The unbearable sorrow of Apple Weather | Hacker News Reader

The unbearable sorrow of Apple Weather

leancrew.com

18 pointszdw21 comments

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.

> Perhaps OP is using one of the extra-large font sizes hidden behind the "Larger Accessibility Sizes" toggle.

They are. FTA:

“Update 23 Jun 2024 4:11 PM

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. I bumped up my text size so long ago I’d forgotten all about it, but I should’ve known to look into that before posting. Interestingly, moving my text size down just one tick got all the bar ends to match up. The colors still seem a little off to me, but I’ll need to zoom in and look more carefully.”

A failure to account for accessibility modifications is endemic to mobile devices.

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

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.

> failing to load the one part of the map that I want to see.

Yep. My partner and I have this problem every time we use the app in our home city. It usually works better when we’re traveling. I’ve left them feedback and will keep hoping for better. Meantime, I’ve switched to a less frustrating app.

Unless I am on an extremely poor connection the temp data and maps populate quickly for me.

Most of Apple's Weather app works OK for me, except the precipitation map/animation takes ages to load, if it loads at all (it's about 50/50).

I usually hop over to AccuWeather instead, which doesn't seem to have this issue.

I went back to Wunderground after Darksky went … dark.

I loved Darksky and I hoped Apple would use some of its genius ideas in Weather.app but so far it’s a miss.

A shame on Apple.

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.

I want a weather app that shows the NOAA forecast graph neatly so I know specifically the predicted conditions for the day.

I'm building: https://weather-sense.leftium.com

Any suggestions?

My app is inspired by https://merrysky.net

For me the main focus is what is the weather today and tomorrow so I can plan outdoor projects. Predictions after a day or so are much more general and not possible to track hourly.

However I do need the NOAA forecast for those days in the form of their textual forecast to know what their general prediction is. This way I can look 3-4 days ahead and plan, and then a day before or during that I can move times around the weather.

Basically a "if you work outdoors here's what you need to know" kind of weather app.

oooh i rather like that watercolour effect on the map!

I figured the "main characters" on the radar map are the current location and precipitation relative to your current location.

So the watercolor map layer looks more aesthetic while hiding unnecessary detail ^^

Meteogram from meteoblue is not the same, but plots thd output of different models. Even for slightly technical users, I find weather so underwhelming in how it's presented

Just high and low numbers not graphs, no sense of variance (time or intensity). Without dark sky hard to get minutely predictions, even with large error bars

> 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?

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect consistent design in first-party apps for users who use larger text on their phones.

Failing at accessibility is not nothing.

It isn’t a failure of accessibility.

"Larger Text" is a built-in basic accessibility feature.

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