Weather Machine – Review
By App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: Massimiliano Torregiani
Version #: 1.0
Date Released: 2009-05-17
Developer: Weather Machine
Price: 3.99
User Rating:
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Everybody likes to know the weather, and there’s pleanty of apps to choose from—Apple includes the basic weather app, WeatherBug, and The Weather Channel app to just name a few (more weather apps can be found here).
Weather Machine has the same information found in other apps: temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed, etc, and it does have a variety of maps as well.
What really attracted me to this app though is the interface. It seems like CustomWeather, Inc. really worked hard on redefining the user interface and tried to really push it to new directions.
I commend them on their effort—it isn’t an easy thing to do, and this app really LOOKS good. Instead of just using the selector on the bottom to see data, you can swipe your finger up and down to cycle through forward and back through time. To get to a variety of the screens, you grab a button and drag it. This is all very inventive and unique.
From an academic point of view, the UI is fantastic. From a real world/usability point of view the user interface fails in terms of usability, consistency, and response time.
One thing that Apple has always prided itself on is the intuitive nature of its applications. (Am I the only one that remembers the old Mac commercial showing a PC with stacks of manuals, and then fluttering down comes a small manual that shows you how to use a Mac?). This app has thrown much of that intuitive nature out the window. I’ve repeatedly read the instructions on how to use the app to figure out what I’m supposed to do. Do I drag something to make it go forward? Why do I have 3 ways to pick a day on one screen? (I can swipe the days, select the day along the bottom, or choose the day on the right side!)
To make matters worse, the interface isn’t consistent. For example, get from the main screen to the settings, I drag it out from the side. (It’s actually kinda cool.) But when I’m done, I don’t push it back, I choose the standard ‘Back’ button found in a navigator window. Another example is when you rotate the phone (landscape) on the current date, you get various maps (satellite, Doppler radar, etc); but if you have a date other than ‘today’ showing and you rotate the phone, you get an hourly breakdown of what the temperature, etc. are going to be.
Lastly, the response time of the app is extremely slow. I often tapped and/or swiped extra times to make things move. Later I realized I was just impatient.
* Maximum and minimum temperatures
* Perceived temperature
* Speed of the wind and its direction
* Atmospheric pressure
* Dew point
* UV Index
* Humidity
* Probability of rain
And there's more: you can view the current situation of each locality, have forecasts of the next 5 days, and you can also go even more in detail consulting forecasts divided into day quarters for the next 48 hours.
Moreover, by rotating your iPhone, you can browse maps of your preferred regions. In addition, you can use the GPS receiver to accurately determine the closest location to you so to have related weather information.
You also have the possibility to customize the appearance of Weather Machine by choosing an image in your photo library to use it as background image.
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