Emerald Time Support

FAQ

My iPhone™ is only off by 4 seconds; why do I need this silly app?

You don't. But some of us think such an error is insanely huge for a 21st century computer. It's just not right.

It doesn't properly work on the iPad

Please upgrade to version 1.2.1.

The seconds have disappeared!

Tap the seconds window. That cycles between displaying the seconds with tenths, the seconds only and nothing at all. That's convenient if you find the blinking seconds annoying. But it's confusing if you don't know that. Now you do.

The other two right hand side windows show "?".

That means Emerald Time can't contact any servers. Make sure you really have internet connectivity. Be patient. Or tap the lights to force another retry. Sometimes it takes several tries.

All the servers in the list are red or gray like the picture above.

See previous answer.

What do the colors mean?

• Red: unable to contact the server
• Orange: making the first attempts to contact the server
• Yellow: getting data from the server but not yet enough
• Green: Emerald Time has suficient good data to compute that server's time
• Cyan: same as green but the green one had more consistent statistics
• Gray: that server has not been contacted at all

What are those funny server names?

Emerald Time uses servers from the NTP Pool Project. The addresses you see are not real; they just redirect (more or less at random) to the real servers. You will not get the same real server each time. This is good.

Emerald Time seems to be very slow in the UK.

Emerald Time was using the wrong server names for the UK. Fixed in version 1.2.

But what if I somehow get connected to a really remote server on another continent?

It will probably work just fine. An NTP server half way around the world seems to be able to supply a more accurate time than the cell phone tower a mile away. But Emerald Time picks the best of the servers it tries anyway, so it's not likely that a really distant one will be picked.

My iPhone 3G has GPS built in. Doesn't that have a really accurate clock?

It sure does, and it's accurate to a few nanoseconds (if it wasn't it wouldn't work). In fact, GPS receivers are very often used as the reference standard for NTP servers. But the iPhone does not use the GPS time information. And of course, the older phones and the iPod® touch don't have GPS.

I ran Emerald Time and it got a good time setting. But when I quit the iPhone's clock went back to what it was before.

Yeah, that's how it works. Setting the system clock requires root privileges which are granted only to Apple's own apps. This is probably a good thing in general; you really don't want random programs messing with your system.

What's that misshaped "o" at the head of the middle column?

That's the Greek letter sigma (σ) which is conventionally used to represent a standard deviation.

What's the red question mark in the status line?

That's just to show that the iPhone's time is not to be trusted .

Bugs

essupport@emeraldsequoia.com

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Release Notes