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bassbug · Nov 10, 2003, 09:54 AM

What's the best / handy / small / beautiful weatherprogram?

Used to use Meteorologist, but it's dead now...

mydog8mymac · Nov 10, 2003, 10:02 AM

I'm hooked on WeathermanX. All info comes right from the national weather service and there are several types of radar, plus extended forecasts. It is simple, semi-elegant and fast�and only $10 for life after a 30 day free trial. The app notifys you when there is a new version with a URL to go to and download.

http://www.afterten.com

gorickey · Nov 10, 2003, 10:19 AM

Meteorologist reined supreme for so long; however, I have changed over to WeatherPop Advance...

memento · Nov 10, 2003, 11:24 AM

I use WeathermanX also, sometimes Watson which has a nice weather module.

PabloTX · Nov 10, 2003, 11:42 AM

I like WeatherPop as well.

http://www.glu.com/products/weatherpop/

BZ · Nov 10, 2003, 01:28 PM

1 vote for WeatherPop Pro.

Using it for years. Works. Works. Works.

It was worth the $8.

For a ton of weather, I use Watson.

BZ

IronPen · Nov 10, 2003, 02:27 PM

Originally posted by bassbug:
What's the best / handy / small / beautiful weatherprogram?

Used to use Meteorologist, but it's dead now...

What happened to Meteorologist?

mcsjgs · 03:36 PM

I like WeathermanX's baby brother, WeatherMenu. Nice small weather visual in menu bar with drop down menu full of data if I want to read it. 5 day forecasts, alerts, etc. $5 shareware.

gorickey · 02:54 PM

Originally posted by IronPen:
What happened to Meteorologist?

The developer didn't have the time to keep it going on his own; however, he made the source available for others to develop if you so desire:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/heat-meteo

cpac · Nov 10, 2003, 03:03 PM

I'm still using meteo with great success.

kelesh · Nov 12, 2003, 11:41 PM

meteorologist has been crashing quietly on my powerbook with a clean 10.3 install. it just dies without an error

clam2000 · Nov 12, 2003, 11:52 PM

meteorologist is working fine for me, I had it installed, and it came accross fine when I uprgraded to 10.3

--will

G-Force · Nov 13, 2003, 12:45 AM

I would like to cast my vote for WeatherMenu also. Like meteorolgist, it is simply a menubar item that shows various weather information. It has performed flawlessly for me since I installed it two months ago. Meteorologist used to crash rather frequently for me, so it's a welcome improvemtent. It has attractive icons and is $3 cheaper than weatherpop advance.

DigitalEl · Nov 13, 2003, 03:39 AM

I use WeatherPop Advance because I paid for it, but that's the only reason. The data is often FUBAR no matter which source you choose.

Freeflyer · Nov 13, 2003, 09:31 AM

Weather Desk seems the most reliable for me at the moment.

J.

gorickey · 09:42 AM

I remember reading about some "feature" from Glu that is supposed to be included in WeatherPop 2.0....it had alot of buzz around it when it was talked about; however, I don't think anybody knows what the feature really is and when 2.0 is due out, do they?!?

**Edit**

I found the MacNN news byte that talked about this:
==============
Apps: WeatherPop, Desktastic, DVDxDV...
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 @ 8:40am

Glucose today updated WeatherPop 1.7, which adds the ability to determine whether or not a weather data source is missing data for the city the user has chosen and will automatically choose a different data source with more accurate and complete information. The update also includes number of bug fixes, related to problems with forecasts for cities with negative temperatures, text forecasts that include elevation information and improvements specific to Canadian cities. The company expects to release WeatherPop 2.0 within the next 4-8 weeks; it will include "the ability to see what it looks like without actually going outside." WeatherPop is free, while WeatherPop Advance is $8 shareware. [WP, OSX]
==============

I wonder what happened?!?

kelesh · Nov 14, 2003, 06:28 AM

I was using Meteorologist to just show a temperature in the menubar. What other program can I use to do this?

Weatherpop shows an icon alongside it, which is a waste of space imho. Do any other weather apps allow you to just show temperature?

Montanan · Nov 14, 2003, 10:35 AM

I've also been quite pleased with the current beta of Weather Desk.

mcsjgs · Nov 14, 2003, 12:30 PM

Originally posted by kelesh:
I was using Meteorologist to just show a temperature in the menubar. What other program can I use to do this?

