I have a set of logitech speakers that are vintage 2006. They are one of the first ones that came out and I got them after Adam Curry plugged them as he used them in his San Francisco apartment. They are still great, but only one downside, they don’t charge the current generation of iPod Touch. Since the H-Bomb uses it in his room we had to upgrade to something that would charge. I swapped it out with my XtremeMac Luna Alarm Clock – it charges, sounds great, and has a dimmer control – a great product.
Now I needed a new alarm clock so I took the Sony Dream Machine from the office. The bummer with that is that it’s at least 10 years old and the CD player doesn’t work anymore. Since I can only wake up to the buzzer I now have the XtremeMac Micro Dock on my Amazon Wish List.
As the dominoes continue to fall this means that I now no longer have a clock in the office. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but after half a day I realized I needed to get one. I have a Griffin Loop and a Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad so I thought I could set that up and try a desk clock app.
After Googling and checking out the AppStore (btw if you are not using AppShopper you are missing out on a great tool to find stuff in the AppStore) I found 4 apps to test out:
My Frame – Tried to add pictures and it crashed on every 3rd or 4th one. At that point I got frustrated and deleted it.
myPhotoAlarm – Deleted all but 1 of the stock photos and I couldn’t add my own, again I gave up and deleted it. Update: Right after this was posted, Gregg responded and apologized for a bug that’s due to the 4.0.2 update. I will reinstall and see how the update arrives when the folks at Apple let it through. Points to Gregg for great customer service.
Lifelike Clock – Is one I have kept, it doesn’t have photo capability, but it does allow you to access your music library for alarms. This is a good one if you want your own alarm clock when you travel. It also includes weather.
Nightstand HD – Was my winner, it allows you to select your own photos (although there is a bug I’ve hit after 10 photos where I’ve added new ones and they don’t show up. It also has weather functionality. If it had the ability to hit my music library for alarms it would be the sole survivor.
I’m also playing the Christmas levels of Angry Birds, if you have any great apps please comment so I can check them out!
3 replies on “Using Your iPad as a Desk Clock”
I have found a couple of very interesting 3D apps you might want to check out. They are both really fun to play with and useful too. The first is wurlit. The second is photoscope 3D. Both are free. Wurlit shows you some apps in different categories but let’s you spin them around in 3D. The photo one let’s u view your camera roll in 2 different neat ways. Hope u enjoy these apps. They are both fun!
Beth Lamenskie
Hi, Sorry for your bad experience with our app. It was designed specifically to make the “Dream Machines” unnecessary for iPad owners. Sadly, a bug that was only brought out by iOS 4.2 causes this photo adding problem. We have addressed this in an update which was submitted to Apple on 12/6 and thus should be approved and available within a few more days.
Really sorry to hear you had a bad experience with the app, but I hope you will give it another shot with our update… it really does function as a robust and customizable alarm clock and should allow you to add and rearrange photos at will, as well as control the slideshow settings in detail, adjust size, position, colors, etc of all time elements, and wake to a variety of sounds including music, nature, alarms, and custom recordings.
Best Regards,
Gregg Radell
President
TwoDogs Group (myPhotoAlarm)
Thanks for the quick follow up, I appreciate it. I will reinstall the app and when the upgrade comes from the app store I’ll apply it and give it another shot.