The Alarm Clock Showdown: Awaken vs. Aurora
If you use your Mac for almost everything, why can’t it also replace your alarm clock? There are two great alarm clock applications, Aurora 4 from Metaquark and Awaken 4 from Embraceware. With these apps you can wake up to your own music, or with Aurora, a favorite TV show using EyeTV. I’d like to see your bedside alarm clock do that. They are both easy to use and pretty cheap, but they do have their differences, so which one is right for you?
The first application is Aurora 4. This app just recently went from freeware to shareware, but it added many features in the jump.
The window is very simple and easy to use, with just 3 buttons in the toolbar: Alarms, Playback, and Fall Asleep. I’ll start with Alarms. After clicking the Add Alarm button you get to select the options on the left: day, time, volume, playlist, duration, label, and what to run. I did notice, though, that it only gives you the option to play iTunes music or EyeTV channels, not standard noises.
The next section is Playback. When an alarm goes off it switches to the Playback section, which displays the music currently playing. You can then click Snooze, Stop, or Switch Songs.
Finally, when the day is done, there’s the Fall Asleep section. This will cause your computer to fall asleep after a set time. You can make it fall asleep after “x” minutes, at “x” o’clock, after “x” iTunes tracks have been played, once a DVD finishes, or once Quicktime finishes playing. The Aurora dock and menu bar icons will also display the time of the next alarm.
The next application is Awaken. Awaken has been out as shareware for quite a long time and is packed with features.
The Awaken window is smaller and simpler than Aurora, with a large clock that displays the date and time and a section with alarms. You can also minimize the Alarms section to only display the clock. On the bottom of the window are 5 buttons: Add Alarm, Actions, Hide Alarms, Egg Timer, and Sleep Timer. By clicking Add Alarm an options panel pops up with choices for Title, Type (iTunes, sound, or task), Occurrence, Time, and Notes. With any of the alarms you can also add launch items.
The iTunes alarm plays an iTunes playlist, the Sound alarm plays a selected system sound, and the Task alarm will only open the launch item. You can even select to use the fullscreen mode which will display the alarm in full screen when it goes off. The Egg Timer is a simple countdown timer which will then make a noise or play iTunes and the Snooze alarm will cause the Mac to sleep after a set time.
So what’s the difference? Both of these applications are great. Which one you choose just depends on what extra features you really want. The applications have very different user interfaces. Awaken’s interface is very small and simple. You can minimize the alarm list to display only the clock and choose the text color for the clock. Aurora’s interface shows you all the options at once and has a playback mode that shows the song currently playing in alarm mode. Aurora and Awaken have a similar list of features, but they have some differences that could lead buyers to a certain choice. Awaken has a fullscreen playback mode that enables easy viewing when the alarm goes off and it also includes podcast support. Aurora includes EyeTV support which will allow you to wake up to a TV channel, or just alert you to your favorite show.
Aurora 4 is only available for Mac OSX 10.5, while Awaken 4 can run on Leopard and Tiger (and version 3 is available for 10.3 users). Awaken can be downloaded here and costs $12.95. Aurora 4 is available here and can be purchased for about $22. They both have 14 day trials.
I have Awaken and love it. I gave up on Alarm Clock Pro once I started using Awaken (because of simplicity of Awaken by comparison). Great user interface and silky, smooth functionality make this app a winner. But what sets it apart even farther from other competitors are these 2 things:
1. The developer is amazing. Never received such good customer service in all my life. He responds instantly to email questions and always asks for more feedback from his customers.
2. Updates are free for life.
Not sure how you can beat that!
I have Awaken and they sponsor my blog because I love them so much!!
Ah… nothing like using a thousand dollar computer to replace a ten dollar alarm clock.
Seriously though, Robbie Hanson’s “Alarm Clock 2″ does pretty much everything you need for free:
http://www.robbiehanson.com/alarmclock/
I got Awaken as part of the recent MacHeist 2 Bundle and thought I would never use it. Somehow, I gave it a try, fell in love with it, and now I rely on it every day!
