I've been asking a lot of people lately whether or not they like the colored icons in the system menu bar. The results have been about 50/50. Half of the people like them, and half would prefer black & white, to match the standard apple scheme. In fact, I even did a poll on MacUpdate, and the results (at the time of this writing) are exactly 50/50. Because of this, I'm offering a new option, in the app's preferences, of the next version to use colored or black & white icons.
Another thing that many people have been asking for, is for me to disable the 'kill alarm' feature. I realize that many people like to continue listening to music after they get up, and as they get ready to leave in the morning. However... the kill alarm feature is a safety feature for those times when you forget to disable an alarm, and it goes off in the morning and you're not there. Even those people who like to listen to music in the morning will need this safety net occasionally. To compromise, I'm allowing the kill alarm duration to be turned all the way up to 90 minutes in the next version. I'm hoping this will be plenty of time to get up and get ready in the morning. If anyone is listening to music for hours on end after they get up, they should probably be listening to iTunes anyway.
I also plan on adding title's to stopwatch windows.
And I've been contacted by people who are working on a Norwegian and Japanese localization. Haven't heard from them in a few days, but I'm hoping to still have these localizations soon.
And one more thing:
The other morning, my alarm went off, and I decided I wanted to sleep in for another hour or so. Not exactly a normal snooze duration, but I proceeded to hit the plus button (to increase the snooze duration) 50 times before I got it to where I wanted it. When I layed back down, I thought to myself - that was overly difficult. So in the next version I'm going to add support for a key modifier. If you hold down option and press the plus/minus buttons it will increase/decrease your snooze duration in increments of 5 minutes.
Let me know what you think. You can post comments to this blog even if you don't have a blogger account.
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29 comments:
I personally like the coloured menu-bar icons. But it's good that you're adding the option anyway. :)
Hi Robbie,
Those features sound great. One feature I would really like is the ability to set the sound output device, for example to the "Build-in Output" instead of Alarm Clock defaulting to the default device, which could be my bluetooth headphones if I was using them before I went to bed.
I would also really like to ability to assign a key to stop the alarm, I would prefer space.
You are doing an great job with Alarm Clock, thanks very much.
Cheers
I wonder if this is an open source project? I need to add a simple feature.
I need my timer tell me how many minutes left every 5 min. I'd do it myself for greatful future generations.
Hi there * plz 4give me my bad English! Thanks ***
Alarm Clock 2.3.5
The Stop-Watch Feature doesn't work in the German Localisation: no window pop's up when I choose "New Stopwatch".
I moved the "German.lproj" out of "Alarm Clock"'s Package Folder and now the Stopwatch works.
Hope that helps!
Thank You
Alan
Thanks alan!
The problem was bigger than just the German localization. I added a panel to the english localization, and spent so much time double-checking my code, I completely forgot to add the panel to the localizations! So, in other words, EVERY non-english localization had that same problem. I've fixed the problem now, and released the updated build as version 2.3.6. You can download it now from my website.
Hi Robbie
Thanks for all your hard work with Alarm Clock. One feature, bacuse of the way things are implemented, you cannot play a streaming radio station, i make a playlist with just one station in it, and set that for the alarm. It accepts the playlist, but unfortunately, when it goes off, nothing happens.
cheers,
bammi
Are you sure "nothing" happens? Because when I do this on my machine, the alarm clock plays the default sound. (beep beep)
I think this is an excellent program but I do have one major issue with it, that I hope you can fix.
At the moment, you offer an option to wake the computer from sleep. However, for users like me who have their screensaver password enabled, this is not enough.
What happens is, the computer wakes up from sleep at the correct alarm-designated time, and the alarm starts playing. It waits for me to enter my screensaver-unlocking password, but if I don't (and I usually can't because I'm still sleeping) then the computer goes back to sleep and the alarm enters snooze mode. This all happens within a period of 10 seconds or something.
