OK.  I admit.  This is first part is a bit of a rant.  The one thing I hate the most about the iPhone is the hubris of Steve Jobs in thinking that no one can do it better than he can.  The internal clock app is a perfect example.  While not allowing other developers to run background processes (like an alarm clock) because of alleged performance issues and battery drain, it’s actually all about control.  Steve has no problem at all with you running an alarm clock in the background as long as it is HIS alarm clock.  The iPhone is basically marketed as not only a phone, but a mini-computer with thousands of programs that you can run on it – as long as they are programs that Steve approves of.  If Microsoft were to sell you a computer and only allow you to run their chosen programs on it, folks would go nuts.  If GM were to sell you a car and tell you where you could drive it, they’d go nuts.  But in the cult that is Apple, the sheeple buy the party line of “it’s for our own good” and see the hubris of Mr. Jobs as a good thing.  But, thinking outside the box, now there is an app for that…or rather to get around that.  Fishbone Studios has, until Steve figures out someone has created a better mousetrap, created an app that gets around the “background processes” limitations of the iPhone and does it in style.  The way they did this is pure genius.

Alarm Clock is a $0.99 utility in the App Store that gets around the “background processes” limitation of the iPhone with an ingenious use of push notifications – alarms that are synchronized with a push server.  It is such an obvious solution that it leaves you smacking your forehead for not thinking of it first.  Not being satisfied with getting one over on Steve though, they went further and created one of the most comprehensive and feature-rich clock apps I’ve ever seen.  Not only does it support both portrait and landscape modes, but the interface is fully customizable with built-in themes and manual overrides and will allow the user to select separate brightness levels for both the clock and the background.  Even fonts (standard or italics) can be selected.  Alarms can be chosen from included sounds or selections from your iPod library (shuffled or not) and can be faded in over a chosen period of time.  Snooze times are also configurable up to 30 minutes and alarms can be set to repeat on certain days of the week.  The alarm can trigger the standard push notification, no push notification at all, or a selection of a couple of other sounds.  This is in addition to the sound selected for the alarm itself.  (Be warned though that without the push notification set to trigger the alarm, you need to have the app running in order for the app itself to trigger it.)  One of the handiest features though is the built-in flashlight mode.  If your alarm goes off in the dark, a shake of the iPhone will fade in a “flashlight” white screen to illuminate your surroundings.

This app is so feature-rich that I had to really search for my typical list of suggestions….but I did come up with a list. :)  Right now, the app has very few built-in sounds and no access to the iPhone’s regular alarm sound library.  The ability to choose any sound from your music library allows for all kinds of opportunities, but it would be nice if there were other alarm sounds available.  Also, while the alarms can be repeated on particular days of the week, it would be nice if they could be set like a calendar function with specific dates and repeat weekly, monthly, annually, and so forth.  I don’t know if there is a way to have a “silent” push notification that automatically triggers the selected alarm sound from the app, but that too would be cool.  Maybe one way around this is to have the required push notification to play a selected song from the iTunes library at the selected volume level so that “viewing” the push notification is not required in order to hear the selected alarm sound.  Finally, and this is the one feature I expected and was surprised not to find, it would be cool if you could select an image from your own photos to use as a background.  That, in conjunction with the adjustable placement of the clock digits, would make this app pretty much perfect.

All in all, I’m very impressed with this app.  With push notifications for an alarm turned off, it acts like most other alarm apps.  With them turned on (particularly with that obnoxious “digital nightstand” sound), it alerts/wakes you no matter what you have running.  If/when Apple ever allows a push alert to automatically launch an app, you’d already have all your alarms set up for that.  For those of you that ask me privately if I’d recommend this app for you, the answer is yes.  It’s a buck well spent and definitely makes my Must Have list as it will be replacing the other alarm apps on my iPhone permanently.  The fact that it gets around some of Steve Jobs hubris is just icing on the cake.   Even if you don’t use your iPhone as an alarm clock, support the ingenuity of this great little work-around.