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iOS 5 Brings Improvements to Weather App

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One staple of iOS since its inception has been the Weather app, a simple home screen powered by Yahoo and The Weather Channel that allows users to add locations and see the current conditions as well as a six-day forecast of high/low temperatures and an icon showing the conditions for each day.

wwdc11 weather notification
With iOS 5, Apple has made several minor improvements to the weather functionality, starting of course with the integration of a weather widget into the Notification Center, offering users a glance at weather conditions with a single swipe.

ios 5 weather hourly
But Apple has also made improvements to the Weather app, including a "current location" page that uses geolocation to automatically display the weather and forecast for wherever the user is rather than having to manually input a location.

Apple has also increased the level of forecast detail, as tapping on a daily forecast expands the item to display an hour-by-hour forecast of temperatures and conditions, with the user able to easily scroll through the entire list for the day.

Unfortunately, Apple has yet to deploy a dynamic home screen icon for the Weather app that would show the current conditions for the user's location instead of the fixed display of 73 degrees and sunny. But with the weather easily accessible from anywhere via a single swipe in Notification Center, users may find their need for a dynamic home screen icon to be lessened considerably.

Top Rated Comments

192 months ago
It would be great if it would let me pick the weather.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
192 months ago
Seriously?

Unfortunately, Apple has yet to deploy a dynamic home screen icon for the Weather app that would show the current conditions for the user's location
Presumably looking into the sky/out of a window is too retro a method for discerning the current weather?
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
192 months ago
Presumably looking into the sky/out of a window is too retro a method for discerning the current weather?
True, but it'd be a nice touch. The problem is not so much that it doesn't show the weather on the icon, it's that it shows the WRONG weather on the icon. There's nothing more annoying than sitting in a drizzly office in London in the middle of Winter, looking at an icon on the Springboard that tells me it's 23° and Sunny.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Lahmy88 Avatar
192 months ago
dynamic icons for apps such as weather should still be something to aim for
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
192 months ago
The best enhancement they could make would be to ditch Yahoo Weather and use something else, because the current version is regularly 3-4 degrees C (5.5-7 degrees F) out in certain international locations. ie: mine.

Presenting the weather with more features and more options is pointless if you're presenting the wrong weather.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sunfast Avatar
192 months ago
Can you remove stocks & weather completely yet? That'd be the best enhancement for me.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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