Weatherpop shows an icon alongside it, which is a waste of space imho. Do any other weather apps allow you to just show temperature?

Weathermenu has the temperature and an icon showing weather (cloudy, sunny etc.) but small and unobtrusive.

King Bob On The Cob · Nov 14, 2003, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by kelesh:
I was using Meteorologist to just show a temperature in the menubar. What other program can I use to do this?

Weatherpop shows an icon alongside it, which is a waste of space imho. Do any other weather apps allow you to just show temperature?

The Free WeatherPop can be told to disable the icon I believe.

kelesh · Nov 14, 2003, 10:57 PM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
The Free WeatherPop can be told to disable the icon I believe.

uhhhh..... definitely not. i just downloaded the latest version and only Units, Font size, and city are changeable.

AfterTen · Dec 2, 2003, 11:19 AM

Originally posted by kelesh:
uhhhh..... definitely not. i just downloaded the latest version and only Units, Font size, and city are changeable.

WeatherMenu allows you almost complete customization of what info shows on the menubar. Icon or no Icon. Temp Unit or no unit (or both units). City name or no city name. You can even turn on/off the "degrees" symbol. So for the minimalist you could just turn on the Temperature and only see a number in your menubar and nothing else.

<shameless plug>WeatherMenu is also the only program to allow you multiple cities in the menubar at one time out-of-the-box.</shameless plug>

kelesh · Dec 9, 2003, 12:19 PM

<complaint> weathermenu is using 100 MB of ram and growing. what's up with that? i was thinking of paying for it, but not if its going to be hogging the ram. </complaint>

ryaxnb · Dec 9, 2003, 06:23 PM

Are there any weather programs that access weather.com?

kelesh · Dec 9, 2003, 06:58 PM

yes most of them do. imho meteorologist, weatherpop, and weathermenu can all access it.

AfterTen · Dec 12, 2003, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by kelesh:
<complaint> weathermenu is using 100 MB of ram and growing. what's up with that? i was thinking of paying for it, but not if its going to be hogging the ram. </complaint>

Good question. This is the first I've heard of this so I checked and my personal copy is eating up a lot of RAM. The last version I out out I specifically addressed any memory leaks I may have. Many times just pulling the menu down will free up a lot of RAM due to how OS X auto allocates and frees RAM. But, I'll check into this and fix whatever may be causing. This also may be releated to Panther somehow (if that is what you are running. Thanks for the report.

kelesh · Dec 12, 2003, 01:55 PM

yeah i'm running panther. i was monitoring 4 cities, now i'm just monitoring 2. It hasn't climbed to obscene amounts of ram yet.

Moonray · Dec 12, 2003, 10:51 PM

I get pretty actual and accurate weather info for my location by looking through my window. I updated it once with a thermometer and am very happy with it now. The RAM usage is minimal.

-

TeknoTurd · Dec 13, 2003, 04:24 AM

I like WeatherPopAdvance the best. I think the way the menu is setup is far superior to the others and the icons are really nice and professional looking. The weather has been pretty accurate for the most part. It is totally worth the 8$ My only complain is that it won't allow you to add cities by zip code like it used to. I'm not sure if this is because the sources won't accept this or it was a decision based on the developers of the program, but my gripe for this is that in large cities like San Francisco there are tons of microclimates, for example in the Financial District it would be 75 and sunny while in the Sunset there could be thick fog and temperatures around 50. So yea, other than that this program is awesome and highly recommended.

AfterTen · Dec 15, 2003, 09:53 PM

Originally posted by kelesh:
yeah i'm running panther. i was monitoring 4 cities, now i'm just monitoring 2. It hasn't climbed to obscene amounts of ram yet.

It looks to be a intermittant problem.
After your first post I looked at mine and it was eating up a big chunk of RAM. So I quit it and restart it. Since then the RAM usage has been very low for over 24 hours.