You need to:
a) figure out a way to enter my screensaver password, so I can get back to the desktop and the alarm will keep playing
or
b) prevent the computer from going back to sleep after 10 seconds when I don't enter my screensaver password.
It's a pretty serious problem, and I didn't notice it until recently because I usually don't put my computer to "sleep", per se, I just wait for the screen to turn off. Because I had authorized the program to wake me up from sleep, I thought it would do that, but since I have my screensaver password enabled, it just crapped out after 10 seconds, I didn't wake up, and I almost missed work.
I'm working on an iBook G4, Mac OS 10.4.7, if it helps.
Thanks for an otherwise great program.
René,
What you turned on is a Security option. As in, you went into the system preferences, and then the Security option, and turned on a preference to "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver." Because of this, I am unable to bypass the password prompt. If I could, would this option be very secure? My application doesn't store your password, it just uses it to authenticate a helper program once. However, even if my application did store your password, the Operating System does not allow passwords to be entered programmatically. This means that when you turn on this security option, your password must be MANUALLY typed in, on your keyboard, when prompted, or else the Operating System forces your computer to go back to sleep. Sorry for the bad news, but I don't think a 3rd party application will be able to bypass this security option. On the other hand, the good news is that your OS is very secure, and you don't have to worry as much about hackers, virueses, spyware, and all those other things Windows users worry about on a day to day basis. The obvious solution is to turn off the security option. I don't know your situation, so this may or may not be an option for you. If it's not, I apologize, as I may not be able to help you out.
Yeah, okay, I understand that the password has to be manually entered, but is there any way to prevent it from going back to sleep after the 10-second time period has lapsed?
If it would just stay awake for another minute or two, it would be enough for me to wake up and enter my own password manually.
I believe that any keyboard input (and perhaps mouse input) performed by the user during the 10-second time frame prevents the computer from going back to sleep for another ten seconds.
There's no easy way to emulate a super-slow mouse drag or an occasional mouse click or something, is there?
Alternately, I believe the following would be rather easy to implement given that you've already done most of the work for it.
As it functions now, Alarm Clock wakes the computer up only once: at the designated time. If the computer goes to sleep after the alarm has started, then the alarm dies.
So I would suggest an option that if the computer goes to sleep within that 30-minute "Kill Alarm After" time frame, Alarm Clock would automatically re-wake the computer and restart the alarm (preferably at full volume).
Two or three rounds of that would be enough to wake up most people, I think.
Thanks.
I Love your app its so much better then using my cellphone with its anoying ringers to wake up in the morning. But one feature i was trying to get working but couldnt is to have it play a iTunes radio station. It puts the alarm to the default beep rather then playing the station. Maybe im just not settng it up right.
I want resizable alarm window, because in my display its quite small...
Robbie, what are your plans for fixing the radio station support?
Jai !
One feature i would like is that i can set the title for the Alarm, like reminder ... for example, i will set one alarm to 5 o'clock and the title show me "hey ! go for the kids ! ! ! " :-P
Its a great app, thanks so much !
bye
It would be nice to have an associated title for the alarms. Also, could you add a Countdown feature? I don't mean stopwatch or timer. I mean a countdown to a certain time in the future (i.e. 3 days 2 hours 3 minutes 49 seconds before "My Wedding"). I think that would be really awesome. Thanks!
I wanted to thank you for making Alarm Clock 2, Robbie -- it's really elegant and easy to figure out! Earlier, I was trying "Alarm Clock Pro", and it was just too difficult for me to wrap my head around, iTunes alarms and all.
Alarm Clock 2 is so elegant -- the way it displays a translucent alarm when the music begins, and the timers are *super* handy too. Wish there was a program like this for Windows, I'm using AleJenJes Timer on my PC right now.
Kudos and keep up the tremendously superfantastic work!
I really like your program, it works so much better than any other alarm clock I've used. One feature I'd really like is the ability to disable a repeating alarm for just one day. As in, I normally have to get up at 7 every day of the week, but just for tomorrow I can sleep in. Right now I have to disable the repeating alarm entirely then remember to re-enable it the next day.
