Wake Up To A New Tune With Awaken

Many of us have to wake up far earlier than we would like, and Embraceware’s Awaken lets us do it in style. The interface is very polished, with interface transparency and iTunes-like buttons. The dock icon is a very cute aqua-ised alarm clock complete with bells on top. A large digital display (with the date underneath) reminds you of the time in a not-so-subtle way. A drawer below shows all the alarms you have set up at a glance. Of course, the main feature is that you can choose an alarm from your itunes music.

A Plethora of Options

With Awaken your experience can be customized endlessly. If you like your sleep and want to drift gradually into reality, set the awaken to fade in system volume gradually with the screen brightness after waking from sleep, playing a calming playlist in iTunes. If nothing short of bedlam in your bedroom will wake you up, set the system volume and iTunes volume to the max in preferences; then place your (laptop) Mac on the other side of the room and use your Apple remote to control it. If for some reason iTunes crashes or the music is unavailable, a selection of several short, but still jarring sounds get you out of bed-choose from ‘cuckoo clock’, ’sci-fi alarm’, or ‘buzzer (loud)’ among others.

Power Features

If you are too lazy (or busy) to open your RSS reader, email, or browser when you wake up, Awaken will do it for you. If you’re working on an important article or other file, these can be opened too. You can set a handy reminder note to show when the alarm starts (e.g. sync iPod, make hazelnut-with-an-extra-shot-cappuccino). If you find that music isn’t really right for you, add any custom sounds you like through a preference pane or choose from your podcasts instead. For a hidden-away look, Awaken can open at login as a menubar app, and alarms can trigger through this.

While I actually got my copy of Awaken as part of the MacHeist 2 bundle, the asking price of $12.95 isn’t bad, and you can take advantage of a fully-functional 2 week trial if you don’t feel like shelling out that much for an alarm clock.

Comments

  1. #1

    Dan Philibin → danphilibin.com

    Awaken is definitely a life saver for me during the school year. The Apple Remote option is nice but I have to physically get out of my bed to turn the alarm off if I want to have any chance of staying awake!

  2. #2

    Craig → www.craigmacproductions.com

    I tried awaken out for the two week trial and i didn’t mind it.

    but i just can’t justify paying for an application that makes me do something i hate doing.

    awaken should be freeware.

    i love the screenshot you used tho. lol. i can’t imagine waking up to a podcast.

  3. #3

    Matt → www.thisguysvoice.com

    I have actually been using Awaken for a while now after using Alarm Clock for some time. I was pleasantly surprised by thy power and versatility of Awaken. I love to set up my Headlines workflow along with other workflows and iCal events in the morning.
    P.S Love the time in the screenshot…

  4. #4

    rmaspero → www.rmaspero.com

    I love awaken and I use it as my Alarm clock it has to be the best option.

  5. #5

    Jerry Brace → embraceware.com

    Thanks for the review guys. It was a nice surprise this morning. I just wanted to let you know what we are working on Awaken 4.1 at the moment which is turning into a huge update. We’ll be posting development progress on our blog: embraceware.com/blog. As with all updates to Awaken, 4.1 will be a free update.

    If anyone has feature requests, questions/comments for us email our team at support@embraceware.com.

  6. #6

    Larson Fritz

    Awaken is what wakes me up every morning. Nice review.

  7. #7

    Ryan Ponce → www.tacocar.com

    Awaken is a really cool application. I recently purchased it as part of the MacHeist Bundle. The only problem I have with it (which is more of a problem with my Mac setup than the actual application) is that sometimes I set the alarm only to wake up an hour late due to the fact that my headphones are in my computer, masking the noise of my iTunes library. Great application nonetheless.

  8. #8

    Charles Waldron

    Thanks for reading, guys.
    @ Dan, It’s interesting to hear that you use Awaken for school, I use for school as well. While my apple remote is actually broken, I used to enjoy that feature (I guess it offers a bit of a lazy option, though).

    @ Jerry, it’s great to know that you read my review. Thanks for creating a great app to make my life easier! I’m looking forward to aforementioned improvements in version 4.1…out of interest, it is emBRACEware for a reason, isn’t it?

  9. #9

    Dave → www.sliceofblue.com

    Confession: I deleted this app twice as a niche piece, useful but so limited as to be just a place holder. I reinstalled it to - duh! - set some alarms with specific actions, and then came the epiphany.

    This thing is still growing on me and it’s one of the apps that I continually find new uses for. It’s integration with Automator is ingenius, enabling this little guy to do just about anything I can dream up (and I can dream up quite a bit). Over time, this thing has taken over the menial tasks that used to drive me mad.

    $13 is beyond reasonable for this little Swiss Army knife of an app. Great job, Embraceware!

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