iOS 6 will allow you to choose a song as alarm

Ever since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, users had a practically scarce choice in choosing an alarm tone. This issue was brought up in various forum posts and users have been requesting Apple to change this aspect to cater to an individual preference. It looks like Apple has done something about it and with iOS 6, a user can now pick a song of their choice and use it as a tone for their alarm, a report by Apple Insider states.

The report states, “The little-mentioned feature, which originally turned up in the first betas of iOS 6 back in June, is bound to become on of the most adopted creature comforts of the company’s new mobile operating system. A study conducted last year by YouGov found that nearly 60% of all smartphone users age 16-34 employ their handset as their primary time piece, with roughly 25% of those users saying they also rely on their phones to wake them up in the morning.”

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The report goes on to state, “While the current version of iOS 5 restricts alarm sounds to Apple’s pre-defined ringtones or those purchased via the company’s iTunes Store, the release of iOS 6.0 will offer the option for users to designate any song in their iTunes playlist as their custom wake up tune at no additional cost.”

Another bit of interesting information detailed by the website is that the iPad will now get its own clock application. The clock app has been present on the iPhone and iPod touch devices but was not present on the iPad. But, with iOS 6, users will now have this native application on their Apple tablets. The tablet version of the app will also feature a world clock mode that shows the time and weather of different locales which are shown on the world map. Along with the world clock, the iPad app for the alarm will also feature the stopwatch and timer functionalities.

Apart from the ability to pick a song as an alarm, in iOS 6 beta 4, the native app for YouTube is missing. This is arguably the biggest change we have seen in the new version of iOS 6 yet. With the app being removed, a user would now need to watch YouTube content directly from the browser. Another interesting feature of iOS6 that was not given the spotlight at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote is that it will have an Auto Layout feature. This feature will allow app developers to apply constraints that define how the elements of the user interface are displayed on-screen. These elements can be moved depending on a prioritized list of rules. This Auto Layout feature will be especially beneficial if Apple does launch an iPhone with a larger display or an iPad with a smaller one. This should reduce the issue of fragmentation, which the brand has avoided so far.

While the addition of the ability to select your own song may not be that big a deal to most, this feature has not been present on iOS devices thus far. Let us know your thoughts on these features being implemented in the comments below.