Apple iPhone alarm problems persist worldwide for a third day

Apple iPhone users worldwide are still complaining about malfunctioning alarms, even after Apple said its iPhones alarms would work on Monday. 

Many iPhone owners took to social-media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to sound off on sleeping in, arriving late to work and even missing meetings and planes after recurring alarms set in the iPhone's Clock application failed to go off this morning.

Twitter user @AshleyMGreene wrote "Really iPhone!? Not a good way to start the year off with a phone who's alarm doesn't go off. Good thing my ringer was realllly high this AM."

A tweet from @pattikurtz said "Woke up VERY late this am. Just found out that the iPhone's alarm app is broke!"

To which user @mjbehrendt replied, "Steve just thought you needed more sleep."

A fake Steve Jobs account, @ceoSteveJobs has found a lot of inspiration in the alarm problems, tweeting "Sorry about the iPhone alarm glitch. We had absolutely no way to prepare for 2011" and "Apple Stores will open on a two-hour delay tomorrow to let employees sleep in. This is in no way related to the iPhone alarm clock glitch."

For some users, Monday was the third day in a row of faulty iPhone recurring alarms.

Other users have reported that the alarms work fine, as long as the alarm is manually reset each night and not a recurring alarm.

The problem has not been limited to the iPhone but has also been seen in other Apple products such as the iPod, according to Reuters.

Apple officials were unavailable for comment on Monday.

Carolina Milanesi, a tech analyst at Garnet, said the alarm problems were a bother but not one that would keep people from buying an iPhone.

"Apple certainly needs to fix it as soon as possible, but I doubt this will impact sales or reflect negatively on Apple itself," Milanesi told Reuters.

The alarm problems aren't the first time Apple's fourth-generation iPhone has had widespread functional problems. The first came last July after the iPhone 4 was released and antenna problems were discovered by users and the media.

The antenna problems, which were caused by contact between a user's hand and the iPhone 4's antenna, located in a metal band around the outside of the phone, resulted in Apple calling a press conference at which the company announced it was giving away "bumpers" to prevent signal problems.

Mark Papermaster, Apple's senior vice president of iPhone and iPod hardware engineering, left the company during the height of the antenna problems, which were given the nickname "antennagate."