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To say I’m a heavy sleeper would be somewhat of an understatement! At the moment my alarm is set for at least an hour before I wake up as I am one of those types who likes to hit the snooze button several times before even thinking about waking up. Awaken for Mac gets me out of my slumber with a choice a music or radio stations.
As the iPhone doesn’t really have an application which is an alarm that wakes you up with music that doesn’t require the iPhone to be left unlocked, I searched around on the Internet and found a great application called Awaken.
Sitting in the menubar Awaken can be programmed to wake you up with a array of alarms which you can set to different intervals times and dates and months etc. Awaken also features the ability to launch an item upon start-up so you can wake up and have your browser ready to rock and roll first thing in the morning with no intervention leaving more time for the all-important task of waking up.
Non-morning people can rejoice as the infamous snooze button is customisable for your desired period of time.
The choice of alarms is pretty much a limitless as you can either use the default Apple sounds or play any music from your iTunes library.
You can also went up to your favourite Internet radio station but this does involve quickly creating a playlist item that contains your radio station.
Personally I use this application to waking up in the morning with one radio station and then an alarm goes off playing another radio station for a particular DJ that I like to listen to
There are a few things you need to be aware of to get the best out of this application. In the latest version if you wish to play music you can do so using the applications built in player however, if like me, you want to wake up with a radio station you have to make sure you set the appropriate setting.
Also the default installation does not feature the wake up from sleep option. For this you need a separate application also available on their website. This was included in previous release versions of the software but now seems to be a small separate application.
As of the day this is a very simple yet powerful application making me realise why I own a Mac. As the saying goes it just works (when everything has been installed properly LOL).
As Awaken actually works to help prize me out of bed in the morning with a preset radio station it gets a massive thumbs up and makes are always coveted essential Mac application list.
As always a copy of this review has been sent to the developers and if we hear back we will post their comments here.
Awaken is available from Embraceware.com for $9.99
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