Not sure if this should go here or under the Brainstorm itself, but here goes..

My solution is to use a third part application: Flipclock. Gives you a much better/easier to use interface, much more features than just built in alarm functionality, and is under active develpoment (Hi, I'm the developer ;-) ):
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32832

Trying to get some of these rolled into the built in alarm app would take a lot longer and will not be anywhere near as high a priority as alarm is considered a low value application (nobody's going to buy a nokia tablet/phone/etc to use just as a clock... having an alarm feature is one nice added bonus that's all). Maemo does a very good job with having an Alarm API/daemon, and Flip utilizes that to give you all the benefits of the built in alarm program, but with much more. Fremantle is currently in the works but has been set as second priority to completing the app and getting all features working (since Fremantle devices are not readily available to mass market yet).

Anyways, my thought is that Nokia/Maemo team has done a good job improving the alarmD API/daemon, so any quams with that should be directed to them; any quams with user interface/how the alarm screens work should be directed to third party/community apps that have time and desire to focus on such things.