iOS Today 809 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on iOS today, Rosemary Orchard and I, Micah Sargent, talk about the weather and how you can keep track of it. Stay tuned. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is iOS Today, episode 809 with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 for Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. Wonderful. We hello and welcome to iOS Today.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:35]:
This is the show where we Talk all things iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, HomePod, OS and all the other OSes Apple has to offer us. I am one of your hosts. My name is Micah Sargent and I
Rosemary Orchard [00:00:48]:
promise you folks, I am Rosemary Orchard. I just look really pale because it's super hot here. So I'm not wearing makeup because I don't want to just be sweating it all off because I figured that would probably be distracting. And you know, the topic for today's show is the weather. So, you know, it seemed appropriate. Appropriate that one of us would be melting and then Micah would just be looking as cool as a cucumber as
Mikah Sargent [00:01:07]:
he always does, literally wearing a sweater. I feel bad. I am currently in the basement of a home. That helps. But it certainly we are appreciative of you being here despite the heat wave that is going on for you. And yes, we thought it'd be an appropriate time to talk about the weather given that you are faced with weather troubles at the moment. Now Apple of course at one point had a relatively basic weather app, but over time, not only did Apple make improvements to its app, but it also purchased a very well known, very well loved app called Dark sky and used that to basically, I think drastically improve upon what the weather app is possible or is capable of doing. And so we have seen sort of localized, better improvements there and I think a lot of fanciness, frankly, when it comes to the weather app as well, given what has been added by way of dark sky.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:23]:
Now that Rosemary on your screen looks to be the weather app.
Rosemary Orchard [00:02:29]:
Tell us about it. Yeah, so the weather app, depending on where you are in the world, is going to be pulling in data from a variety of sources. So here on my screen you can see it's showing the area that I am the current outside temperature. Please note folks, the outside temperatures are measured in the shade, not in direct sunlight. Very important if you are considering doing things like walking your pets. This temperature is way too hot for taking anybody outside, including pets. Then underneath that we've got, you know, words for the current weather condition. Believe it or not, it's sunny outside and then the highs and lows of today.
Rosemary Orchard [00:03:04]:
And underneath this, this is where the localized data pulling comes in really helpful. So at the moment we have an Amber weather alert over here in the UK which is turning into a red weather alert which is basically it's super, super, super hot and we don't know how to cope with it and our infrastructure is not built for this. So we're all just going to slowly toast like marshmallows over a fire. So if anybody has some chocolate covered biscuits that would be really great time to send those over. They'll probably have melted by the time they get here, but we would appreciate the sentime. Underneath this we have the hourly forecast for the rest of the day. So as you can see now it's about 5pm and it's going to go through all of that. So it's got the general conditions.
Rosemary Orchard [00:03:45]:
You can also switch it to precipitation. Good joke. And weather wind. Sorry, what? What is wind? No idea. And then underneath that then we go through into the daily and then precipitation maps and more and more detail as we go down. So basically it starts on, starts off super simple and then goes all the way up to complicated. Now right at the bottom we can see there is the option to turn on notifications. And turning on notifications is pretty important because then it can actually send you push notifications for localized weather which is really great for saying like oh hey, like you know, there's about to be a thunderstorm in your area, maybe you want to get the laundry in off the line.
Rosemary Orchard [00:04:28]:
It doesn't say exactly that, but it is does do a pretty good job of keeping you up to date with things which you know is always super, super handy. So yeah, Apple Weather is honestly pretty. If I weren't in love with another weather app which we will get around to talking about, I would use Apple Weather for my primary app.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:47]:
Let me ask you too, when it comes to the weather app, of course we know that a lot of third party developers these days make use of the APIs available from Apple and the Apple Weather service. And so that made me think about shortcuts and what shortcuts uses when it grabs the weather. When you are doing your weather based shortcuts on occasion, do you make use of the third party app that you love for that or do you let the system handle the kind of weather outlook whenever you create these or do you not do very many weather automations?
