Weather Channel providing Apple more detailed data for iOS 8 Weather app than Yahoo did
Starting with iOS 8, Apple will ditch Yahoo as its default data provider for the iPhone's built in Weather app, turning instead to The Weather Channel which earned the partnership by providing more detailed and advanced weather data for users.
The behind-the-scenes happening that led to the ouster of Yahoo and Apple's partnership with The Weather Channel were revealed on Friday by Re/code. The change coming with the launch of iOS 8 this fall ends a more than 7-year-long partnership between Apple and Yahoo for the iPhone's native Weather app.
The Weather Channel already provides data to Yahoo -- who, in turn, supplied it to Apple's iPhone app. But in this instance, the company trumped Yahoo and took its place by going above and beyond, allowing Apple to cut out the "middle man."
"To convince Apple to make the shift and cut Yahoo out of the middle, the Weather Channel added a lot more technology and information to the offering that it does not provide to Yahoo," Kara Swisher reported. "That includes more weather specificity related to the location of a user, a nine-day forecast (up from five), a weather-conditions summary and more.
Currently, the weather data in iOS 7 and iOS 8 is slightly different. For example, as of Friday afternoon, the Yahoo-powered Weather app in iOS 7 said the current temperature in New York City was 79 degrees, while The Weather Channel's data in iOS 8 reported it as 82 degrees.
The forecasted highs and lows for upcoming days are also slightly different. And the new iOS 8 Weather app allows users to scroll down and view a forecast that extends all the way through Sunday, June 29.
Below the extended forecast, the iOS 8 Weather app also includes a text description of today's conditions, along with a readout of data including time of sunrise and sunset, chance of rain, humidity percentage, wind speed and direction, a "feels like" temperature, barometric pressure, UV index, and more.
With Yahoo's ouster from the Weather app, Swisher reported that some believe the online service company could also lose its position of providing data to the built-in iOS Stocks app.
Sources reportedly indicated that Yahoo's complacence helped contribute to the iOS 8 switch. In a quote from one Yahoo executive, the report compared it to the company "renting ocean-front property for years" before it realized "the lease was up."
The behind-the-scenes happening that led to the ouster of Yahoo and Apple's partnership with The Weather Channel were revealed on Friday by Re/code. The change coming with the launch of iOS 8 this fall ends a more than 7-year-long partnership between Apple and Yahoo for the iPhone's native Weather app.
The Weather Channel already provides data to Yahoo -- who, in turn, supplied it to Apple's iPhone app. But in this instance, the company trumped Yahoo and took its place by going above and beyond, allowing Apple to cut out the "middle man."
"To convince Apple to make the shift and cut Yahoo out of the middle, the Weather Channel added a lot more technology and information to the offering that it does not provide to Yahoo," Kara Swisher reported. "That includes more weather specificity related to the location of a user, a nine-day forecast (up from five), a weather-conditions summary and more.
Currently, the weather data in iOS 7 and iOS 8 is slightly different. For example, as of Friday afternoon, the Yahoo-powered Weather app in iOS 7 said the current temperature in New York City was 79 degrees, while The Weather Channel's data in iOS 8 reported it as 82 degrees.
The forecasted highs and lows for upcoming days are also slightly different. And the new iOS 8 Weather app allows users to scroll down and view a forecast that extends all the way through Sunday, June 29.
Below the extended forecast, the iOS 8 Weather app also includes a text description of today's conditions, along with a readout of data including time of sunrise and sunset, chance of rain, humidity percentage, wind speed and direction, a "feels like" temperature, barometric pressure, UV index, and more.
With Yahoo's ouster from the Weather app, Swisher reported that some believe the online service company could also lose its position of providing data to the built-in iOS Stocks app.
Sources reportedly indicated that Yahoo's complacence helped contribute to the iOS 8 switch. In a quote from one Yahoo executive, the report compared it to the company "renting ocean-front property for years" before it realized "the lease was up."