Again, thanks for making such a great program and making it available for free.
First I'd like to thank you for such a great app. It would be even greater if the alarms had differents titles that would be displayed while the alarm goes off. Nothing too elegant, something like the timers would do just fine. Again, thanks for the great app!
Robbie,
THIS IS THE GREATEST AP ON MY MAC. As much as for other reasons I wish my computer could in another room, your application has spoiled me with Easy Wake and access to iTunes to the point that it must stay. THANK YOU for coding it and sharing it with all your fans :).
I have a feature suggestion I thought of the other day while using PhotoBooth...what about using the display to simulate a sunrise, like EasyWake with white light? I know it isn't as bright as a lamp, but this time of year when it is hard to adjust to the dark mornings, it would be KILLER to have that little boost. What do you think? Is that hard to code?
René,
You've made some excellent points. As it stands now, if the computer goes to sleep while an alarm is going off, the alarm is automatically snoozed. So it would go off again, and wake up the computer again, in 10 minutes. (Or whatever you have your snooze set to) This is obviously not satisfactory in your situation. I'll see what I can do about this.
Andy,
I haven't made any progress on the radio station support for a while now, because I've been hired by a new Mac software company to help create a new application. Sorry. But I do think you'll like the app when it comes out.
I've had several requests for titles on alarms. I've discussed alarm names several times on my blog. See this: https://beta.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22806069&postID=115047652560887139
However, many people have in mind something simpler. Just a quick little title. This is a rather intriguing thought, and I'll be giving it some thought. I have to take into consideration the following:
A) Is this feature useful to at least 80% of users?
B) Will this feature overly complicate the interface, or confuse users?
C) Can such a feature make the application unreliable in any manner?
D) Can this complicate the perceived use for the application?
I'm not sure about A. I think I could find a simple interface to solve B and C. However, I'm always a little stumped with D. I still don't want people to use the alarm clock as a replacement for iCal. Perhaps if I dive farther into the interface changes required I can solve this one too. I will certainly keep this feature request in the back of my head.
Thank you to everyone who has been requesting features by the way. Keep 'em coming! We're going to make this alarm clock even better!
Hi Robert,
You asked about using the display to simulate a sunrise. Is this difficult?
In a word, maybe. First I'd have to dive into some full-screen coding. This alone isn't too bad. However, I'd also have to find a way to disable the screensaver, and turn off the energy saver option that turns off your monitor. Hmm... I've been meaning to do those last 2 anyways. Does anybody know some AppleScript to do these things???
Hi -
The one feature I can't find anywhere is integration with Eye TV - so that I can be woken up by a radio or tv station gently fading up via EyeTV on my Mac.
Great App - as everyone agrees!
Is it possible to have multiple snoozes? The electronic alarm I'm currentlyusing allows me to "snooze" it up to 3 times. Can it be done with Alarm Clock?
Also, when my computer awakes, the screen is incredibly bright - even with a near black desktop. 5:30am is very dark here - can there be an option to "dim screen upon wake"? That way it could at least be toned down rather than being blasted by light. The birghtness is such a contrast to the Easy Wake of music slowly fading in.
Hi luxborealis,
Yes, you can hit snooze as many times as you like. (I hit snooze about 8 times this morning...)
And that's a good idea about dimming the screen. I'll look into it.
Would be great, if you could allow alarms without any sound (or just for some seconds), because I just want to wakeup my iMac to get the NFS ready to write on it from another system (which isn't possible to send a Wake-on-LAN-signal).
Interesting article you got here. I'd like to read a bit more concerning this matter. The only thing I would like to see on that blog is some pictures of some devices.
Nickolas Watcerson
Phone jammers
We use your alarm clock to make all our timings throughout the day. We currently have about 30 in one day. I'd love it if you could also name each alarm as you can the timers.
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