Interview and Giveaway: Jerry Brace of Awaken
Here at MacApper, we love talking to some of the most creative developers. After all, great applications are what we like best. I recently got the chance to chat with Jerry Brace, the founder of Embraceware and creator of Awaken.
For those who’ve never tried or heard of it, Awaken is an innovative alarm that allows you to both wake-up and fall-asleep to your iTunes music. It also has a fullscreen mode and supports the Apple remote. I started by asking him about his background, and also the significance of yesterday’s iPhone announcement.
Marvin: Jerry, thank you so much for joining me. First of all, I’d like to know what got you into developing Mac applications?
Jerry: Thanks for having me. I’ve been interested in programming since I was 9, when I got a Commodore VIC 20. My neighbor offered it to me before tossing it in the trash. It had no software – just the BASIC language and I had no reference materials or books or an internet to find help.
Basically without knowing what programming was, I guessed at words and eventually figured enough out to use it for math homework, and later made some primitive games.
I continued programming/development on the PC route after that – not ever using a Mac along the way until late 2001 when I got an iBook G3. At the time I poked around in Project Builder and read up on some Cocoa/Objective-C tutorials. I started a bunch of project ideas – not finishing any of them – but learning in the process.
In 2005 I decided to take the hobby seriously and build an app from start to finish. I decided on something I had a use for and hopefully others would as well – that app was Awaken.
Marvin: Awaken is very innovative, in fact I just bought it a few minutes ago! Did you create it to solve a problem, scratch an itch or for some other reason?
Jerry: The response to Awaken has been great from the start. I have to thank the Cocoa Development community for being so helpful to a new comer and answering all of the “noob” questions. We got a nice plug on G4TechTV’s Call for Help with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur which was the coolest thing and gave us a nice boost (check out the video).
Awaken was picked as my first project because it was something that I had a use for and none of the apps available back then had the features that I wanted. I’ve been using it everyday ever since and it’s great to see other people get interested in it and contribute by submitting their feedback/feature ideas.
Marvin: What’s it like being an indie Mac developer? Do you face issues such as annoying customers, piracy, and does Apple provide good developer support?
Jerry: I love being an indie Mac developer. I’ve kept my day job in the meantime but Mac development is by far my favorite.
I have to say that I haven’t found any customers annoying. There have been a few Windows users out there who purchase Awaken after just looking at it and write in to ask why they can’t open the .dmg… Once they find out that it’s a Mac OS X only app – the same question pops up every-time – “Will there be a Windows version?” – I think we all know the answer to that one.
As far as piracy goes – you can’t really avoid it; you just have to accept that a small percentage will go that route. Although I’ve had many people purchase Awaken after they pirated it for a while, they’ve come out and told me that up front. Some people just don’t like the idea of any restriction when testing an app, although Awaken allows a 2 week trial with full functionality.
Apple have been amazing in every case that I needed help and they see issues through until they are resolved. I couldn’t say anything negative about them.
Marvin: What sort of Mac hardware are you running?
Jerry: Right now my main Mac is a MacBook Pro, my wife has the iMac G4, we have a Mac mini connected to the living room setup to serve as a media center and I have my old iBook G3 available for testing the minimum system requirements for Awaken. I test Awaken on all 4 with each update and every new version of iTunes.
Marvin: Quick! Name 5 apps sitting in your dock right now.
Jerry: Damn – my dock is hidden… Did I run out of time? Okay – let’s see – Xcode, Interface Builder, iTunes, Photoshop CS3 and iChat. There ya go…
Marvin: Apple recently announced that the iPhone does 3rd party applications, but in the form of web apps. Will you be actively pursuing this route?
Jerry: Jerry: Of course I’d rather an SDK to build a native app and I’m sure that will come in time. A web solution is the next best thing. My day-job for the past 6 years has been as web developer so this fits in nicely. It’ll be very interesting to see what kinds of applications get developed. We’re ready at Embraceware to get started today.
Marvin: What are your future plans for Embraceware? Will we be seeing any new apps soon?
Jerry: Currently we are adding more languages to Awaken. We added French last week and I’m currently working on Spanish this week – lots more to come. Future plans right now include a new app which is in development, then we’ll be working on our first game. We really can’t wait to do both! After that – more apps and games. We’re here to stay 
Marvin: Sounds great! Jerry, thank you so much for your time, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you.
Jerry: Thanks again for having me.
Thanks to Jerry, MacApper has 5 licenses of Awaken to giveaway. To be considered, you have to answer this question: What is one feature you’d like to see in Awaken? Leave your answer in the comments, the more creative it is, the higher your chances are of winning.
However, we realize that not everyone has the time to think up new ideas, so we’ll award only the top three ideas each with a license; the remaining two licenses will go to two readers who can suggest the best wake-up song. Again, post it in the comments.
The competition will be judged by Jerry himself, plus several of the MacApper staff. You have up till 16th June 18:00 EST to enter. Of course, you’re welcomed to submit both a song and a suggestion.
I would like to be able to do things sequentially, for example, Currently, in the sleep timer module I can select to either play music from iTunes for n minutes and optionally sleep the computer afterwards, or to sleep the computer after n minutes. I would like to be able to play music from iTunes for say 15 minutes, then it should launch a script (in this case, via GUI Scripting, start Pzizz), then it should sleep the computer after another 30 minutes. This should of course also apply to all the other parts of the program.
So to sum up, actions that sequentially started, either when the other action completes or a specific time after the other action has started or ended.
