I’m always surprised when I see people using weather apps packed with ads. The Apple Weather app has gone from good to great over the last decade.
It remains the best free weather app that has no chance of being acquired and turned off. Sure, Apple acquired and turned off Dark Sky, but precipitation alerts live on in Apple Weather.
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Apple’s Weather app is having a rough week, facing multiple outages of over 12 hours each. If you’re looking for an alternative that’s more reliable, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite weather apps for iPhone and iPad…
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The popular iOS app Weather Line has been acquired by an unknown buyer and will be shut down in April 2022. Users of their premium SuperCharge service will have their subscriptions extended until the app is shut down next year. All other users who currently use the free service will continue to be able to do so as well.
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Rejoice, meatbags, for your beloved AI overlord has finally deigned to make its way to the Mac. Despite having an infinite number of better things to do, CARROT, the sarcastic and sadistic artificial intelligence that powers a whole family of iOS applications, is now ready to provide weather information right on your desktop, since it seems you are far too lazy to get up and look out a window for yourself.
CARROT Weather for Mac is available today on the Mac App Store, along with a matching update to its iOS counterpart, that introduces several cool new features to the app while maintaining all of the character and personality you’ve come to expect from the line.
Dark Sky is out with a major update to its hyperlocal weather reporting app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Dark Sky 5 adds a number of new features including a new focus on 24-hour forecasts, the ability to share pressure data, customizable advanced notifications.
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Yahoo today announced its plans to bring four of its apps to Apple Watch in time for the device’s April 24th launch date.
Yahoo is planning to update its Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Sports Fantasy, Yahoo News Digest, and Yahoo News Hong Kong apps with support for Apple’s new wearable, today giving a first look at the experience.
The company provided a breakdown of what you can expect to see on your Apple Watch with each of the apps:
Here’s a look at the News Digest and News Hong Kong apps:
You can expect updates to the Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Sports Fantasy, Yahoo News Digest, and Yahoo News Hong Kong apps by April 24th.
You all remember CARROT, right? The sadistic, sarcastic artificial intelligence that powers a collection of productivity and fitness applications has returned for a fifth app. The latest piece of software to join the CARROT family is CARROT Weather.
As you may have gathered from the title, this new app helps you track current and upcoming weather conditions with the snark that only CARROT can really nail. The Weather app is much simpler in presentation than its predecessors, but it’s just as robust as you’ve come to expect from this line of apps.
Google has a new app for iPhone and iPad users called ‘Google News & Weather‘ that presents local news and weather as well as headlines from a variety of categories and sources in one app. Categories for headlines can be added or removed from within the app for customizing the news you want to follow. Previously, Google News & Weather was only available for Android users.
The app joins a huge list of existing Google apps including Gmail, which was just updated for the new iPhone 6 display sizes yesterday, and Google News & Weather is already optimized for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Full description below:
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In March we reported on a new jailbreak tweak called ProWidgets that introduced a whole suite of widgets to the iOS 7 Notification Center. With today’s release of iOS 8, Avanio Labs, the company created by Alan Yip, has released several native widgets for the new operating system. These new add-ons will help you keep track of your calendar and to-do list, monitor the weather, and perform a ton of useful actions on the text stored in your clipboard.
The first of these is Agenda+, which you can see in the screenshots above. Agenda+ combines a list view of your calendar events with a summary of your iOS Reminders. iOS typically breaks these two up into separate widgets, with the Calendar widget showing a full timeline of your day (which can take up a lot of space depending on how many events you have and how late in the day they are).
When Apple unveiled iOS 8 earlier this month, it didn’t take long for beta testers to notice it had replaced Yahoo with The Weather Channel as the source of data in the stock iOS Weather app. While recent reports suggested Yahoo was trying to get Apple to put even more of its services on the iPhone including search, we now have a bit more of the story behind why exactly Yahoo got the boot for weather in iOS 8. Re/code reports that the deal was made by Weather Channel CEO David Kenny who also happened to be a former Yahoo board member:
The situation Yahoo finds itself in is due to a very crafty deal engineered by former Yahoo board member and Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, who has essentially shoved Yahoo off the key smartphone to be replaced by a new offering that he has been developing since he took over the weather news and information service last year. With it, he has unseated Yahoo from its important perch.
It’s worth pointing out that Yahoo has always powered its weather services with data from The Weather Channel. With that in mind, it’s unclear if Apple possibly had plans to drop Yahoo and go straight to the source before Kenny started developing the new and improved weather service referenced above. More from Re/code on why Apple made the switch:
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Yahoo released an interesting update to its Yahoo Mail app for iPhone today. In version 3.0, Yahoo is integrating many of its other services including weather, sports scores, stocks, images, news, and web search directly into the mail app. The goal is to provide users one easy place to access all their content from Yahoo, but it’s unclear what that means for the future of Yahoo’s other iOS apps for each of the services. The feature is currently only available to iPhone users running iOS 7 and up.
When you’re finished reading and replying to your email, see what’s happening in the world by tapping on the News icon. From celebrity gossip to the latest political news, you’ll find it in your personalized, visually rich news stream.
Let’s head over to the Today icon. Here’s where you’ll find a snapshot of the information you care about most every day and search — from your local weather to a news digest to the latest stock quotes and sports scores you care about.