Rosemary Orchard [00:05:29]:
I mean I personally don't do a huge number of weather automations. I do have a couple of automations based around sunrise and sunset because as Much as I like my phone turning dark at sunset, I don't want it turning back to light mode at sunrise. That is in the summer way too early and in winter way too late. So instead I have my alarm turn my phone back to light mode, which means when sunrise happens, then I have a thing which basically goes, hey, just set this back to dark mode unless it's after 7:30am but, but I mean there's all these things where unfortunately many apps have seriously lagged behind in their shortcuts support over the years. And the weather app was kind of there from the beginning. It wasn't there right from the beginning beginning, but it did a pretty decent job. And for anything more than that, people tended to use Dark sky because it had a really great API and was used as part of the documentation for shortcuts. Obviously Dark sky no longer exists, it's part of Apple's own weather app now.
Rosemary Orchard [00:06:35]:
We will get you something that's kind of a replacement for Dark sky later. But yeah, it's one of these things where I found that most of the time if I'm making a weather as shortcut, it's for someone else and the one app that I can guarantee they are going to have on their phone is weather. So that's what I tend to use.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:54]:
That makes sense. That makes perfect sense. Now there, frankly, when Dark sky was around, that was the period of time where you would get quite a big difference between different weather apps in terms of the results. Right. You would wonder, okay, when I'm using this third party weather app, is it giving me the best possible results? And when I was using Dark Sky, I knew that I was getting the best possible results for where I was. Now that Dark sky is owned by Apple, now that Apple has the weather API, a lot of, as I said, the playing field has been leveled in many ways, but some still use third party or other methods of getting the weather and that can make a difference. But what it does mean is you almost get to make the choice of the theme, the skin, the look and feel of your weather app. And you can not worry so much about the impact that has on the accuracy of your results because again, in many ways the data that's underneath is being pulled from the same place.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:11]:
It's sort of the styling on top. And that is why, you know, regardless of the weather apps that we talk today, you're probably going to be as happy as you would be with your local weather person about the predictions that come via the app. But what if I want personality? What If a joke here and there is important to me. What if a little bit of. Of. Of. Of achievement tracking would be a fun thing. Is there some place I can go to get that?
Rosemary Orchard [00:08:49]:
Yes, there is. And not only can you get some personality, you can choose what sort of personality you want because, you know, we all know that choice is everything. So my. My personal favorite weather app. It's one that just has a soft spot in my heart, even though it threatens to kill me every other time I open it. It's Carrot. So it Cara. Today the sun has finally decided to grace us with his presence.
Rosemary Orchard [00:09:17]:
It's 31 degrees outside in Celsius, feels like 34. And there is an option somewhere, I've forgotten what where that is to change this into Fahrenh. Obviously I have my phone set to Celsius because I much prefer to have that because I understand what that means to me. Now you can customize what data points you get in Carrots so you can have things like wet bulb. There we go. I can add in Fahrenheit, you can have sunrise and sunset moon phases, UV index, There's, you know, visibility next tide, things like that. There are plenty of options. And you can rearrange these as well.
Rosemary Orchard [00:09:54]:
So you know, you've got all those things. 88 degrees Fahrenheit outside, folks. There you go. That's what that is. Plus also, you know, relative humidity of 58%. So that's nice and nice and easy to get through. Carrot pulls weather from multiple sources and you can change what those sources are in your settings. So if you go to Carrot, then you can tap on its ocular sensor a number of times and it will get crankier and crankier and crankier at you until eventually it threatens to kill you, which, you know, is always fun.
Rosemary Orchard [00:10:26]:
There are various achievements, you know, where you need to debug Carrot or, you know, find an area with an active fire hazard. Please note, folks, this does not mean physically go to an area with an active fire hazard. If there's an active fire hazard, Carrot doesn't want you there. It just wants you to look at it on your phone. So, you know, those are two very different things. There's missions that you can do. Current mission is to find the Gulf of Mexico. It's still called the Gulf of Mexico in Carrots.