Oh, and the best wake-up song is of course Let Go by Frou Frou
it might do this or it might be impossible but I would love an alarm that worked when a notebooks top was closed and it was asleep.
if not a cool feature would be that as it got progressively louder your screen got progressively brighter (for those that sleep near their computers)
Best wake-up song: “Welcome to Jamrock”, by Damian Marley
Feature I’d most like to see: More colors for the transparent clock bezel. Black, pink, green and blue are nice, but surely there could be a color picker option. Lovely app!
oh the best wake up song
Gavin Castleton – Why Wake Up
My best wake up song is Such Great Heights by the Postal Service. I love Awaken, too.
How’s about just the option to set the screen to sleep instead of the whole computer. I like the idea of more colors for the time display. What about a fade out when you have the zzz timer set. But the super duper, spectacular feature would be if when Awaken woke up the computer it would cook you breakfast, feed the cat and take out the trash all before you get out of bed. Now THAT would make my morning. So what do you say Jerry? Can we expect that any time soon?
Best wake up song, “Wake and smell the coffe” by the Cranberries.
I would love to get awaken, it would be very useful as I often time cook things, and get on the computer while they are in the oven… more then a few things have burned.
@Steve – In the Awaken volume preferences there is an option to fade in the screen brightness and music volume at the same time. As well as an option for the sleep timer to do the reverse.
man, I thought I had a good idea.
Well I guess I will second the cooking breakfast and add that it would be nice if it made the bed after you got up.
Also if it could somehow take the pain out of shaving, perhaps it could wake you up by removing the hair from your face via bluetooth?
A cool feature, although I don’t know if it would be possible, is that awaken could comunicate with my stereo through my Airport express and my other macs around the house inside my network and make all of them alarm me. maybe it could also communicate with my bluetooth phone to make it also wake me up.
@Daniel – Awaken works through AirPort express/AirTunes via iTunes. If you have iTunes set the stream to the appropriate room it’ll work when Awaken tells it to play the chosen playlist.
How about having it display our Schedule/todo list for the day from iCal (fullscreen wake).
Best wake up song:
“So What” by Miles Davis from his album ‘Kind of Blue’
Best Wake-Up Song: “Sleeping Lessons” by The Shins, from their latest album “Wincing the NIght Away”. Not only is it aptly named, but it builds itself from soft to all out straight ahead rock by the end of the song, making it perfect for me (or anyone else) to wake up to every morning.
The One Feature I’d like is iCal integration. It would be cool if Awaken would take over iCals alarms and I could use it instead of iCals cruddy reminders.
The same way To-Dos will be a system-wide in Leopard, I want to forget where I set what alarm. So if Awaken would take care of it, I’d buy this.
I’d like to see voice recognition. It’d be awesome to have your alarm go off, be able to yell “SNOOZE,” and not have to get up for another 5 minutes.
Best Wake Up Song: Shrinking Universe by Muse.
Having it do a list of things, such as for example run isync an synchronise with phone, then connect to wireless network after specified time, and then open urls (to download files). Maybe these could be done with applescript, but most people would prefer to have it as options in the app itself. I would.
Or to do things like turn off after specified time if running on batteries, and not if running on a/c.
Very cool! I can replace 3 other apps with this.
I’d like to be able to set an alarm to quit playing after x minutes. I didn’t notice an option like that, although I haven’t checked everything out extensively yet.
@Betsy – That option is in the Awaken preferences (Stop alarm after …minutes/hours). I hope that you like the app.
Wow, it sports a great UI. Works a lot better than other apps with similar function.
Best wakeup song…
Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins
How about a feature using the movement sensors in all the new macs. When you wake up you could just nudge your mac to turn off the alarm, or go into snooze mode. Would be a nice addition to the preferences.
D
Can you set awaken to help you go to sleep? Maybe have a nice sleeping thing that gentley fades out, both the backlighting and the music.
Or maybe Awaken should have a super alarm for really heavy sleepers like myself. I’m talking like air raid style honking mega-alarm.
If you can’t do any of that stuff, maybe we can add some extra voodoo to use the software to Awaken the dead. Maybe that level of technology will actually help me wake up from my near-dead state every morning.
@faber: Yes, Awaken has a sleep timer feature. You can also set it to slowly fade out the volume and screen brightness via the Awaken preferences.
Alarm volumes can be set as high as you need/your speakers can output.
Regarding waking the dead – that’s a though one. We’re actually half way there in Leopard with the help of CoreAnimation – all we need now is CoreZombie and we’ll really have something…
I bought Awaken shortly after buying my Tivoli Model Two radio, which also doubles as external speakers and subwoofer for my MacBook Pro, rather than buying another physical alarm clock (which Tivoli Audio does sell).
I can’t think of anything else to add to this perfect alarm clock…if only it could geographically shorten my 40 mile commute to Cleveland every morning!
Wake up song: “Somewhere Between Baking and Bleep” by AIR
Wake up song: “Good Morning Starshine” from the musical Hair.
One feature I’d like to see is to have a built-in library of “jingles” to set as your alarm sound.
I would like to wake up to whatever song I made last in garageband or the next song in itunes. it would be nice if it could wake up the computer from sleep mode and get louder as i ignored it. one song awesome to wake up to Sandtorm by Darude
@Zachary – there are roughly a dozen built in alarms sounds available. Is this the kind of thing you were looking for?
A big thanks to all who entered; the giveaway is now officially closed.
Jerry and several members of the MacApper staff are now finalizing the results. Look for it really soon.
[...] days ago, MacApper spoke with Awaken creator and indie Mac developer Jerry Brace. Thanks to Jerry, we decided to give three licenses to the best [...]