Heliports, the Mac Menu Bar App, and Smarter Search
A few weeks after AvClock's first release, three changes landed that pushed it well past "airport clock": heliports joined airports as a trackable location, the Mac app stopped being an afterthought and became a real menu bar utility of its own, and search got noticeably smarter about how people actually look for a place.
Heliports and hospital helipads
Airports aren't the only places that matter for time and weather — hospital helipads and EMS pads have real operational relevance too, and they'd never fit the ICAO/IATA-code model AvClock started with. Heliports shipped as a Premium-included feature: searchable, saveable, and viewable exactly like airports, with an Airports/Heliports switch right in the list header instead of a separate app to juggle.
AvClock, now on your Mac menu bar
The Mac app isn't a scaled-down port of the iPhone version sitting in a window — it lives in the menu bar itself. Your top favorite airport's code and live local time sit right there at all times; click it for the full list, live VFR/IFR weather, and an airport detail view with sunrise/sunset and full location info. It shares AvClock Premium as a Universal Purchase — unlock it once, and it's unlocked on iPhone, iPad, and Mac alike.
Building the Mac app surfaced a real lesson worth naming: a menu bar app can't assume it's always foreground and always fast. Getting the timer-driven clock right (instead of a naive per-second full-window redraw) and loading airport data off the main thread were both necessary before the app felt native rather than like a web view wearing a menu bar icon.
Search that understands cities and states
Typing "Utah" or "Orlando" now actually finds the right airports — city and U.S. state fields were added to the underlying data pipeline and wired into search on both iPhone and Mac, alongside an in-app "Update Airport Data" button so the database stays current without waiting on an app update.
AvClock is reference and informational only, not for actual flight planning or navigation — always use official sources (FAA, NOTAMs, charts, ATC) for that. See Data Credits for where AvClock's airport and weather data actually comes from.