iOS 15 Weather App
Apple today at WWDC revealed a new iOS weather app with additional features, like full-screen maps and live weather notifications. The new app includes many features similar to Dark Sky, which Apple acquired last year.
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There’s also new animated backgrounds that more accurately reflect the sun’s position and precipitation, and notifications highlight when rain or snow starts and stops.
This looks much improved, though I’m not sure yet whether it will win me over.
One of the headlining changes in the iOS 15 Weather app is the interface. It features an all-new design that changes based on the current conditions in your area. For example, if it’s raining outside or there is rain coming soon, the app will adjust its layout to show the hourly forecast, next-hour precipitation, and the radar at the top.
On the other hand, if there’s no rain in your area, the app focuses on the 10-day forecast and current conditions at the top, and pushes other things such as the radar towards the bottom.
I hope it’s not like the Mac Weather widget, where the 5-day forecast—yes, Macs only get half as many days—completely disappears when it’s currently raining.
Sadly, despite the new Weather app being written using the cross-platform SwiftUI, it won’t be coming to iPadOS or macOS this year. The Translate app, introduced in iOS 14, still isn’t available for Mac, either.
Previously:
Update (2021-10-21): Federico Viticci:
The daily forecast at the top of the screen now features a contextual summary of what you should expect for the rest of the day; the 10-day forecast below it is more spaced out and features redesigned weather symbols along with colored bars to indicate low and high temperatures for each day, both of which I like.
If you’re seeing a bar next to today’s weather colored in yellow, red, blue, or green lines, it essentially tells you the temperature range for the day.
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In case you’re wondering what is the temperature range for a particular day in your region, you need to first understand what range each of the colors indicated inside the Weather app corresponds to.
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An overview of these color codes will also appear when you open a location’s Temperature Index.
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For days where the temperature range is shorter than the range expected for the next 10 days, their bars will be shorter.
This is cute, but I find it less usable than simply showing the temperatures throughout the day, as in Weather Line, Weather Strip, and Yahoo Weather. Also, unlike those apps, Apple’s Weather doesn’t show preciptation times more than a day ahead.
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You know, I was just thinking that the Weather app was pretty cool but it needed a few more lens flares because I can still see the background. This new one has a very futuristic Star Trek vibe.
This inability for Apple to sync apps across all platforms is becoming more of a glaring issue now, especially with moves to put the M1 in the iPad Pro and the consolidation of their frameworks. It's also nuts the whole calculator app thing on the iPad still isn't resolved after all these years. Translate, as brought up, is another example. I hope they eventually unite everything.
I would argue (and some tech podcasts have made this argument as well) that this year's WWDC actually showed them having become better about syncing feature sets across platforms.
I also doubt there's much of a _technical_ constraint in bringing Calculator to the iPad. I think Craig even addressed this a few years back, arguing that they couldn't figure out a good UI design that makes sense on the iPad's size. Maybe they can add an ability to iPadOS that some apps are always in Slide Over or Split View?