Rosemary Orchard [00:10:56]:
There's various horoscopes and things, there's soundtracks, there's all sorts of things going on because the maker of Carrot, otherwise known as Brian, a lovely person, has been doing Carrots bidding for quite a while. Yes, Carrot is sentient, something that you should be aware of. So sources, then you can see which ones are popular near you. So there's Forcy act, there's Apple Weather and there's accuweather and then there's global providers, regional providers. So for example, if you're in the United States then you may want noaa. If you're in France, you may want Meteor France, Deutsche Veterans Met Norway. There's, there's various options. You can also add personal weather stations.
Rosemary Orchard [00:11:39]:
So if you have hardware that can detect what the weather is doing currently and so on and so forth, then that can also be provided and to be fed into Carrot. I have done this before with netatmo sensors. I'm currently looking at option I would like to use in my new house. I still have my nat atmo stuff but I've got my parents some really cool hardware over the last couple of years. So I'm debating whether or not I want to go that route myself and hook in my own option there. It can also do tides and air quality index, both of which can be super important for people. It has live activities which can start automatically, which is great for like showing you hey, it's going to rain in 20 minutes and then it'll switch to rain forecast for the next 45 minutes or whatever it is. You can adjust your layout to have the exact order of information that suits you.
Rosemary Orchard [00:12:30]:
You can do smart layouts. There are so many options within Carrot that if you're looking for a weather app that kind of just you can make it your own, then that is a great way to do it. As I mentioned, you can change the personality of Carrot. You can change the politics. So you can change Carrot to just be completely professional if you want. You can also take it all the way up to overkill. Personally I found homicidal to have a nice mix of funny and pretending to try and kill you. Is it only pretending? Did it actually send me this weather? Who knows.
Rosemary Orchard [00:13:03]:
And then you can turn on and off various features. So if you don't want any of the thing, the, the weird fun additions which aren't weather related like achievements and your zodiac sign and term of the day, all of those can be turned off and then you don't have to deal with any of that and you just have a very customizable on the. On you know, the custom. The latest updates from iOS weather app. So it really depends. But personally I find Carrot the fact that it collates data from multiple sources and you get to choose which sources that you use, which means that if you find that one source where you live, that particular little area, that little geo niche, like maybe you're down in a little bit of a dip compared to most of the people around you or you're up on a little bit of a hill and therefore the average weather forecast doesn't work. But you can pull in your own data from your own weather station and this weather service always gets it right. Then you can select those and have exactly what you want and get the perfect weather solution.
Rosemary Orchard [00:13:58]:
Which, you know, who doesn't love getting the right kind of weather?
Mikah Sargent [00:14:02]:
Yeah, the next app that I want to mention, sort of special, Shout Out. The Not Boring company makes a bunch of different apps and one of those has won Apple Design Awards. It has been chosen as App of the Day. It is a really kind of just simple and beautiful and playful little app called Not Boring Weather. Now again, not Boring makes Not Boring weather makes Not Boring camera and a few others and not Boring Weather. It's just a visual depiction of the current state of the weather and a little bit of a forecast underneath as well. So if you're looking for something that is a little bit more visual and just kind of a quick little okay, I need to check out what the weather is and you move right along. This might be the app for you.
Mikah Sargent [00:15:06]:
It's just different. It's fun. Here's what Apple's editors had to say about it. Created using gaming industry tech like 3D modeling and lighting effects, Not Boring Weather makes local forecasts delightfully interactive. Fun flourishes such as high fidelity sound effects, charming animations and just noticeable haptic feedback make the weather report anything but boring. And indeed that is the case. It looks really nice when you pull it up on your Mac and it, you know, is using that huge screen and you can just see the weather nice and big. It's also kind of delightful when you are pulling it up on an iPad as well.
Mikah Sargent [00:15:49]:
So that is not Boring Weather. There's an interesting one in here, Rosemary, because it's got a really long name. Met Office Weather Forecast. Can you tell us about that one?
Rosemary Orchard [00:16:07]:
I can, Micah. So this one. I apologize to any folks who are not in the uk. I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time on this one because it is so specialized. This one is a specific to the UK weather application, but it's great if you're coming here because this is the official service which decides whether or not we are having weather warnings of any kind. You know, it could be created by wind or storms or in this case extreme heat. Are they worried about the entire country melting? Maybe. I've heard that there may be power cuts and things like that, which is why there is a.
