raccoonsaidthis

Wonderful little application. I have been using it for close to a year and maybe only two or three times something happened and the alarm didn't sound. I haven't been using it in conjunction with iTunes because, as Jerry says, sometimes iTunes does not play well together with other applications. But when Awaken can play my music directly (as promised in 4.1), I will certainly be getting up to music instead of alarm sounds.

Another feature that Jerry says he is working on and I hope he incorporates soon, is the ability to choose an audio output. This would be a fantastic feature for me. My main audio system uses the optical output on my computer. I always turn the main system off at night and switch the sound output to my USB speakers (which turn on with the computer) so that Awaken has speakers to play on. If I could set Awaken to use the USB speakers, I would not have to remember to make the audio switch at night time.

Doesn't really work for me. It just suddenly wakes up my Macbook in the middle of the night, and me at the same time...

i really enjoy the sleep function, i like to fall asleep listening to podcasts, and i like having awaken turn my computer off for me.

it really feels like a Mac App. I love it.

Awaken is a really nice app, but creating a new one-time alarm takes too long. There are some options that are not default, but should be:

1. The playlist should be the same one I selected the last time. This seems to work for the sleep timer, why not for regular alarms?

2. Occurrence: why is "weekly" the default? After the initial setup, how often do you add weekly alarms?

3. What is the most important feature of any alarm? The time it goes off. I can set my old-school table alarm easily for the next day. Ideally, I should be able to enter the time I want to be woken up, and leave the rest as is. Awaken would then ring at the next occurrence of that time, so I wouldn't even need to worry about setting the right date.
Idea: Make the time field the first one, larger than the others. Also, title is a very secondary feature if it's not a weekly timer you're creating. It doesn't need to be the first field.

Just my 2 cents worth, but I think changing these defaults could make Awaken much quicker to use. I'd love to hear your opinions.

@parasight - Thank you very much for your feedback. All three items are great ideas and will be addressed in future updates to Awaken. We are currently busy working on Awaken 4.1 - which may incorporate some of your suggestions. Email our support team at support@embraceware.com anytime with feedback/questions/suggestions. I got your reply on my twitter as well :)

@parasight - You can see that your feedback has been a big part in our latest 4.1 demo video: http://www.flickr.com/photos/embraceware/2530152094/

hey, Jerry.
I just had an idea which might cause you some pain, but:
what about integrating iCal in a way that you can create a holiday-calendar in iCal and a holiday wakeup-timer so you don´t have to set your wake time manually in order not to be kicked out of bed early on that one day off a year?
Let´s say you normally get up at 6am and on holidays you want not to be disturbed before 9. And of course, Awaken would have to realize that it has to select the holiday timer instead of the regular timer the day before.

You CAN set it manually, I know, but why not give some real lazy buds some more lazy quality of life?

@medienhexer - thanks for the iCal idea. I've added it to our feature request list which gets reviewed each time we decide on features for the next release. Contact us at support@embraceware.com at anytime with your features/questions. Our team will respond to you quickly.

I've used Alarm Clock 2 for a year (it was reliable), Aurora for almost a year (it was easier to use), and now Awaken for 10 minutes, and I'm convinced this one is the best! Awaken combines the features I wanted, but were divided among the other 2 alarm programs, into one easy to use and attractive interface.

I've read other comments and I agree that there is room for refining, but at least the dev is here listening, commenting and demonstrating that this is a community driven application.

The bottom line:
Time is money, so your first investment should be in a good alarm clock. And I'm confident that I've made an informed decision that this is the one worth buying.

@oldsystem - thanks for your comments/feedback. We're busy working on Awaken 4.1 which is a huge update with many features and fixes. Like all updates to Awaken it'll be free once it is available. If you have any comments/questions/problems - please email us at support@embraceware.com. Our team is always glad to help.

Awaken 4.1 was in the development and due to all of the new features coming its going to be released as Awaken 5. As with all updates to Awaken it'll be a free update. You can watch the development progress on our Awaken 5 Flickr photoset: http://www.flickr.com/photos/embraceware/sets/72157606129825486/ and Twitter: http://twitter.com/jerrybrace

Can it turn on your mac while it's powered-off? Aurora could do such thing, I thought Awaken could too =S Switching back to Aurora for the time being...

@camifran - we're working on getting Awaken 5 ready in September. It will allow you to power off your Mac and have Awaken power it back on. This is just one of many features coming in Awaken 5 (free update to Awaken 4 users).

Awaken is great, and obviously the developer listens to his users. I had a go through with all the alarm clock apps for mac when i got my new imac, and out of all of them awaken was the easiest to use. But why does it take up ~75 megs of ram when the program (the actual program + the menubar daemon) is open? I've got four gigs, so it's not that big of a deal, but it seems like a little much. Oh well.

I would like to be able to remap the function keys to the apple remote... so say that "menu" would stop the alarm, and play would use the snooze timer... i'm always disoriented when i wake up and always end up hitting the play button more than once, which shuts off the alarm, which means sometimes i don't get up...

Hi Paperdigits - regarding the RAM usage, it should remain around 22-25MB with Awaken 4. Could you tell me if you quit Awaken and relaunch it - does it start at 75MB?

Regarding remote button mapping - this is coming in Awaken 5 :)

FYI: Growl support is coming to Awaken 5. Screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/embraceware/2820197110/