Tag: Weather tracking »

In this day and age where just about any amount of information can be acquired anywhere with a few screen taps, some can often forget that it’s the information itself that’s most important. Sometimes the relevant data can be hidden behind several menus or overly complicated interfaces, resulting in a delay of acquisition or even users flat out giving up on their inquiry. It’s nice then to see that apps such as Weather Neue are still out there. Because sometimes I just want to know if it’s going to rain in the evening.

Weather Neue is, quite simply (and literally), an app that displays the weather. Locations are gleaned from the iOS device’s GPS, and the current temperature and weather conditions are displayed. Location, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and a three day forecast with highs and lows are the only other bits of information shown. Settings can be adjusted to switch between metric (Celsius) and non-metric (Fahrenheit), and users can toggle between four different display themes until they find one they prefer. My theme of choice is Cloudy.

Weather Neue is perfect for anyone who just wants to see what it’s like outside, or what tomorrow will look like. There are no extraneous bits of information to dig for and no menus to fight through. It’s just the weather. The app starts up quickly and displays the pertinent information prominently in the center of the screen with no need for the user to do anything, really. Giving the device a shake to refresh the info is about as complicated as it gets. The clean and simple visuals do well to round out the package with instantly recognizable icons and helpful text that’s just big enough to stand out but small enough so that it doesn’t obscure anything or fight other visual elements for attention.

As perfect as such a simple weather app may be, Weather Neue does have one potential drawback in that it’s just the local weather. Anyone who wants to know the forecast for the whole week or what the skies are doing in another city is out of luck.

Personally, I couldn’t be happier with Weather Neue. I rarely need to know what the weather for the whole week is doing and there are several ways to figure out if it’s raining in other areas of the world. Knowing what it’s doing right now or will this evening – or within the next few days – is much more important to me, so being able to find all of that out within seconds is most certainly appreciated.

Whether you chalk it up to climate change or not, it's been one heck of a strange winter. Now it's March, notorious for its leonine bitter entry and mild sheepish departure. With everything else turned on its head, who knows what's in store as we make our annual seasonal transition. We've put together our favorite four iOS weather apps to keep you informed of what's coming your way as we bid goodbye to old man winter.

AccuWeather for iPhone

From AccuWeather.com comes a feature rich app which bears the same name. Accuweather for iPhone provides local and international hourly and 15-day forecasts with radar animations, satellite imagery and storm warnings. Cool features include Pin Location for tracking friends and family, social media griping, er, sharing on Twitter and Facebook and all kinds of special health and lifestyle forecast categories ranging from allergy and arthritis reports to dog walking and early golf course conditions. The app's sleek utilitarian design takes maximum advantage of iOS 5's best features too. From iCloud support to Notification Center and calendar integration, this app does it all. An iPad version is also available, but it gets less enthusiastic user reviews.

Weather+

Presently on sale to celebrate the end of winter, Weather+ is a universal app that wows critics and users. This app balances function and design with something near perfection. According to the developers every worldwide weather station is included, and the app serves up five-day forecasts for them all with stunning fullscreen video. Along with the basics this app gives users wind direction and speed information along with the humidity index, and rain and snowfall expectations. The app includes a gorgeous old-school flip-style alarm clock and swipe gestures switch locations with ease.

Magical Weather

Optimized for the big iPad display and meant to be left running to show off its good looks, Magical Weather is still feature-packed. Along with the visual representations of 16 weather conditions it has daily, even hourly, forecasts for up to nine of two million locations world-wide. It dishes on highs and lows, humidity, wind speeds, UV indexes and atmospheric pressure and displays in Celsius or Fahrenheit. It's eye candy to a meteorological end.

Weather Live

Ignore that Santa's hat, Weather Live's icon and app have just been updated. This beautiful universal package is feature dense too. The app puts form first, in that it's like looking out a magic window at something akin to what's out the kitchen window. But, alongside the amazing design are current conditions and seven-day forecasts. It has the 411 on the humidex or windchill - and in March we can easily see both - with sunrise and sunset details, wind, visibility, all that good stuff. The app lets users search for locations by postal/zip code, IP, and geo-positioning and the icon has a badge indicating the current temperature. Weather Live speaks Metric and Imperial and has customizable widgets so users see as much, or as little, as they prefer.