Smarter Ways To Wake Up

Let’s face it, getting out of bed, especially during these times, can take the power of a forklift to pry most of us from all that cocooning comfort to face the day. But maybe, if the wakeup method itself were a little more enticing rather than a shrill jolt, the process would be much less painful. Enter smart alarm clocks, which come with capabilities that rival house managers in real life as well as state-of-the-art entertainment systems that kick off your day in a more energized way.

While they don’t include robotic arms to physically lift you out of your lair, they do have some serious functionality that might inspire you to, in fact, get up.

Here are four of the latest models on the market.

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential

Part clock, part digital detox, the Lenovo Smart Clock isn’t just designed to tell you the time and wake you up. Thanks to a screen that gradually dims and brightens, it can help you fall asleep and get up less abruptly—so you can slide into your day in a more organic way. It works with Google Assistant, so all you have to do is ask it for things like news briefs, weather reports or updates on the traffic and you shall receive.

Set good nightly routines by telling it to dim the lights and lock the doors—and have it turn on the lights, play energizing music or start the coffee maker in the morning. If that’s not enough, when the screen is not in use, it displays the time on customizable clock faces.

The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is available for around $79. lenovo.com

LaMetric Time

As clocks go, LaMetric Time takes the prize for coolest retro vibes. The Wi-Fi-connected timepiece lets you choose the clock face (from tons of adorable designs) that come to life in pixelated fashion. Program it to play your favourite tracks through Spotify or online radio, or you can stream tunes from Apple music—so you’ll wake up on the sunnier side of the bed instead of being scared out of a deep sleep.

The intelligent clock also has countdown capabilities, which can measure how much time you spend on daily tasks like cooking, fitness or other activities. Send notifications from your phone straight to your clock and it will display reminders right on screen. Like any good smart device, it also connects to other home functions—like lighting, appliances and temperature control.

The LaMetric Time is available for $199. lametric.com

Amazon Echo Dot

The perfect companion for your nightstand, Amazon Echo Dot with its LED clock works with Amazon Alexa, so you can ask it just about anything—for a joke, to play music, to answer questions, to play the news or check the weather and set alarms. Before bed, program it to put on your favourite ambient sounds or audiobook, and then tell it to set a sleep timer, so it turns off while you turn in.

Controlling your smart home using your voice to do everything from turning the lights on and off to adjusting thermostats and locking doors is undoubtedly impressive, but this device’s most noteworthy feature is its capacity to set and store alarms—and a lot of them, 100 to be exact. Ask it to set single, one-off alarms or even repeating alarms on different days. Basically, you’ll never forget anything ever again.

The Amazon Echo Dot is available for $59.99. amazon.com.au

Reason ONE Smart Alarm Clock

In terms of utility, Reason ONE Smart Alarm Clock makes no mistake on time. Its large digital time display is easy-to-read. And it automatically adjusts brightness based on ambient light. Paired with Amazon Alexa, you can set timers, check the weather or news and play music, podcasts or audiobooks. The accompanying Reason Home app lets you take the controls, so you can use it to manage any smart home device. And if you set it to night mode before bed, it eliminates the clock display entirely, which means you won’t have to cover it (or your head) to get the room pitch black.

The Reason ONE Smart Alarm Clock is available for around $30. thereasonclock.com

The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.

The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.

Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.

The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.

When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.

The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.

“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.

Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.

While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.

Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.

Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.

The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.

Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.

Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.

One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.

Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.

Smarter Ways To Wake Up

These high-tech alarm clocks will give you a boost to start your day

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential

Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.