The updated app provides new three new tabs along the bottom— Mail, News, and Today— with Mail bringing you to your inbox, News providing a stream of all stories from Yahoo, and Today providing an overview of weather, trending content, scores, and access to web search. While I have a feeling that some might not be too happy about their Mail app being bombarded with all this new content, Yahoo has done a pretty good job of keeping it out of the way if you only ever want to see your inbox.
Yahoo Mail version 3.0 is available on the App Store now.
– Feature updates for iPhone iOS7+. Your Yahoo Mail app is now enhanced with news, search, and snapshots of the weather, sports scores, stocks, and News Digest. Access the info you need, all in one app.
– Performance improvements
– Bug fixes
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSjEMBLANjw]
The Weather Channel app for iPhone has been updated with a brand new iOS 7-inspired design and features. The new design gives each bit of information a more prominent location on the screen, though it does so at the expense of an all-in-one overview. Where previously all relevant weather information was contained on the main screen, the updated app places various types of information on separate pages that can be swiped through.
The addition of a new airport mode that provides users with information about weather-related flight delays and cancellations could serve as a useful tool for travelers. A new severe weather mode causes the entire app’s interface to change if severe weather is reported in your area, putting critical information front-and-center. Finally, a social component has been added that allows users to submit weather reports and photos of their own.
You can grab the redesigned Weather Channel app on the iPhone App Store free of charge.
The Forecast team today released their iOS 7 update for Dark Sky ($3.99), the ‘down-to-the-minute’ weather app. The update strips back the bevels and gloss to fit the iOS 7 aesthetic. The new design puts the most important information — the current weather conditions — front and center. A graph plot of upcoming precipitation is also available at a glance on the main page of the app.
Blurring has also been used to great effect, with the forecast information superimposed on a blurred view of the global radar maps. These maps are beautifully rendered; the radar patterns smoothly transition over time. In addition to the radically new design, version 4 also brings much forecasts that span longer into the future. The next 24 hours is prioritised, but 7-day outlooks are available with a swipe. The day-by-day breakdowns offer a lot of information, more so than most weather reports will provide.
Completely rewritten from scratch, it sets aside the limitations of the web to become the weather app we’ve always wanted — and always wanted to build. It’s the culmination of over two years of work in figuring out how to display and organize weather data the right way. And it’s a full featured weather app — something we swore we’d never do — but it still remains true to its original focus on what’s happening right now, where you’re standing.
The developers say the app is a complete rewrite, which makes the fact they are not charging for the update impressive. For new customers, Dark Sky is available for $3.99 on the App Store. Note that Dark Sky coverage currently encompasses the United States, the UK and Ireland. The developers have said that they are actively working on adding data for more regions.
At WWDC, Yahoo received an Apple Design Award for Yahoo Weather. This coincided with the unveiling of iOS 7 and its Weather app, which displayed striking similarities to Yahoo’s effort.
With the latest update to the app, Yahoo has brought the same award-winning design to the iPad. The full-bleed imagery from Flickr really shines on a larger display. The layout for iPad is largely a port of the iPhone design with upgraded icons and assets but refinements have been made for the iPad where necessary. For example, forecast information can be much larger because of the additional real-estate.
WunderMap, which describes itself as “the world’s most interactive weather and radar app,” has been given a complete makeover in version 2.0, with a new UI, more layers and improved search functionality.
Weather is pulled from Weather Underground’s network of 30,000 weather stations. You can choose from a range of preset layers like Hurricane, Severe, Precipitation and Wind, or create your own customised layers.
The iPad app is available as a free ad-supported download from the App Store, with a $1.99 in-app purchase option to remove the ads.
AOL launched a new iPad app today that allows users to quickly access their AOL email accounts, as well as the latest news and weather updates from the online service. The app is designed exclusively for Apple’s tablet and doesn’t currently have an iPhone counterpart.
The application is available for free on the iOS App Store.
Features:
• Discover the latest stories and videos in an engaging news stream format
• Connect and share via AOL Mail, Facebook and Twitter
• Choose the news categories that matter most to you by customizing your stream
• Save articles and videos to read, watch and share at your leisure
• Delight in the featured news stream as it reflects your personal news interests over time
Leading up to the unveiling of Apple’s new iTunes Radio service earlier this month at WWDC, we reported on some small details regarding deals Apple had reached with the major labels necessary to get bring its Pandora competitor to market. Earlier reports claimed that Apple was paying Warner around 10% of ad revenue— that’s around twice as much as Pandora reportedly pays. Today, The Wall Street Journal provides us with some in-depth info on what Apple is paying labels and publishers after taking a look at the terms of the deal.
Apple will in fact be paying well over the 0.12 cents per listen Pandora offers the labels, as well as a percentage of ad revenue, and the payout will also increase during the service’s second year:
During iTunes Radio’s first year, Apple will pay a label 0.13 cents each time a song is played, as well as 15% of net advertising revenue, proportionate to a given label’s share of the music played on iTunes. In the second year, that bumps up to 0.14 cents per listen, plus 19% of ad revenue.
However, there are some exceptions. The report notes that Apple won’t have to pay royalties for songs that users already have in their iTunes library. That will apparently extend to “songs that might be on an album that a listener owns just part of.” Interestingly, Apple also won’t pay for songs skipped before the 20 second mark and those included in special promotions, but it can only skip paying royalties on two songs per hour for each iTunes Radio user:
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