Aug 12, 2004 iRooster

Another fun new feature for iRooster

Occasionally, the inspiration for some random little feature will just strike me. Tonight was one of those nights. The next release of iRooster will add a little bit of flair to the default alarm editor’s list of alarms.

Up until now it’s been sort of hard to differentiate between all of the different playlists in your list. If you have even 10 or 12 playlists, it can be very difficult to scan through and pick out the one you really like. Apple solved this problem in iTunes by introducing easy-to-recognize icons for each type of playlist: Playlist, Library, Smart Playlist, Purchased Music, Party Shuffle, and so on. I decided they had a good thing going there, and followed suit. I think this tiny (one hour) change makes a huge impact on usability, and hopefully won’t clutter things too much (which I see as a cardinal sin of sorts).

iRooster 1.2 is still chugging along quite nicely. I’m working out a few kinks in repeating alarms still, and coming up with a better mechanism for re-authorizing your computer to wake from sleep than the current one.

My intention is that over the next year iRooster will remain the easiest to use alarm clock available for the Mac (a particular title I have always strived towards), and also become the most feature-rich.

There are a ton of different things I still want to add. Some of these are catch-up features with the competition (who will remain unnamed, but you can easily find them), and some haven’t been seen in any alarm clock app on the Mac. It’ll be fun, no question about it, and also pretty challenging. I’m looking forward to it, though.

As always, I love receiving feedback on iRooster either here, through email, or on the forum.