Generalissimo Francisco Franco Still Dead; iPadOS Still Has No Weather App

MG Siegler:

Yes, I know there is no shortage of third party weather apps. Some of them are great. But the devil is always in the defaults. And that default Weather widget is about to land on tens of millions of iPad screens with the launch of iPad OS 15 this fall. And with that, Apple will be sending tens of millions of dollars (maybe more?) indirectly to weather.com — which, incidentially is now owned by IBM. Insert the Steve Jobs giving the finger image here.

Do weather.com executives hold some sort of blackmail on the iPad OS dev team within Apple? I can’t come up with a better explanation.

The whole situation is bizarre. Apple just redid the Weather app in iOS 15 to be more beautiful. And the widgets reflect that. And they throw it all in the trash compactor when it comes time to drill down on the iPad.

The lack of a built-in iPad Weather app was a little weird before, but now that they have a built-in Weather widget that, when you tap it, takes you to The Weather Channel’s janky-assed website, it’s downright bizarre.

★ Wednesday, 6 October 2021