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Daily iPad App: Magical Weather delivers a load of weather info to your iPad
Magical Weather (US$0.99) is an app for the iPad and iPad mini that is simple in operation, but packs a lot of information onto it's nicely rendered screens. The app starts up with thumbnails of up to nine selected locations. For each location, Magical Weather displays the temperature and sky conditions, shown with an icon and a very nice photorealistic background. From there, tap any location to view an animated weather graphic as well as current conditions, humidity, wind and UV index. You also get the change from yesterday, today's high and low, and the chance of precipitation. Slide those numbers over and you get an extensive 22 hour look ahead at predicted temperature, humidity and sky conditions. The app sits at a middle ground between apps that are weak in information and those that can be overwhelming with information you might not need. The app performed as expected. All the data and statistics are in white, though I would like to see some color in the app. I also thought local time should be displayed for each location, both on the thumbnail and detail screens. I'd also like for Magical Weather to display local sunset and sunrise times and the moon phase, because that information is useful for many people in making their outdoor plans. Other than that, Magical Weather is all that most people could want in a weather app. It's easy to set up any location you want weather info from, and the forecasts seem accurate and well in line with other forecast information. This is not the app for you if you need radar plots, satellite images or wind vector charts, but it delivers the most needed weather information simply and concisely. The clean design is an added bonus. Magical Weather is a 64 MB download, larger than the usual weather app because of the high quality animations. It requires iOS 5.1 or greater, and will run only on an iPad.
Weather Live for iOS is complete and a looker
Weather apps often sit in one of two groups. A lot of data in a mundane presentation, or beautiful backgrounds and animations but a lack of deep weather data. Weather Live has an excellent mix of both. The US$1.99 universal app has detailed forecasts from anywhere in the world. You can set several cities you want to keep track of, and swipe the screen to view them. Animations reflect the current weather at each location, and the app includes cloud, satellite and radar maps. The app can alert you if bad weather is on the way and you can set an alert to let you know when the temperature drops below freezing. %Gallery-165247% On-screen details include daily and seven-day forecasts, dew point, forecast high and low temperatures, winds, humidity, visibility, sunrise and sunset times, barometer and more. Even better, you can set different display formats, so you can have basic weather information, or a deep dive with everything visible on the main page. The feature that I really like is the icon badge (check the gallery below) that shows the current temperature. It's visible even if the app is buried in a folder. This is something Apple should have done long ago, or let the icon itself update the way the date updates on the Apple Calendar app. No app is perfect, and I find the map displays less than optimal. There is a small dot showing your location, but cities aren't identified, and the map can't be zoomed or moved in any way. I felt the need to see a closer display of storms moving my way, but such a feature is lacking. We reviewed this app last year when it had fewer features but a lower price of $0.99. I think that is about the right price for a weather app, and while $1.99 is not over-priced, especially considering the quality of the app, I was sad to see the price double. If you had to choose just one weather app with a lot of information and a beautiful presentation Weather Live should be on your buy list. Check the gallery below to see the app it all its graphic glory.
