A roundup of clock apps for the iPad

One of the more surprising app omissions from the iPad was the iPhone's Clock app. It's an extremely useful iPhone app, featuring a world clock, alarm, timer, and stopwatch. Why Apple didn't choose to add this app to the iPad is a mystery for the ages, but at least it's opened up the market for some incredible clock apps for the platform. Let's take a look at some of the better clock apps on the App Store:

Night Stand HD (US$4.99, also available in free Lite version) -- This good looking universal app not only gives you a choice of clocks, but you also have a world clock, multiple alarms, and a stopwatch. You can also see limited weather information right on the clock face. Unfortunately, the current lack of background capabilities on the iPad means you'll have to keep this app running in order for those alarms to ring on time, but that will be resolved with iOS 4.2 in November.
Clock Pro HD ($5.99) -- Obsessed with time? This might be the iPad app for you. It features an alarm clock in 18 different styles, iPod music alarms, an analog clock full screen support, a chess clock, a world clock, a stop watch with lap control, nature times (sunrise, sunset, midday, high and low tide) for any location, a sleep timer, an egg timer, a metronome, a countdown clock, and a project clock. Whew! As with Night Stand HD, the app must be open for alarms to work due to the background limitations of iOS 3.2 on the iPad.
Touch LCD - Designer Speaking Clock ($1.99) -- If the jarring sound of alarm bells isn't your cup of tea, how about a universal app that speaks the time and provides spoken alarms? Touch LCD has an elegant LCD theme in five color schemes, and it can speak the time when the screen is touched, every time an alarm sounds, or at a chime interval (i.e., every 15 minutes). Since you'll want to have your clock running for the alarms to work, Touch LCD provides inverted colors and a dimmer to reduce the glare of the clock at night. There's also a stopwatch, world time clock, unlimited alarms, and a countdown timer. You can even set different alarm times for different days of the week and have those alarms repeat.

LCARS Clock for iPad ($0.99) -- Space, the final frontier.... Trek fans are going to love this "24th century alarm clock" with the familiar ST:TNG LCARS look and feel. It uses TNG-style sounds for alarms, provides a timer feature, and also does voice announcements. LCARS Clock now adds the StarDate to a display of the Earth date. This is a clock you'll want to "Engage!" News Clocks ($0.99) -- Do you have a team that is spread all over the globe? If so, you're going to want News Clocks. You can set up to six clocks on a screen, with each clock set to the current time in one of 64,000 cities worldwide. The clocks are set over a world map, which can be set up as a day/night terminator display showing where it's currently light or dark. The color of the label designating a city name on a clock is black if it's currently night there, or white if it's daytime. One other cool feature? It plays the Westminster Chimes. News Clocks is a universal app and will run on any iOS device.

Math Clock ($1.99) -- If a regular clock isn't enough of a challenge for you, or if you're trying to stimulate the brain of your child, why not get Math Clock? It substitutes mathematical equations for the usual hours and minutes. For example, if the hours show 24÷2 and the minutes are displayed as 6 x 7, you know it's 12:42! There are three different levels of difficulty, depending on your math skills, and if those skills are lacking, you can touch an equation to get the actual time. This is a very different clock and a lot of fun. BCD and Binary Clock ($0.99) -- Another clock that is sure to make you think every time you look at it, the BCD and Binary Clock displays the time in BCD (binary-coded decimal) and the seconds in good old binary. A fun clock for programmers, it includes a help window showing how to read the clock (it also displays the numeric time in small numbers below the BCD display). Time's up! If you have a favorite iPad clock app that's not listed here, tell us about it in the comments.
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