Rosemary Orchard [00:16:43]:
Read more. There are currently three warnings going on, so you know that that's nothing to worry about. It's fine. We've only got political chaos as well as weather chaos in one week. We'll be fine. We're Brits. We keep calm and carry on. Or at least we look like it on the outside.
Rosemary Orchard [00:16:58]:
This app is great just for the official one, which is basically it's going to be used by pretty much everyone. So it has, you know, your today the the next day is the sort of highlights. So you can see that there's red triangles on Wednesday and Thursday. That means that those are red weather warnings versus today's merely amber weather warning. And it's got all the details there. It's useful, it does weather maps, it's got wind and temperatures and all sorts. And you know, it's very useful if you're planning on coming to the UK and you're wanting to look at what the weather's gonna be like because this is going to tell you what it it's officially like in the next period of time versus, you know, some other weather apps where I have had Metier France tell me with complete confidence that it was currently raining and I had clear blue skies outside and it's because Meteor France is the equivalent of the Met Office for France and they are great at predicting the weather in France, not so great here in the uk. So this is more of a PSA of if you have an official weather service in your country slash area, maybe download their app and check it out every once in a while just to make sure that you're on top of any weather emergencies might be happening and if there is any kind of weather scenario happening in your area like in yours.
Rosemary Orchard [00:18:14]:
Yeah, maybe download all of the apps just to keep on top of it and see which one's right. Call it a game of bingo or roulette or something like that and just see what happens.
Mikah Sargent [00:18:24]:
I kind of love it's slowly deteriorating. The next pick is if you were looking for an app that is a truly universal creature, then this might be for you. If you are looking for a weather app for the Mac, for the iPad, for the iPhone, for the Apple Watch and most importantly for the Apple Vision Pro, well, Mercury Weather is your pick other than of course, Apple's first party weather app. That's because Mercury Weather is a once again I think does a good job of saying, look, what is the most important information that people are looking for when it comes to the weather? Let's get that up front and show them and make it easy so you can see by the, by the color of the card what the current weather conditions are. And then of course, there's a big old number that tells you the current temperature. From there it can break out and be much more detailed. There's even hurricane tracking and radar inside of this app and you can even do forecasts for when you take a trip. What's the weather going to be like during your entire trip? Very good when it comes to planning ahead and also good at rain forecasting, which is an important thing here in Portland and I'm sure at times can be a very important thing for you.
Mikah Sargent [00:19:53]:
Although I'm sure, Rosemary, you just plan for rain at all times, right? It might rain here. What? Not right now, what with the sun.
Rosemary Orchard [00:20:01]:
I mean, I do always keep an umbrella in my bag for no particular reason. I have also an umbrella in my car. Car and raincoats. It's normal at this point. But yeah, there's no such thing as bad weather. It's just weather that you're not appropriately dressed for, at least in theory. I would say that, you know, there are certain situations where there's you can't be dressed for the weather like a tornado. But yeah, being prepared for your average daily rainfall in the UK is never a bad idea.
Rosemary Orchard [00:20:31]:
Plus, you know, good umbrellas can be used as a parasol as that.
Mikah Sargent [00:20:34]:
This is a very good point. Yes, you can protect yourself from the sun just as easily as you can the rain. Now, Mercury Weather is available for free with in app purchases to get the extra special features. Tell us about the final pick on the list. Rosemary. This one of course has a name that is near and dear to anyone's heart who's ever watched Wile E. Coyote.
Rosemary Orchard [00:21:04]:
This one is very sadly, us only. I ran a survey of a bunch of my friends yesterday to say, hey, what weather app are you using and why. Partially because I was curious if I should have moved from Dark sky to something else or you know, if from Dark sky from carrot to something else. And also just because I want to see what my friends were doing with their weather apps. And you know what, whether they had, I got lots of screenshots which made me jealous. But Acme Weather was one of the ones that came up up a lot. And it's from the creators of Dark sky and it's just beautiful. It's a really pretty app.
