World Clock by timeanddate.com - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

We're actually a small team of mobile developers working on the apps here at Time and Date, with experience going back to the first releases of Android (the T-Mobile G1 anyone?) and iOS3. Time and Date have been releasing apps since 2010.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

We always have a lot of customization in the World Clock apps, different clock faces and styles and adjustable time formats. It's important that users can have a clock that makes sense without having to interpret the information - and that's a really personal choice that is influenced by any number of factors, from what you were taught at school to the job you work in. It's always a difficult balance to find between simplicity and configuration, I don't think there are a lot of users that want a wall of settings, but we always want to make something that people can use.

_{Time and Date AS}

Time and Date AS is the company behind timeanddate.com, World
s No. 1 website for date and time.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

- NetNewsWire 5 - RSS hasn't died yet and NetNewsWire is great on iOS.
- Things is always a pleasure to look at, even if I never get around to doing everything I should
- maps.me is a great app for offline apps
- been - is a simple app for counting the countries that you've visited.
- Any of the other great apps by Time and Date ;-)

How long have you been working on this app?

The first commit comes from late 2014, but builds on concepts and code that date from 2009/10. Since then, we've been releasing on a regular basis with minor updates, bug fixes, UI improvements and there is still a big long list of things that we'd love to get around to when someone adds a few more hours to every day.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

Keeping track of the time in other places is a surprisingly hard thing to do - and it shouldn't have to be. All of the World Clock apps at Time and Date need to be accurate and there is a lot of proprietary code and work that goes into getting that right - we have a team of researchers to make sure that our data is the best. The mobile apps really are the pocket version of the web tools. Our users range from curious individuals to large corporations.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

We've built the app to be independent of the system, it's surprising how often the operating systems can get things like DST changes wrong. On top of that we've built the World Clock around cities rather than time zones, so there is a lot of information about a city, not just its time. Sunrise, sunset, information about the moon, currency, and languages.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

At the moment the big focus is getting everything ready for iOS14 and Android 11, so we're focusing on making that a good experience. Later in the autumn, we'll dig into suggestions and ideas and start planning the winter's work.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

See our other fine apps and services on timeanddate.com: http://www.timeanddate.com/apps