AlarmsClock

The next cdev was AlarmsClock. I use Remember?, so I didn’t think I would use this one much. Then, when I looked up where SuperClock normally lives, SuperClock and AlarmsClock were alternating ticks, flashing back and forth. I rebooted again, this time choosing the Now Utilities group that I had originally made in the Startup Manager to shut off SuperClock. This meant that none of my necessary INITs like Suitcase II or DiskDoubler loaded, making it easier to work on the Now Utilities alone. Back to AlarmsClock. It flashed a message at me to send in my registration card. Cute. I told it to delete the message and configured the clock to look like I wanted, Geneva 9 point text and no flashing colons. I defined an alarm to remind me to pick up Tonya at work at – she hates it when I’m late. Time flies when you’re having this kind of fun.

The main confusion with the alarms is that it’s not quite clear if you are supposed to set the time and recurrence before or after from the controls. The manual makes it clear that you set the time after naming the alarm, but it would be better if it were obvious. Unfortunately, you have to go into the Control Panel to get it to stop playing the alarm (clicking on the clock merely puts it into Snooze mode). That bothered me until I read about the shortcut Now provided – option-click on the clock and AlarmsClock Control Panel screen comes up. Nice touch, but it would still be convenient to have a shortcut to shut off and disable an alarm without using the Control Panel (though that may not be the point of an alarm). Perhaps command-click on the clock?

SuperClock also provides a timer and some other display features which AlarmsClock doesn’t have. AlarmsClock is a slightly better program, but SuperClock is absolutely free and you can’t beat it for the money. If Now updates AlarmsClock so that the alarms can be easily disabled for the day and clarifies the interface, AlarmsClock will be very nice.