Style over Substance

This is an extremely simple app, as you don’t get any more than what is immediately displayed. There is no clicking to expand out a 7-day forecast, and don’t even think about radar maps or simultaneously checking different locations. There is no “percentage chance” of rain either, just an umbrella. Possibly the biggest omission? NO CURRENT TEMPERATURE. Just a high and a low, for the current day and following 3 days.

However, it is BEAUTIFULLY designed, by far the best-looking weather app for Mac out there. I cannot stress enough how sleek this thing looks. It is just simply SO much easier to look at a desktop widget than it is to look at the status bar or even the dock, especially if you have a fair amount of applications and icons already taking up space in these places. The colors are bold and pleasing, the icons stylish and easy to read at-a-glance, the humidity and wind speed a nice touch, and the adjustable transparency welcome and very useful.

Accuracy seems good so far, but again it is not keeping track of current temperature so it’s not doing as much as most other weather apps.

If I could suggest anything to the developers, it would definitely be upgrading this app to real-time functionality. I would even be willing to pay more, because adding real-time temperature and other conditions would put this at the top of the weather-app heap.

In summary: if you need real-time weather and updated conditions, this app is not for you. If you like detailed forecasts and radar maps, this app is not for you either. If you simply want minimal information at maximum style, this app is perfect. Is it worth paying a dollar for? Doubtful, but that logic would’ve put Rolls-Royce and Rolex out of business a long time ago. This is a perfect example of paying for style over substance, and for some people (like me), it’s an acceptable trade-off.

Stan Corbett about Weather posters