This will be a tough one to track down but I'll get it.

dampeoples · Dec 16, 2003, 12:05 AM

I dig WeatherPop Advance. $8USD and it's still working

SciFrog · Dec 16, 2003, 12:18 AM

Meteorologist crashes quietly on 10.3.1 every couple of days. Still my main program though.

austeros · Dec 16, 2003, 12:21 AM

another happy weatherpop advance user. tried weather menu but weatherpop icons won me over. only difference i remember was that weather menu had stuff on the moon.. all i care about is the temp, and the 5 day forcast

AfterTen · Dec 16, 2003, 01:30 PM

Originally posted by austeros:
another happy weatherpop advance user. tried weather menu but weatherpop icons won me over. only difference i remember was that weather menu had stuff on the moon.. all i care about is the temp, and the 5 day forcast

Actually the difference would be...
1) Almost unlimited number of cities you can monitor at one time.
2) Multiple cities in the menubar at one time
3) Displays current weather alerts
4) Displays current NWS radar image
5) Displays full solar and lunar data (sunrise/set moonrise/set, upcoming moon phases plus more)
6) Complete customization of what displays in the menubar
7) Immediate switching from Imperial to Metric units (or both at the same time)

Probably a couple of more things.

In any event, I understand WeatherPop will have a new version out in 1-2 days that will now include many of these features. So, I'll have to dig in and dream up some more new features.

cloudaj · 08:55 PM

now that the weather channel has an official xml feed (well new-ish to me, could be old though

) do you think we could get a menu bar app that takes advantage of it? Maybe the weather.com's frequent changes wont break them all the time

Twister · Dec 18, 2003, 12:09 AM

I still vote for Meteorologist! I keep looking around for new ones though. If weatherPop had radar I might change. But Meteorologist is free and still working great!!

Thomas

Ozmodiar · Dec 18, 2003, 02:14 AM

Originally posted by kelesh:
yes most of them do. imho meteorologist, weatherpop, and weathermenu can all access it.

How is it in your humble opinion that those three programs get their information from weather.com...?

Anyhoo, my vote is for Meteo.

AfterTen · Dec 18, 2003, 01:41 PM

Originally posted by Ozmodiar:
How is it in your humble opinion that those three programs get their information from weather.com...?

Anyhoo, my vote is for Meteo.

WeatherMenu can get data from NWS or weather.com.

The Weather.com XML feed is awful. Limited conditions information and only two-days for forecast info available on the XML feed plus you have to prominatly display their logo and link back to them if you use the feed.

AfterTen · Dec 18, 2003, 01:45 PM

Originally posted by Twister:
I still vote for Meteorologist! I keep looking around for new ones though. If weatherPop had radar I might change. But Meteorologist is free and still working great!!

Thomas

I'm sorry, but I have to ask because this confuses me.

I like Meteo too and if I didn't program my own I'd be using it.

But you said you are looking around for others and would switch to WP if it had radar.
WeatherMenu HAS radar right now. So what is lacking in WeatherMenu that WeatherPop has that makes you not want to switch to WeatherMenu but would switch to WeatherPop if it had radar?

Twister · Dec 18, 2003, 10:08 PM

Ummm. I don't know. I'll cross that road when Metro dies. For good.

jerseyfreeze · Jan 30, 2004, 06:52 PM

Every one I try shows up fuzzy in the Panther menu bar. Is there some solution?

-Jason

Apfhex · Jan 30, 2004, 08:50 PM

WeatherMenu for me. Prettier, with more features, and more accurate (I know it depends on the information source, but WeatherPop always seemed to have some sort of problem with the forcast, or knowing if it's daytime or nighttime).

IronPen · Jan 31, 2004, 10:43 AM

WeatherPop lacks many features Meteorologist and Weather Menu have. I prefer Meteorologist, but development seems to have come to a stand-still. Weather Menu is nice and a very good alternative. It is shareware, but it's inexpensive. I'd even pay for Meteor if it came down to it because it is so easy to configure and I like its features.

Krypton · Jan 31, 2004, 01:48 PM

Global Warmth

Newish weather app by Stone design, seems to work reasonably well.

neilw · Jan 31, 2004, 04:37 PM

I was originally a WeatherPop user, then Meteorologist. Now I'm just starting to play with WeatherMenu, and I must say it's pretty nice. I was really trying to stay with a free program, but for $5 WeatherMenu looks like it might be worth the fee. Quite nicely done.

Global Warmth looks interesting but I haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet.

CharlesS · Jan 31, 2004, 05:00 PM

I like WeatherManX.

Zimphire · Feb 1, 2004, 11:49 PM

Son Of Weather Grok

brutal · Feb 2, 2004, 07:21 AM

I actually use Konfabulator as my Weather app. The included weather-widget is just sooo beautiful

Montanan · Feb 2, 2004, 10:02 AM

With much sadness, I've finally given up on Meteo for good. After playing with several of the replacement candidates over the next few days, it looks like WeatherMenu will earn a place in my menu bar. It's definitely worth five bucks.