(Note: This is one of a series of reviews of weather applications and webapps for the iPhone, which will culminate in a head-to-head comparison)
The weather application that most iPhone owners are familiar with is the one that comes with it. And while it can satisfy the need to know the most basic forecast details (sunny, rainy, etc), it certainly leaves many people wanting more information to help them better plan their day. Several web applications and iPhone applications have been written address this need – both for the casual user and those more meteorologically-minded. Today, we look briefly at Weather Radar, currently retailing in the App Store for 99 cents.
Weather Radar doesn’t promise much – but yet doesn’t quite deliver. While it certainly does live up to its App Store claims to display a radar image from a Location Services-derived location, the claims of pan and zoom are somewhat overstated in that you are panning and zooming around and into a static image; one that degrades rapidly as you “zoom” in, and is limited to predefined image boundaries. Picturing how panning and zooming into an image taken with the Camera works (rather than, say, panning and zooming in Google Maps) and you’ll get the idea. Also, as you may have guessed, there is no provision for animated radar.
To change locations from the current GPS location, you must supply the zip code of the location for which you wish to view radar imagery. The shortcomings of this method are obvious; most of us don’t know the zip codes for the vast majority of cities we might be interested in viewing.
While the location issues may be a bit challenging, Exact Magic, the developers, did thoughtfully include toggles for various map features such as County borders and highways.
The maps themselves are quite attractive, if somewhat undetailed.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Save your money. There are much better alternatives, both pay and free in the App Store and in WebApps. We’ll be covering (more of) them right here. The developers seem to have lost interest in this App; their link on the App Store entry is missing from their web site (http://www.exactmagic.com/iphone), and there is no mention of Weather Radar or any other iPhone development activity on their site at all – so an update to improve this app does not seem to be in the cards.
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