered from the many different local authorities, processed through CLDR, ICU, and finally gets to devices? A document like that would be another useful piece for explaining to bureaucrats why changes of civil time need significant advance notice. I expect it could also serve to let Apple give credit where credit is due for the process of gathering information. That is clearly evident in the tzdb documentation, and completely unclear for vendor-supplied timezone information. -- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m

On 11/1/18 7:41 AM, Dave DeLong wrote:

iOS devices do OTA updates of the tzdb

Android 8.1 added something similar; see <https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/timezone-rules>. Like iOS, the update mechanism requires a device restart, which is a real pain for users; unlike iOS, it requires coordination between Google and OEMs, a pain for the OEMs. Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc. do not require reboots on tzdata updates, though there is a downside: currently-running processes that have loaded some tzdata will  cache it by default, so you may need to restart the processes.

On 11/1/18 2:26 PM, Hicham Boushaba wrote:

- the market share for Oreo 8.1 in Morocco is still below 4%: http://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/morocco...

- it's disabled by default, and the OEMs have to enable it and prepare the Data App. Time only will tell, but I don't think that many OEMs will use this.

All good points, though that URL told me that Oreo has 10% share in Morocco (perhaps October figures recently became available?). For what it's worth, my Android phone (an Essential Phone, so an OEM and not Google directly) is running Android Pie security patch October 5 and still has not been updated. And my work desktop, running Fedora 29 (released October 30), has not been updated either; Red Hat and Fedora tzdata integration and testing is expected to take a minimum of five business days <https://access.redhat.com/articles/1187353> so they are still on their schedule though that schedule is not fast enough for Morocco's hastily-announced change. It appears that Apple, Debian and Ubuntu were the leaders for this update, and that other distributions we've checked are not ready yet. Clearly it would have been better had the Moroccan government had given more notice. Kasraoui's article implies that the government decided to make the change in March, but for political reasons did not announce its decision until Friday. If the government had announced the decision when it was made, a lot more phones and computers would have been updated in time.

We agree that Moroccan government is the one to blame for this mess. But also Google should've thought about a solution to the tzdb update earlier, because even if the government gave a year notice, many models running older versions and abondonned by their OEMs will stay impacted. On Fri, Nov 2, 2018, 02:07 Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu wrote:

On 11/1/18 2:26 PM, Hicham Boushaba wrote:

...

- the market share for Oreo 8.1 in Morocco is still below 4%:

http://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/morocco...

...

- it's disabled by default, and the OEMs have to enable it and prepare the Data App. Time only will tell, but I don't think that many OEMs will use this.

All good points, though that URL told me that Oreo has 10% share in Morocco (perhaps October figures recently became available?). For what it's worth, my Android phone (an Essential Phone, so an OEM and not Google directly) is running Android Pie security patch October 5 and still has not been updated. And my work desktop, running Fedora 29 (released October 30), has not been updated either; Red Hat and Fedora tzdata integration and testing is expected to take a minimum of five business days <https://access.redhat.com/articles/1187353> so they are still on their schedule though that schedule is not fast enough for Morocco's hastily-announced change.

It appears that Apple, Debian and Ubuntu were the leaders for this update, and that other distributions we've checked are not ready yet.

Clearly it would have been better had the Moroccan government had given more notice. Kasraoui's article implies that the government decided to make the change in March, but for political reasons did not announce its decision until Friday. If the government had announced the decision when it was made, a lot more phones and computers would have been updated in time.