After a long night of work, there is nothing worse than the dreaded sound of an alarm clock going off, loudly letting you know that two hours of sleep goes by faster than you could ever imagine (theory of relativity anyone?). With all of the advances in technology, why is it that my alarm clock doesn’t slowly monitor my awareness and gradually bring me out of a state of rest? While the latter would be nice, I found what I would call alarm nirvana using software that is available today.
Honestly, I was not looking forward to reviewing software that, quite frankly, I didn’t think would be that interesting. Enter Awaken (by EmbraceWare), easily the best alarm clock software for mac and by far superior to the old-and-busted annoying as heck alarm clock you currently own. Awaken combines an innovative set of features and a superb visual interface to create an alarm clock that is actually fun to use on my mac.
Of the many features of awaken, the ones I like the most are:
- Volume + Screen Fade - Because your alarm should not startle you every morning with sheer volume.
- Integration With iTunes Genius Playlists - Wake up to a new “Genius” mix every morning.
- Fully customizable alarm “repeat” settings - Never forget to “unset” your alarm again!
- Awaken automatically wakes up your computer - Let your computer sleep while you sleep, Awaken takes care of the rest.
During my normal everyday use, as shown above, I have no need to ever worry about changing my alarm based on different days of the week, as I have a pretty routine schedule. My accounting class is only on Tuesday and Thursday, which is why Awaken only wakes me up at 8:00 am on those days and 11:00 am on MWF. Pretty intelligent eh?
Of course this application is not quite perfect, although it is pretty dang close. The one feature I would like to see implemented in a future release is the volume + screen fade for the snooze alarm. Hitting snooze will definitely make sure you get up in 10 minutes when your computer plays music at full volume all at once.
All in all, Awaken is easily worth the $12.95 price tag it carries. Trust me, you will never feel good about getting waken up until you try out Awaken. Also included in the pricetag is unlimited lifetime updates (major + minor), what a deal!