As part of the design for Time In Words for Mac , I had to work out the interface for selecting time zones. With Time In Word for iOS , I used picker wheels which are excellent for selecting hierarchical data. On the Mac, there is no such thing as the iOS picker wheel and so I had to consider what to use instead. When you ask the system (Mac or iOS) for the available time zones, you get a list of names like this:

With the introduction of OS X 10.7 (Lion), Apple removed the obvious scroll bars from windows and replaced them with a much more subtle scroll indicator, that only appears when you are actually scrolling. This was designed to match the iOS scrolling, as was the swap of scroll direction which makes much more sense if you use a trackpad. With the upcoming Time In Words for Mac , I have a Preferences window to allow selection of time zones to display in the menu.

Time In Words is now available at the App Store. Time In Words is a clock and calendar app that takes you out of the digital era and back to when saying “quarter to seven” or “five past two” was accurate enough. Check out the Time In Words web page for more info and screen shots.