📖 The Story
Back in the early days of Mac OS X, there was a little gem called Timer Utility by JR Productions. Version 4.1.4, built for macOS 10.5+ with Xcode 4.0 — it shipped as a Universal Binary supporting PowerPC, 32-bit Intel, and 64-bit Intel. A true relic of the PPC-to-Intel transition era.
It was a beautifully practical multi-tool: countdown timers, alarm clocks, stopwatches, date countdowns, and — the killer feature — project time tracking with cost rates and CSV/PDF export. Coaches used it for training blocks. Freelancers used it to track billable hours. It lived in your menu bar and Dock, quietly doing its job.
us.jrproductions.timerutility · Architectures: ppc7400, i386, x86_64 ·
Growl notifications · Dynamic Dock tile · iTunes playlist actions via AppleScript ·
Action chaining (sound → linked timer → notification) · NSKeyedArchiver .tudata persistence
Then JR Productions went dark. The app was discontinued, the license server went offline, and macOS marched on — dropping 32-bit support, then Rosetta, then Intel entirely. Timer Utility couldn't follow.
Timer Utility Next is a ground-up rebuild in modern Swift, designed to carry forward everything that made the original great — and leave behind everything that held it back. No Growl. No license servers. Just a solid, native macOS app that respects your time (pun intended).