Rosemary Orchard [00:21:41]:
It's got great weather data, as you would expect from the people who created Dark Sky. They already figured out how to get weather data before they figured out how to do it again. They've got alternate predictions so they, they, they guesstimate based on multiple factors what the forecast is going to be. And pulling all those, they do notifications. There's also community reports. So if your next door neighbor is also using acne weather and goes it's hailing, then you would find that out. You wouldn't find out there's your next door neighbor that did it, but you would find out that there was hail in your specific localized area. It's got maps, it's got so much here.
Rosemary Orchard [00:22:16]:
And I really wish I could get this. And I got all excited yesterday evening and went and tried to download it from the App Store. And yeah, then I was a little disappointed for a while because it's currently US only. But that may change because, you know, they've got to work out getting all the data sources from around the world. There is no, well, there probably is a global weather service, but I don't know what they're doing and how they're collating all that data and how much they would charge. And at the moment, Acme Weather is free to download and it is a $25 a year subscription or if you want to share it with your family members, it's $50. So it's just one in app purchase. Well, two, the price of two in app purchases.
Rosemary Orchard [00:22:58]:
But then it can be shared with everyone in your family and yeah, it's really great by the looks of it and I would really love it. It's got all the widgets and all the cool things there too. So worth giving a, giving a try.
Mikah Sargent [00:23:11]:
All right, those are some of the most popular and I think well designed weather apps. There are many weather apps available in the App Store and of course this is always the time where we invite you to let us know about the apps that you're. If there's something out there that you really like that we didn't mention on the show. And you're going. But how could you leave off Puddle Weather? Well, let us know about Puddle Weather. Email us iostoday@twit.tv to get in touch. All righty. We currently don't have much news going on as we are in a lull after Apple's wwdc.
Mikah Sargent [00:23:56]:
So we of course are keeping an eye out there. And if you have shortcuts, requests for Rosemary Orchard make sure. You send those in. If you're on the beta and you're testing that out right now, I remind you that we have put in the request that you perhaps send in a shortcut request, have it auto generated by Siri's Shortcuts system and we can compare and contrast the work that gets done there. So very exciting stuff to do there. Email us again. Iostodaywit TV all right, it is time for our app caps. These are the apps or gadgets we're using now or have been using for some time or excited to be using that we want to share with all of you.
Mikah Sargent [00:24:43]:
Spigen. Spigen, the company that's spelled S P I G E N has a new. I've talked about them before. I've got this wonderful phone case from them, this lanyard for my phone and, and the little AirPods Pro case as well that has that old school look to it. They have the most adorable little MagSafe organizers that you thwack to the back of your phone. And mine comes on Friday, but I was too excited about it to not get to talk about it today on the show. It's called the Tap Zip Magnetic Organizer and it comes in green and it's just a little, it's like a little backpack that, that it goes on the back of your phone. It looks like a little backpack and it's so cute.
Mikah Sargent [00:25:32]:
And it also works kind of as a popsocket in a way because it has a loop on the back of it so you can slide your fingers through and grip the phone better. But you can put a bunch of stuff in there, your AirPods if you want to. It's got places for cards. All sorts of stuff can fit inside this little organizer and it uses the same sort of hook look that the Apple Watch Alpine band has. And I quite like that as well. So I'm very excited about this. I can't wait for it to arrive. It's green.
Mikah Sargent [00:26:13]:
I love that as well. There are three different versions of this wallet organizer Dealy Bob. There's the, the, the Tin Tap 2, which is the one that comes in green. There's the Snap Zip that has a buckle strap and a carabiner at the bottom. And then there's the Tin Tap one which has a different hook. So very exciting. Looking forward to it. And I will of course, you know, let you know if something if I get it and it's if it's terrible.
Mikah Sargent [00:26:52]:
But otherwise I don't think it's going to be. I think it's going to Be really exciting and I'm looking forward to having it in my hands. Rosemary, do you have an app cap pick for us this week?