Comments
Good. Yahoo! has never been reliable at all.
Notification Center in Yosemite uses The Weather Channel, but Dashboard still uses Yahoo!…
I've said this elsewhere, but I think the fact that hitting the "Y!" on the lower left corner of the stock Weather app (accidentally or intentionally) would prompt you to change your default search engine to Yahoo was bullshit.
Besides, if I wanted to have Bing be my search engine, I'd just use Bing and cut out the middleman.
Apropos of nothing: I prefer Weatherbug to anything else out there.
This makes no sense to me. The Weather Channel gets their data from the National Weather Service offices around the country. So why didn't Apple just go to them instead?
I've been griping about Yahoo's weather data for years!! This makes me such a happy camper. The only thing that would make me happier is if Apple Made the Weather App a client the same way Mail and Calendar or Contatcs are, then made a standard for "weather-dav" so that a person could subscribe to whatever weather data they wanted, but still use the stock weather app.
This makes no sense to me. The Weather Channel gets their data from the National Weather Service offices around the country. So why didn't Apple just go to them instead?
Not true. A lot of the real-time weather is from NWS, but the weather forecasts and models are created by them. Weather Underground, for example, uses a lot of home weather stations in their models. Our NWS office is notoriously bad, I suspect they dump all of the incompetent meteorologists to California, where you never get any severe weather for them to screw up on.
Good news. Hopefully the stock weather app will merge with the Weather Channel app and provide similar functionality. I'd love to just use the stock app and not have to hide it somewhere so I can use the weather channel app.
Weather Underground, for example, uses a lot of home weather stations in their models.
Oh, I love Weather Underground. It’s my go-to source for important weather crap, since Apple’s solutions in Dashboard/Notification Center only give an overview. Great ease of use and better visibility than anything else I’ve seen.
Great answer! I'm wrong.
Quote:
Not true. A lot of the real-time weather is from NWS, but the weather forecasts and models are created by them. Weather Underground, for example, uses a lot of home weather stations in their models. Our NWS office is notoriously bad, I suspect they dump all of the incompetent meteorologists to California, where you never get any severe weather for them to screw up on.
We definitely need some severe weather here in California. I'd tear out my landscaping and put in drought tolerant plants but the association and the city do not permit that. It is getting to the point where I feel guilty about my water usage but it is already as low as I can go and still maintain the garden. In the US we have gas and oil pipelines crossing the country. I wish we had the same ability to move water. Some places in the mid-west are flooded and other places like the southwest are completely dried up. We haven't had any measurable rain here in a year.
It is getting to the point where I feel guilty about my water usage but it is already as low as I can go and still maintain the garden.
Something like 7% of all California freshwater usage is used for landscaping. 77% is used for agriculture. Moving water is ridiculously energy intensive. 20% of total electrical power is used to move water in California through things like the CA Aqueduct.
The logical thing is instead of moving tons of water from wet areas, you move the finished food. But try to explain that to "local farming" global warming tree-huggers.
You want to build water pipelines to "fix" the problem of too many people living in a desert, in order to be able to properly water your lawns?
This will make Marissa very mad.
Oh, I love Weather Underground. It’s my go-to source for important weather crap, since Apple’s solutions in Dashboard/Notification Center only give an overview. Great ease of use and better visibility than anything else I’ve seen.
There's a lot of info there, but that looks terrible. I prefer simplicity
Can there be anything simpler? At a glance I can see the temperature, cloud cover, and wind speed at any point in the day, as well as where it will trend thereafter. Nothing but a graph can show that.
Yahoo was terrible anyway, I like TWC's hourly forecast although their data has a learning curve specific to where you live in terms of reliability.
I suspect a lot of them do, considering that most apps of this nature get their data from the Nat'l Weather Service... (not 100% certain that TWC does too, but I suspect it also does.)
That location looks like it is just west of Decatur