June 23rd, 2024

The unbearable sorrow of Apple Weather

The author criticizes Apple Weather iOS app for inconsistent temperature data presentation, focusing on alignment and color issues in temperature bars. Adjusting text size improved alignment, but concerns remain about decision-making process.

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The unbearable sorrow of Apple Weather

The article discusses the author's frustration with the presentation of temperature data in the Apple Weather iOS app. The author delves into the inconsistencies in how the temperature ranges are displayed, particularly focusing on the alignment of data and the colors used in the temperature bars. Despite attempts to calculate and rationalize the placement of the bars based on temperature ranges, the author finds discrepancies in the app's display. An update reveals that the alignment issues may be related to text size settings on the phone, which when adjusted, improved the alignment of the temperature bars. However, the author still questions the app's decision-making process for bar placement and color adjustments, criticizing Apple's Weather team for failing to ensure alignment across different text sizes. The article concludes with the author expressing frustration over the challenges in understanding the app's temperature charting methods.

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Link Icon 7 comments
By @gaudat - 5 months
Hate to say that but it works for me. I am using the largest regular* font size on an iPhone SE and there's no issue on the exact same page in the weather app.

Perhaps OP is using one of the extra-large font sizes hidden behind the "Larger Accessibility Sizes" toggle. It can be expected users at that font size value accessibility over aesthetics. As screen space is limited there is of course a point where things start to look broken.

The weather app could include a TV or clock-like layout for extra-large text sizes but that doesn't really fly with Apple's UI/UX consistency.

By @snailmailman - 5 months
I was eager to install apples new “sports” app on my grandmother’s iphone. Figuring it would be simple and won’t have ads or anything. But the app was unusable with the larger text size my grandmother uses. Crazy that Apple doesn’t test accessibility features.

The app was brand new at the time. I wonder if it’s improved at all since then

Edit: app seems fine now at least. Glad it’s improved

By @theideaofcoffee - 5 months
It looks like the poster realized a global setting messed everything up but there’s still... everything else about that wretched app. Even on the best, cleanest, fastest, newest, pick your adjective, connection, it’s still so... bad. Nothing loads quickly, I stand there for what seems like ages to get temperatures for my city, every time. I hate opening it and trying to get info from it. The map for clouds or precip is even worse, failing to load the one part of the map that I want to see.

It’s by far Apple’s worst built-in app on the iphone, by far. I wish they’d give it some love, moreso after having bought out Dark Sky.

By @masspro - 5 months
I noticed a couple months ago this same issue with the vertical alignment of the temperature numbers in the first summary bar at the top of the app. I too have text size increased. Days with a different weather icon pushed their numbers down a bit. Gives me the feeling of janky HTML box flow issues.
By @devwastaken - 5 months
I want a weather app that shows the NOAA forecast graph neatly so I know specifically the predicted conditions for the day.
By @c-hendricks - 5 months
> Several readers on Mastodon told me the alignment was fine on their phones and suggested Larger Text/Dynamic Type as the reason the charts on my phone are messed up. They were absolutely right.

So, nothingburger?