This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Sixteen Zen, Relaxation, and Meditation Apps. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Meditator ($4) by SimpleTouch Software is more sophisticated.
You get a preparation timer, a countdown timer to the end of your meditation, and gentle sounds that play as you’re relaxing. A third timer can be set to provide you with a marking sound at an interval, such as every minute, every two minutes, or whatever you prefer.
You can choose from eight sounds for the start, interval, and end, and four background tracks for ambience, and save settings for three different types of meditation. We really liked the audio effects here; you can have the program work in silence, but the sounds it creates for ambience and alarms are truly pleasant.
The only oddities: Meditator actually triggers a beeping sound through the iPod touch’s speaker, which we couldn’t figure out how to turn off, and its clocks are very rigid; you don’t have the sort of control offered by Meditation Timer, and can only set sessions in 5 minute increments, with 1-minute adjustments for the interval alerts.