A quick thought: How come the clock in Windows doesn’t have built in support for alarms?
It doesn’t look like this is going to change any time soon either. Here’s a screenshot of the slick analog clock component for Longhorn (a preview of the next version of Windows) and guess what? It doesn’t support alarms either.
I imagine alarms can quite rapidly get into the whole issue of managing events, but on the other hand, sometimes you simply want an alarm to go off in say ten minutes. Who cares what the reason is. You just want a beep, a song, or whatever to pronounce that ten minutes is up.
Sure there are other programs that can do this, but doesn’t it seem natural to expect the standard, built-in clock to have an alarm. The clock on my nightstand does. My cell phone has one too.
Personally, I think the reason it doesn’t have an alarm clock is precisely because there are already enough alarm clocks around (he says while being surrounded by 4 of them.)
Besides, imagine the calls to MS Product Support: “My computer starts beeping at me every 10 minutes!” etc.
Mr. D,
I suspect that the manufacturer or reseller of the clock on your wall gets plenty of calls regarding beeping. Sorry, but your idea is a tiresome cliche, “companies don’t do xyz because of tech support.” The truth is that computer companies don’t do tech support now, so what is the difference? Personally, MS should put an alarm in because it makes the product complete. I’ve always wondered why it isn’t there !
This is just another example of Microsoft using their monopoly on the Desktop PC to put people out of business.
Sell your Alarm Clock Manufacturer stock now – MS will own the industry soon…
😀
I’ve always just used Task Scheduler to do a one time event to play x wav or mp3 or launch x txt :-). Either that or Outlook.
I can see it now…
The Put in the alarm clock and people are happy. For a time.
Then they ask for multiple alarms (which they will), so they do that – people are happy.
For a time.
Then they ask that they want some alarms to reoccur, and have text, and future dates with them. So they do. And People are happy.
For a time.
Then people demand integration with IM, contacts in WinFS *OUTLOOK* integration.
Ding Next thing they know, people are screaming “ADD EMAIL! IT’S USLESS WITHOUT EMAIL!” and the next thing you know is that it’s got outta hand and the DOJ are on their backs for Embracing & Extending WS-AlarmClocks and shutting out the competition.
Thats why i’m happy with Outlook, my “real world” alarm clock, and my watch.
Dominic, I know Outlook. What’s a watch?
And while you’re at it, what’s this “real world” think you speak of?
Yeah, it’s easy to see how feature creep could spoil the simplicity of the clock. And there are many other programs that provide alarm features. I use Outlook and Microsoft Plus! Alarm Clock, for instance. However, it seems that the clock in Microsoft, like Microsoft Paint and Notepad, have languished in development over the years. Longhorn appears to be going in the direction of sprucing up the clock–by providing a new analog UI–so now seems to be a good time to see if adding functionality makes sense. Sometimes modeless, direct-action features–such as an alarm arm on a clock–are my favorite ways of getting things done, even when there are more elaborate and powerful alternatives. Would an alarm feature fall into this category? It’s one of those things I’d like to try.
I want to be able to drag the hands to set the time. 🙂
how about an alarm clock interface.
just like there’s an email interface and a web browser interface, you click on something and it pops up your web browser of choice.
you could click on the clock and it would send an ical event to your appointment program of choice.
just like the welcome screen can display # of email messages from any email client, the clock in the UI could display alarms from any appointment client.
then this is a clear OS feature, and not a ‘eat other peoples lunch’ feature.
@StopProfanity: Yes, that is my real name (only, it’s spelt with an m, not an m followed by an n, nor with two m’s). 😀
True enough that companies don’t do their own product support, but imagine the next homicidal maniac whose justification is “I was driven to craziness by the Longhorn alarm clock!” /exaggeration
Though, an interface which allowed anyone to “plug-in” an alarm clock sounds interesting.
I heard (NPR?) or read that most children today can’t read an analog clock. Perhaps the clock will need to “announce” the time periodically just so anyone under the age of 10 can understand it.
In the grand scheme of things, isn’t time just relative anyway? And besides, who really needs an alarm clock… Show up late… go ahead, it makes things interesting…