14 DAY TRIAL // Robots have been part of human imagination for longer than you think. Though the modern science-fiction literary genre has made them so famous that they've become universal brands, like "Robocop", "Terminator", "Data", "R2-D2" or "iRobot", they have been present in mythology long before.
You have probably seen, or at least heard of some movies that depict the never-ending theme of robots and their rebellion against humans, inferior beings, taking over the world, stuff like that. You'd probably think that after all these movies, they should have been here by now.
But where are they, and why are the utopian visions of 40 years ago strangely similar to the ones we hold today? You know, the ones where robots would do the washing up and we would live in peace and harmony in an electronically connected, global village, thanks to the net.
Richard Barbrook, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Westminster, in a book called Imaginary Futures - From Thinking Machines to the Global Village says that the business and political leaders in the world have continuously fueled our imagination with things to come to distract us from the present.
"In other words, how we're told that the importance of a new technology lies not in what it can do in the here and now, but what the more advanced models might be able to do one day." He also says that much of today's technology, even the peaceful applications, came to be thanks to war.
The Cold War, that is, when the USSR and the United States dedicated huge resources to demonstrating which empire better represented progress and modernity. In those days, "NASA's spaceships [were promising to] evolve into luxurious interplanetary passenger liners, General Electric's nuclear fission reactors would become fusion plants providing limitless energy for all. IBM's computers were prototypes of artificial intelligence."
Do you see any of those ideas materialized around you? Nope. Well, do we really need another war of ambitions to benefit from technical developments? Let's hope not. Alarms and timers have been available on computers since forever, and nearly everything that could be done in such a program has been done. Because an alarm or a timer is something very simple, I generally tend to look at such programs as widgets rather than anything else, and prefer the simple ones that take up as little screen space as possible and don't pester me with useless options. All that having been said, there are exceptions, and some alarm applications simply go all the way, making you love them for their flashy looks and many options. Awaken is one such application, that you will simply want to use, even if you could make do with anything really.
What it does What Awaken does is really simple. It offers alarms, an egg timer as well as a sleep timer, and it can put your Mac into sleep as well as wake it from sleep. Nothing amazing, really, but the devil is in how it does everything and all the extra features. It integrates with iTunes, letting you link playlists and podcasts to alarms, it has a full screen mode, fade in and out both for volume and screen brightness, and it even plays with the Apple Remote.
Working with it The first thing you notice when you launch Awaken is how it looks. The developers have stuck true to the Apple Developer Guidelines and it shows. Everything is where it should be and looks just right. In terms of functionality, Awaken has three main options that you work with: alarms, egg timer, and sleep timer. The are other options and features but they all tie n with the above three in some way.
Alarms are pretty much what you expect them to be. You specify a time and date and tell the program what you want it to do when the alarm triggers. As expected, Awaken knows about recurring alarms, and handles them well. It also has quite a few options when it comes to what happens when the alarm triggers. Beside an alarm sound, and message, you can also choose to play music or podcasts from iTunes, and last but not least, launch an item. This item can be anything, either folder file or application, but you are limited to just one item. Despite this limitation, you could use it to trigger a script that does multiple things, so there is a lot of potential freedom here.
The egg timer option is a simple countdown from a time you specify. Once activated, the window will resize and display the countdown in the area where the alarms normally reside. Not much to say here except that the timer display will pretty much kill the window, leaving you only able to interact with the program through the menus. Though you can access the create, edit, and delete alarms options, you won't really be able to see what alarms you have selected properly. Moreover, the timer cannot be paused or temporarily hidden in any way, and if you want to get to the alarms, you only choice is to cancel it.
Last but not least, the sleep timer lets you enjoy media from your iTunes library for a limited amount of time, before putting the computer to sleep. While the iTunes integration is solid, the timer is a bit of a bother. It can really be a pain if you are say halfway through a podcast and the timer kicks in sleeping the computer.
All the love This program, despite being simple has lots of great features. These are what really set it apart from all the others, which could be argued to be far more pragmatic in approach.
First up is the iTunes integration. Not only can Awaken talk to iTunes to tell it to start playing music, but it can also go for movies, podcasts and TV shows. When it does play music, it will automatically fetch the information on the track and display it. This includes name, album art and rating.
The Full screen mode is another great thing about Awaken. Not only does it look really good, but it is also very functional. Whether you are using it to start your day or to remind you of something important, full screen simply does a better job than any window. The options to fade sound and screen brightness in and out are just icing on the cake. With a maximum time of 6 minutes, faxes can be as smooth or as abrupt as you want.
Last but not least is the Apple Remote integration. Being able to snooze the alarms without having to get out of bed is simply a must for any kind of wake up alarm. With this option, you can simply hit the remote and go back to sleep.
The Good
Looks great and has plenty of nifty little features that make this a joy to use.
The Bad
Not the smallest of such applications, with a permanent large timer display that is not really necessary. There are some things it does that make little sense, such as the egg timer killing the alarm list though the menus still let you interact with them.
The Truth
If all you want is the basic functionality of alarms and timers, then this might not be up your alley. If you don't mind or want the extra options, Awaken has plenty.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
