Time is a man-made concept. And just like every other man-made thing out there, it is effed up. You’ve got arbitrarily constructed time zones based on geographical boundaries. Then there’s Daylight Savings Time that no one country can agree upon. It’s not just the time that’s the problem, it’s how we keep track of it – our watches. Atomic watches are the only ones that really have an idea of what’s going on. Everything else runs at about the same time, but not precisely.
Time.is is an iPad app from the stellar time tracking website. The app syncs with an atomic clock, considered by some to be the most accurate time source in the world. But between the atomic clock and your iPad screen stand a network of no-one-really-knows-how-many servers, your internet connection and the iPad’s own Wi-Fi or cellular network. Syncing through all of that takes time. It’s a small, yet quantifiable amount of time (0.02-0.10 seconds). A couple of times, I got the exact time synced up and that really made me happy, that too for something I never thought I’d care enough about.
Other than the sheer technological achievement, what’s interesting about Time.is is how it looks and behaves. The app uses the iPad’s beautiful Retina display to its advantage. You’ll find the time in big bold letters that you can fiddle with using the pinch to zoom gesture. Underneath sit three customizable time zones. Time.is is also the first clock app I’ve used that implements the pull to refresh gesture – used to synchronize the time. The app also takes care of Daylight Savings Time for you.
Time.is has a neat feature that shows you the time in different places in relation to one time zone. So, say for example, to see what time an Apple keynote will be broadcasted, I can search for Pacific Time, place the line at 10 AM and just like that, my home town marker updates with the relevant time (10:30 PM). I’ve used a lot of difference services and websites for this function and nothing comes close to Time.is as far as ease of use goes. You can measure days in the same way. From the calendar, tap a day to mark it as base, then tap on any date on the calendar to see the difference between the two. If your math is just as bad as mine, you’ll appreciate this feature.
Time.is can provide you with the precise timing for more than 7 million locations. Depending on the sunset time, Time.is will automatically change the theme to dark mode, or you can just make it the default theme (which is what I did).
Time.is is a wonderful time keeping app for the online man. We’ve got friends in more than a dozen different time zones and we follow events that happen all around the world. Time is something we need to be on top of. Time.is can also be a great app to wake up to. You can set an alarm for any of the listed time zones but you need to do it using the same sliders and swipe gestures (which takes some time getting used to). Even if you don’t have an iPad, check out the website, it’s just as awesome. Time.is is available on the App Store for $1.99.