One more time…iClock → iClock ProFor the next 30 years.

Happy holidays from julian

As a previous owner of iClock, you know the app. You’ve been peeking at it for years. Mark and I created it back in the last century, about 30 years ago. iClock’s been scheduled for a major overhaul for years. And now was the time to translate the app from the old code to Apple’s newest language. I’ve been working hard over the past 12 months on iClock Pro and the other apps to free them from any dependence on Rosetta.

iClock’s main developer was Mark Fleming, a great man, programmer and friend who worked at Queen’s University. We used to spend many a night on the phone, often past midnight for him on the East Coast. We talked about future features and bad bugs, and we made many apps together.

One app makes me laugh just thinking about it. Mark was a professional photographer, and he started putting digital frames around pictures. We had hundreds of digitized wooden and artistic frames and an app that would resize them to fit your photos. When we decided to share it, we talked about names and I said, “Let’s call it ‘I been framed’.” The icon was a rough-looking cowboy in a black hat, a varmint with both hands on the bars of his jail window, waiting forlornly for help to bust out of the hoosegow. I don’t think I’ll ever remake that app, but it was fun, funny and useful.

Mark died this past year, and I think of him often. Before he died, he cared for his wife for the last six years of her life while building their house in Kingston, Ontario. He was a very devoted husband and a great man I’m grateful to have known. We all benefited from his work on iClock. There’s much more to that story, but maybe in the next newsletter. Sometimes I digress. I’m getting older too.

Why rebuild now?

Rosetta gave Intel apps more time on Apple silicon. Apple is ending general-purpose Rosetta support after macOS 27. That gave me a reason to clean up the code and rebuild in Swift and SwiftUI. The new foundation lets us use current Apple technologies and spend more time improving the apps. The new iClock requires a newer version of macOS so we can build for Apple silicon and use more of Apple’s latest technologies. Apple’s Rosetta timeline

What’s different in the new clock?

If the old iClock still suits the Mac you use, keep on enjoying it. It’s a great app. We’ll maintain it as long as possible. The new version will get most of our coding attention. More is now possible, and like in the past, it’ll be fun to watch as new features are slowly added. This is a major paid upgrade. It’s free to download and try for 30 days. Test it out on your Mac to see how it works.

The biggest change is the one you can’t see. The Swift and SwiftUI foundation makes iClock easier to fix and improve. It also gives us a path to add Apple’s App Intents, so in the future you can build Shortcuts that work with iClock or ask Siri for information from it.

Four things to try first

1. Add Places. Search nearly 237,000 cities and add the ones you care about to your Mac’s Time menu. Make a set for family in Japan, business associates in Africa, manufacturing partners in China, or banking clients in London. Switch sets to see the local times you need. It’s handy for anyone making calls across time zones, especially traders and sales teams.
2. Plan a Meeting. The new planner builds on Global Scheduler. Save people and groups, see everyone’s hours in their own time zone, and compare suggested times. Try it for a meeting with colleagues in 3 time zones, or a call with family scattered around the world.
3. Hibimekuri · 日々めくり. Very zen from a calmer time.
4. Sky & Calendars. Click the Moon to explore the sky for a city you choose. See the Moon’s phase, when it rises and sets, and where the planets are above or below the horizon. Pick an evening time and compare it with twilight to plan a look outside. There’s also a Calendars & Traditions tab to explore.