Also, the Awaken developers are fantastic, they are great about interacting with the Mac community and responding to feedback.
Seems a little irresponsible to leave your laptop on all night, sucking up power, just to play an MP3 at 8am. Why not get an alarm clock with an iPod dock?
I agree with jayKayEss – would rather use my cell as an alarm as opposed to my laptop. If the laptop is doing nothing in the night, I tend to put it to sleep.
You can leave the laptop open, but still put it to sleep.
I’ve been using Awaken for well over a year now. It’s great for me as someone who spends most nights in hotels. I’ve never trusted hotel alarm clocks and wake up calls are annoying. Awaken lets me wake up to my iTunes as the volume gently ramps up and I can leave the Mac on the desk and hit snooze with the remote!
Aurora can wake your computer from being shut down as long as its open and you don’t have a login password. I haven’t upgraded to Aurora 4 yet because version 3 does everything I need.
I’ve had the honor of owning Awaken since my Mac Heist 2 purchase, and I LOVE IT. Simple, elegant, easy, reliable. I have my mini hooked up to my stereo system and tv, so it wakes me up when I need it, reminds me to do certain things etc.etc. Its the best.
Like Van Lam said above, Alarm Clock 2 is free, can wake your computer from sleep (regardless of password) and works with the Apple remote.
And yes, it is really simple to use.
Not sure I would pay for an alarm for the computer, though if I had EyeTV, Aurora’s “wake to” feature sounds nice.
Hey guys – Jerry here from Embraceware. First – thanks for the review! Second – we’re super busy working on Awaken 4.1 which will be a major update feature-wise. As with all updates – 4.1 will be free update.
The first sneak peek is on our blog: http://embraceware.com/blog/
If anyone has any comments/questions for us we’d be glad to answer them via support@embraceware.com. We have a new person to help with support emails (http://embraceware.com/company/ she knows Awaken inside and out).
Happy Easter/chocolate weekend
Nice review. I prefer awaken personally, but for the most part they’re both pretty interchangeable in my opinion.
Thanks for the tip Jerry. That new update looks great.
Hi there,
I’ve tried the previous versions of both, the betas as well as the final versions. Awaken couldn’t turn on my macbook which had been switched off at night. Only ’sleep’ works. With Aurora, I can turn off the macbook completely and it will turn on automatically and wake me up nicely each morning. There’s no good alternative to Aurora 4. If you want a free one, or you have Tiger, you could get Aurora 3.
@Shawn – the ability to turn on a powered off Mac was originally slated to be a feature in Awaken 4 but it was dropped due to some bugs to be worked out. This feature will be coming in version 4.1 which is in development now. I would be interested to hear if you would prefer this to be an app-wide preference or a choice per alarm.
I just use ical, automator and itunes. Its free.
I tried Aurora before it went to shareware, and it was VERY glitchy for me. I got the MacHeist bundle, and got Awaken, and I’m never switching back. It’s got more than enough features for me, and its UI is amazing. I can’t ask for anything more.
Another one for alarm clock 2… free, small, light weight, easy to use and reliable.
Why none of these allows you not to modify the current volume level!?
You always have to set up a volume level. How about just leave it the way it is when an alarm goes off.
It feels kinda weird to be listening to music at say 7/10 volume, have an alarm going off and lowering the whole thing to 3/10 (or vice-versa!)
The ability to turn on a powered off Mac is built into the operating system. If that’s the sticking point, just use your Mac’s built in scheduler to turn on the Mac, then the alarm should work just fine in Awaken. But like someone said, they are going to add that feature soon!
Unlike Aurora as mentioned above, AWAKEN works EVEN IF YOU HAVE A LOGIN PASSWORD! That’s right, if your Security preferences have the “require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” checked, it’s no problem. Just be sure your laptop is open if it’s asleep (leave the cover almost shut if you’re worried about dust).