iUpdate
I just can’t get over how much I miss the Android alarm clock. I say that, but I may also go ahead and get a 6S this Friday. So it’s not holding me up a whole bunch.
My core problem is that I prefer to run my alarm setup in a silly but effective manner for my personal degree and style of sloth. I have a 6:00 AM alarm and a 6:30 AM alarm running all the time, repeating every Monday through Thursday. These ideally have a 10 minute snooze available, but the exact interval value isn’t important.
Within maybe 4-5 hours of going off, Android K and beyond starts showing a notification for “Upcoming Alarm”, which contains an action button to advance-dismiss the alarm directly from the notification block. So if I’m having trouble sleeping or absolutely know I don’t need to get in early and I’m within the window, I generally can just go ahead and “dismiss” the 6 AM alarm overnight and rely solely on the 6:30 AM alarm.
Doing this absolutely does not stop the 6 AM alarm from being “on” in terms of its Monday through Thursday repetition schedule. I never turn these alarms off unless I’m on vacation or something to that effect. I will not accept the risk of turning alarms off day-by-day, because I will forget to turn them back on.
I mainly have the two alarms in case I mistakenly dismiss the 6 AM alarm. This is both the weak point of my argument and the key personal rub. I don’t want to accept the risk of a single morning alarm; I am simply not awake enough at first beep to trust that I will do the right thing.
If I get out of bed at 6 AM, or even after a single or double snooze, I can then “dismiss” the 6:30 AM backup alarm. Here’s the rub of the rub: if I am not able to dismiss the 6:30 AM alarm in this case, it will generally go off while I am in the shower, which is unacceptable.
Basically iOS has an odd but effective dismiss/snooze system, but the clever dismiss optionality I had in Android is simply not available. You can feel the Jobs answer is “have one alarm and don’t dismiss it by mistake”, but I have trouble taking that risk. I also can’t abide maintaining my dual system but shutting them off and on as needed.
I’ve been lazy enough since going to the iPhone that I’ve relied on my 6:30 AM alarm every morning so far (which is not altogether abnormal for me). But this is the best-case for iOS running the tandem setup: I dismiss 6 AM at 6 AM, then get up for the 6:30 AM. The first time I get up at 6 AM I will lack the ability to dismiss 6:30 AM and will end up having the alarm go off while I’m in the shower.
Other people clearly want this.
The current solution I’m testing:
Add a third dadgum alarm, no repetition, normally off. 6:45 AM. Label: “Reset Alarms”. No alarm sound or vibration on the alarm. Snoozable. Rule: if you dismiss an alarm early, enable this alarm, which will then remind you after both alarms have “expired” for the day that they need to be enabled again. This occurs via popup without vibration or sound, so no disturbance if in the shower.
Hmm.