Weather HD became my favorite weather app for the iPad within about 5 minutes of using it, and now it’s got a superb new big brother, Weather HD for Mac.The app was released a couple weeks ago and it’s actually just called Weather HD in the Mac App Store, but I figured I’d add ‘for Mac’ just to make clear it’s a new version for the desktop platform.
If you’ve ever used the iPad version of Weather HD you know that its calling card is the stunning video images used in the app. The new Mac version shares this same feature of course. The images are wonderful to look at, no matter what conditions they’re reflecting. The iPad app is very basic and offers only a fairly minimal set of weather information. It’s definitely not for those who need maps and extensive detailed weather info, although it’s still a handy app to have around if you don’t mind using it alongside a more powerful app.
This new Mac version of Weather HD has quite a few more features than the iPad app. It shows a summary of current conditions (temp., high and low for the day, humidity, chance of precipitation, wind) within its big window with the video image illustrating those conditions.
As with the iPad app, there are buttons to toggle between Daily and Hourly forecast views. These are in the left sidebar in the Mac app; and the daily forecasts cover seven days. Just below this information in the sidebar, there are buttons to Refresh the info and to toggle full screen view on and off.
In the sidebar it also offers three sections that the iPad app doesn’t have: Maps, Moon, and Severe.
The Maps section offers 10 maps covering current and next day conditons, including radar, temp and humidity. The Moon section shows moonrise, moonset, sunrise, and sunset times as well as cycles of the moon throughout the month. The Severe section shows any current severe weather alerts for the location/s you’ve chosen for the app.
It’s easy to edit and add locations and set a few basic preferences via the Settings app – e.g whether you want to receive notifications and whether you want the app to open automatically at login.
There’s also a neat little menu bar icon for the app. It shows the current temp, a symbol to reflect current conditions, the current temp. and a quick link to open the app.
Oh, and the very good news about Weather HD for Mac is that this is the legitimate, proper version of the app, from its original developers, Vimov. It is NOT the name-squatted version from Presselite that made a brief appearance in the Mac App Store. Hurrah for that.
Here’s a Mac App Store link for Weather HD; it’s priced at $3.99.
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TAGS: Mac Apps, Weather HD for Mac
