IOS – The time using ‘Set date and time automatically’ differs between OS X and iOS

iosmacostimezone

On my OS X Mavericks my time is always a few minutes (about 4 minutes) ahead of my iOS 7.1.2 iPhone. Both devices are set to set the date and time automatically.

On my Mac I can choose from:

  • Apple Americas/U.S. (time.apple.com.)
  • Apple Asia (time.asia.apple.com.)
  • Apple Europe (time.euro.apple.com.)

but these do not differ more than a second or so.

On my iPhone I can only choose 'Set Automatically'.

Why is there a difference between both times? And which one is 'real'?

Screenshot taken with a few seconds in between (believe me 😉
osx time settings
iphone time settings

Best Answer

The iPhone does not use NTP to synchronize its clock. It uses a feature of the cellular network. I can't tell you why your Mac's clock is off that far, but I suggest you use nl.pool.ntp.org instead of time.euro.apple.com.

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