Filed under: Audio, Software, iTunes
Aurora
Yesterday we gave you a hardware solution to the eternal problem of wanting to wake up to some of your sweet, sweet tunes, and today we have a software solution. Aurora is a little app (donationware) that is an alarm clock. What's so special about that? Well, it uses playlists from your iTunes library to wake you up.You can set recurring alarms, control the volume, and tell it how many songs to play (you can limit it to 1, or just let it keep playing until you wake up).
Simple and free; aren't Mac developers grand?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Do you like my ZDAR? said 5:46PM on 8-29-2006
I use Awaken, it costs around $8.00, but its worth every penny.
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Gregory Wostrel said 6:12PM on 8-29-2006
or, you can set your iPod to turn on and play a playlist for you with its built-in alarm clock.
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Pixelicious said 6:20PM on 8-29-2006
I use Alarm Clock: http://www.robbiehanson.com/alarmclock/index.html. It does everything I need an alarm clock app to do(for free!), plus has apple remote integration, can wake a computer from sleep , has stopwatch and timer functionality, and the developer has always been great about adding requested features. Also, as an advantage over Aurora, you can set individual songs to wake you up in the morning.
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Curt Kay said 6:43PM on 8-29-2006
HOLY CRAP!!! An alarm that actually works...
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Jason said 6:49PM on 8-29-2006
hey Pixelicious, thanks!
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Tony said 7:05PM on 8-29-2006
My Treo has me covered...but thanks anyway.
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Alex said 7:37PM on 8-29-2006
This is great. I tried awaken, found it a bit much for an alarm. This does everything it did, but doesnt put it all in my face, and its free. Biggest feature for me was apple remote for snooze...and it's supported!
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Daniel D said 7:40PM on 8-29-2006
Thanks for bringing up the subject or alarms, it is certainly a subject that is close to my heart "Curt Kay" is right to react this way I have used too many alarms that quite simply didnt work properly. I ditched my old free alarm for the one "Pixelicious" mentioned though it hides itself up on that top bar thingy rather then the dock which i like and I love that it doesn't not rely on itunes.
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darkphan said 9:15PM on 8-29-2006
I use iCal and a small applescript i wrote that ends up having my skype call my cell phone. I have it set to go off 3-5 times seperated by about 15 minutes. Been using that since Skype-out became free.
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starwxrwx said 11:09PM on 8-29-2006
You can use automator and ical to play any iTunes playlist. I used it for a while, but I am rather fond of my 70s radio alarms BEEP BEEP BEEP
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Steven said 12:17AM on 8-30-2006
I agree with pixelicious on alarm clock choice. I wrote an open source itunes alarm clock for windows, and Alarm Clock 2 has been the closest thing I've found since getting my MBP
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Smaran Dayal said 1:55AM on 8-30-2006
You didn't happen to get this off my Flckr stream, did you? Because I submitted ascreenshot with Aurora installed into the TUAW pool. Let me know if you did.
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Jonathan said 2:25AM on 8-30-2006
I chose Alarm clock over Awaken, it's really nice, expecially with the remote and such and such.
So, when I first read this article, I thought it would be just like the other alarms.
But one thing struck me on their site: (quote)Aurora will wake your Mac (even when shut down)(end quote)
I just want to know, because my Mac is in Dutch, does this mean you can totally turn your Mac off for the night ?(no sleep, no status light on the Macbook, no fans, everything off, no power required) Because if it does, this really is the best alarm clock ever.
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Jonas Witt said 5:21AM on 8-30-2006
(I am the developer of Aurora)
Jonathan: Yes, Aurora will wake your Mac from "everything off". You need to do two things for this to work:
1) Enable "Enable Alarms when Aurora isn't running" in Aurora's preferences (should be on by default)
2) Enable Auto-Login for your Account in the Accounts System Preferences Panel (since Aurora naturally can't do anything if your Mac is stuck at the login prompt)
Then your Mac will power on at the time you set the alarm to, boot up, log you in and start the Aurora Helper Tool (icon in the menu bar, if you didn't disable it), which will then start iTunes playback. Since all of this may take a minute or two, you may want to set the alarm time a few minutes earlier than the time at which you want to wake up.
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