Like most Apple products, the iPhone’s Clock app is pretty well designed. It is easy to understand, easy to use, and is pleasing to look at too. Unfortunately, I can’t help but feel like it was not designed for people with irregular sleeping habits like mine.
When it comes to irregular sleeping schedules, I probably have one of the most extreme ones. Whenever anyone asks me when I usually go to bed, I never know how to reply. That is how uncertain my sleep schedule is. My friends have literally asked me when I sleep, because it seems like I’m awake 24/7. If it weren’t for classes and other responsibilities that need to be taken care of during the day, I would probably be nocturnal. I don’t get enough sleep, but I never want to be late for classes. As a result, I can’t set a regular daily alarm, and instead set alarms to wake up whenever I decide to go to sleep. Emphasis on alarms, because I can’t wake up with just one. Also alarms are turned off if you unlock your phone with Touch ID, and since I always end up turning off my alarms rather than snoozing them, I’m forced to set at least 6 alarms at 5 minute intervals, starting from 30 minutes before I actually need to get up.
This is very inconvenient for me, since it forces me to turn on multiple alarms every single time I decide to take a nap or go to sleep. I wish there was a way for me to force myself to be unable to turn off an alarm until I do something that forces me to wake up, such as play a small game.
Another feature I wish they had was the ability to have an alarm start ringing at a set time before I need to be up. The current design with snoozing alarms means that you need to be able to predict how long you’ll continue to try to sleep and set your alarm for a certain amount of time before you need to be up. However, what if you could set a latest time you need to be up by and an earliest time for the alarm to start ringing, and then set the interval you would like the alarm to continue to ring at.
For example, say I have a class at 9 am and need to be up at the latest by 8:50 am. I could set the alarm to start ringing at 8:30 am and end at 8:50 am with 5 minute intervals in between. When the alarm starts ringing at 8:30, I can choose to snooze the alarm, in which case it would ring again at 8:35, or I can choose to turn the alarm off, which would force me to do an activity to verify that I am awake, such as play a small game. If I successfully complete the activity to turn the alarm off at 8:35, then the alarm will not ring again at 8:40, 8:45, or 8:50.
However, in the end, I think that most users of Apple Clock will have relatively consistent sleep schedules and do not need to use the app in the way that I do, so it wouldn’t be worth the effort to add all this extra functionality.
