iPhone Shabbos ClockApple just approved two new apps we released recently. They are virtually the same app, but one is named the iPhone Shabbos Clock and the other is named iPhone Auto Shutoff Alarm Clock. Let me explain how they work.

On Shabbos, religious Jews are not allowed to use the iPhone, amongst hundreds of other things. So we cannot set a normal alarm clock to wake us up for morning services on Saturday. Why? Because we cannot shut the alarm off from beeping. So they make special alarm clocks that turn themselves off after X seconds or minutes.

So we built the same idea, as an iPhone app, and named one for the Jewish crowd (i.e. iPhone Shabbos Clock) and one for the non-Jewish world (i.e. iPhone Auto Shutoff Alarm Clock), if it is helpful for non-Jewish people to have an alarm that turns off by itself.

Now that you understand the need for it and why we have two of the same app, just named for each market, let me show you how it works...

You can set up to three alarms:

iPhone Shabbos Clock

You can then set how many seconds the alarm should go off for:

iPhone Shabbos Clock

Once you set it, the time will show in landscape mode only:

iPhone Shabbos Clock

Important things to note: Touching the screen will not do anything, except for hitting set alarm. We do this on purpose, because we don't want you to do anything by accident to the phone when it is on Shabbos. Turning the phone won't change the orientation, again - a shabbos thing. Also, make sure to keep your phone or iPod Touch plugged in, because it keeps the app open and doesn't shut off the phone or sleep it, while it is on. Also, the App must be open for it to alarm. Finally, make sure your volume is loud enough to wake you. Got all of that?

You can get the Shabbos version over here for 99 cents and the Standard version over here for 99 cents.