Review: MeteoEarth brings detailed weather info to your Mac

I've previously reviewed MeteoEarth in its iOS incarnation, and found it a capable and useful weather app. One of the strong points of MeteoEarth has always been the quality of the graphics, largely because the company that produces the app also does professional weather graphics for TV broadcasters.

Now the company has brought its skills to a Mac app (US$4.99 in the Mac App Store), and it has more detailed information and nicer graphics. Maps are presented in 3D or 2D mode with realistic shading, and there are layers for temperatures, precipitation, cloud cover, wind and pressure. All these map features can be animated, and you can drag a slider into the future to see an educated guess at the forecast.

You get an option to view current conditions at your location in your menu bar, or you can make the map your full-screen desktop. There is also an option to turn the live data into a screensaver.

You can turn the globe with your mouse, and zoom in for details, out for the big picture.

MeteoEarth is a solid app, but the developers can't resist the temptation to sell you a subscription for more data for three months ($1.99) or 12 months ($5.99). With the tremendous availability of weather info around for free, I don't think this is a good investment. The extra information includes things like the surface temperature of water, and most people won't want it. If you are a fisherman or pilot, that information may be valuable, but chances are you get more targeted weather services anyway.

Still, MeteoEarth has loads of good weather information, and provides a nice-looking desktop, menubar feature and a screensaver. Graphics are first-rate.

Other nice apps in the category are Clear Day screensaver ($1.99) and Weather Tab Pro at $1.99.

MeteoEarth requires OS X 10.9 or later and a 64-bit processor.