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Weather App on the Home Screen

W

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
Hello all,

Do you know if it's possible to have the Weather App on the home screen adjust real time? Every time I have seen one it looks the same - sunny and 73. I think it would be nice for it to update itself to the actual weather conditions and temperature where I am located.

I don't currently have an iPhone, so I'm not sure if that is possible. I had an app on my Widoze Mobile device that did that.

If so, how do you make the change. If not, do you think it can be hacked/changed with the SDK?
 
Maybe it will change with the 2.0 firmware. It would be cool. It should change like the iCal icon.
 
The problem is which temperature would you display if you have 5 cities set up? The first one in your list would be reasonable. Even better would be to use the GPS/wifi/cell locator to display the temp for where you are at that moment. That would be useful.

Apparently, it took Apple a long time to make the date change in the dock on the mac with the iCal app closed. Maybe Apple has similar problems with the temp.
 
Wingnut330 said:
Hello all,

Do you know if it's possible to have the Weather App on the home screen adjust real time? Every time I have seen one it looks the same - sunny and 73. I think it would be nice for it to update itself to the actual weather conditions and temperature where I am located.
Click to expand...

Seem like that could be a battery drain, since it has to pull the updates.

Similar to having it auto-check your e-mail - I know there have been comments about how much that drains the battery.
 
Yeah, Apple is doing this in their new operating system Snow Leopard, They are eliminating background functions for OSX. This is exactly what they don't and you don't want your iPhone doing. It will draw juice and create unwanted lag. It's based on the idea that when you close and application - it will stop running period. I suppose what they could do is include a preference pane in the weather application that would allow you to set refresh intervals or have it completely manual like the Mail app. Interesting idea - some would like, and some would hate this.
 
this is exactly what I was thinking!!! I want the same thing on my iPod touch, but it would have to be through push or it would drain the battery... otherwise I don't know why not
 
MM07 said:
Maybe it will change with the 2.0 firmware. It would be cool. It should change like the iCal icon.
Click to expand...



The iCal date change only requires the iPhone to look at its internal clock to get the date. Getting weather and temp will require constantly going to the network. Which, as noted above, is going to impact your battery in a meaningful way.
 
Not really - it's not like it needs to get up-to-the-minute updates. It could check say every half hour and still be quite a bit more useful than it is now.
 
Wingnut330 said:
Hello all,

Do you know if it's possible to have the Weather App on the home screen adjust real time? Every time I have seen one it looks the same - sunny and 73. I think it would be nice for it to update itself to the actual weather conditions and temperature where I am located.

I don't currently have an iPhone, so I'm not sure if that is possible. I had an app on my Widoze Mobile device that did that.

If so, how do you make the change. If not, do you think it can be hacked/changed with the SDK?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming you mean the next days' weather, otherwise you could just look out of the window.
 
I think I'd be happy if the weather app was just correct when I clicked on it! Invariably, if it says it will rain, we get nothing but sun. And if it does rain on a day that it said it would, by the time it is raining the app has changed to say that it will be sunny. And I cannot count how many times the temperature ends up higher than the app thought it would be. Yahoo weather sux.
 
I would like to see current weather conditions perhaps with a toggle option for the following day if you would prefer to display that. I would also like to receive severe weather alerts - maybe display a red exclamation point or something similar.

As for the syncing times / frequency in the Windoze Mobile world, you could select how often you wanted to sync in minutes, hours etc or just when you docked.

Hopefully someone will help us!
 
phinnaeus said:
Now THAT makes sense for a push service.
Click to expand...

Yeah that would be pretty cool. I know Scott said that you can push an alert sound to the phone, I wonder if it will actually wake up the phone to play it or if it has to be awake already.
 
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