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Over the weekend many of us in Europe put the clocks back in preparation for the long, cold winter ahead. I’m personally a big fan of the system, as it means I don’t have to get up before dawn (a procedure nobody should have to be subjected to in a rational society), however, detractors of the system say it causes undue confusion and should be scrapped.

Now the good folks at Apple have added to that confusion with a previously unknown bug which means that, although the clock on your iDevice will go back automatically, your alarms won’t. Many Europeans were awoken (or not, as the case may be) to find they had overslept by an hour yesterday morning and this morning. The bug was first discovered a few weeks ago when Australia’s clocks changed – iPhone and iPod Touch users across the country suffered the absolute horror of an extra hour in bed, and now the same terrible fate has befallen the Cupertino faithful in Europe.

Apple will no doubt be scrambling (or “working its butt off”) to fix the problem before American clocks change at the end of the week to save further embarrassment.

Engadget has gone a little further down the rabbit hole and found that the bug only effects certain types of alarms – you will get stung if you use a repeating alarm set to any configuration other than “every day” (i.e. “Weekdays”, “Weekends”, “Every Monday” etc.), however non-repeating alarms are unaffected.

It’s not often I wish I had an iPhone, but on balance I really could have done with an extra hour’s sleep this morning.