Rosemary Orchard [00:27:03]:
Well, Micah, I've gone a little rogue just like you and I've gone hardware pick instead of app pick just because it's hot over here. And one of the things that we really think about when we're getting hot is our devices get hot too. They get hot charging via a cable or wirelessly. And I'm a big fan of ESR's Cryo Boost range. So CryoBoost range, essentially, as you put your phone on the charger, the little ring lights up, but then a fan starts running in here and it attempts to cool your device down as it also charges it. Now this one is their 100 watt six in one charger. So it's got MagSafe here for phone, it's got an AirPods charger down here, it's got a watch charger and then on the side it's got one USB A on the inside and two USB C ports, which makes it 6in. One of the things I love about this, it's got a figure 8 plug on the back so you can change this cable out to be a longer one or a shorter one if you need to.
Rosemary Orchard [00:27:58]:
If you move country, not speaking from experience, definitely never done that. You could buy a new one. I didn't because this is a more recent addition to my life. But honestly, this is a great charger. I actually have a couple of these, not this specific model, but they do various other charging stations with cryoboost. So I have one in my car car, which is great because it means I could just lock my phone onto it and it charges, but it also cools it at the same time, which is good because otherwise it might get a bit too warm. And yeah, they're really great for this. They also, I should note, have a little button on the front.
Rosemary Orchard [00:28:33]:
It's a little difficult to see, but there's a button here. So if you put your phone on charge and it's the bedroom, it's the middle of the night and you just, you can't quite sleep because there's the humming and the light. You can just hit that button, button and it just switches to being a regular MagSafe charger.
Mikah Sargent [00:28:47]:
Nice.
Rosemary Orchard [00:28:47]:
And that's it done. So it turns off the light, turns off the fan and then you don't hear any of the fan sounds or see the light. Personally, I haven't found that it bothers me, but every once in a While I'll have a sleepless night. And I know that that is the sort of thing that might bother me and it could bother other people as well. So it's worth knowing that that is a feature on all the esr, at least their charging stations for the house. It's not a feature on the car ones just because I figure they don't want you messing the button buttons. And also the whole point of it is that it's charging and usually they sit on like an AC vent anyway, so you're gonna have that coming out. But yeah, the fact that this is 100 watts as well means I can plug my MacBook into this and charge my phone and my AirPods and my watch and two other devices all at the same time.
Mikah Sargent [00:29:30]:
Yeah, that's awesome.
Rosemary Orchard [00:29:32]:
Like, I wouldn't say this is the most suitcase friendly thing that I own, but you know, I. We've all been there, right? Taking the weirdest thing on holiday because it makes the most sense. I'm not saying I'm never going to do it because honestly, these are pretty great. So yeah, that. That's my pick for this week. It's the ESR 100 watt 6 in one charging station with Cryoboost. It's a mouthful, but basically have a look at the ESR Cryoboost range. That's what I'm really recommending.
Rosemary Orchard [00:30:00]:
Especially if you are watching this live. It's Amazon prime day right, right now, so check out some deals and see if they are deals by checking in camelcamelcamel or something like that to make sure that you don't get ripped off.
Mikah Sargent [00:30:12]:
All righty folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of iOS today. I want to thank you so much for being here with us today. Of course you can reach out to us iOS today at Twitch TV. I've already mentioned Club Twit. Just a reminder. Twit TV Club Twit is where you go, so be sure to check that out. Rosemary Orchard. If people would like to keep up to date with the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?
Rosemary Orchard [00:30:35]:
The best place to go is rosemary orchard.com which has got links to apps, books, podcasts that I am or have been involved with. And of course it's got links to all of my social media there, except for Discord, where you can find me hanging out in the Club Twit Discord. During the live show, Keith has mentioned Weather Underground. Can't believe we didn't talk about that. We'll have to research it for our next feedback session. And yeah, it's always great to hear what people say during the show. And after the show Mecca. Where can folks find out you?
Mikah Sargent [00:31:01]:
If you're looking to follow me online, I'm ikasargent on many a social media network. Or you can head to Chihuahua Coffee, that's C h I H u a h u a Coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you so much everyone for being here today. We appreciate you and we'll see you again soon. Bye bye.
