App Caps and Hardware Picks

Coming up on IOS today, Rose Muray Orch and I Mike a Sergeant to talk about the weather and how you can keep track of it. Stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by Black Hat USA. If you listen to the show, you go deep on the technical detail. So does Black Hat. For nearly three decades, it's been where the security industry's most rigorous research gets presented and pressure tested. More than a hundred hands on trainings taught by practitioners who've actually deployed in live environments, not lecturers reading from slides Hundreds of peer reviewed briefings that go well past the overview into the real work across the four areas defining security right now, AI and autonomous threats, cyber conflict, systemic resilience, and identity. This year Black Aats Briefings passass includes all keynotes and mainstage access plus business hall entry. You also get breakfast, lunch, arsal liive tool demos, on demand session access, and admission to the midnight in the warroom screening Black hat takes place from august first to the sixth in Las Vegas. If you want the depth the show gets into in person with the people doing the work, this is the room. Oh, and we'll be there too Pices rise on july seventeenth, so book before then, usese code Twit for two hundred dollars off your briefings pass at black hat dot com slash US hyphen twenty six. That's B L A C kha dot com slash USash twenty six Podcasts you love from people you trust This is Tit This is IOS Today, Episode eight hundred nine with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micaah Sargent. Recorded Tuesday june twenty third, twenty twenty six for Thursday, july second, twenty twenty six. Wonderful weather apps Hello and welcome. to IOS today. This is the show where we talk all things IOS, iPad OS watchatch OS homeome Pod OS and all the other OSs Apple has to offer us. I am one of your hosts. My name is Micah, Sargent And I promise you folks, I am asemary or shirt, I just look really pale because it's super hot here. So I'm not wearing makeup because I don't want to just be sweating it all off because I figured that wouldd probably be distracting. And you know, know the topic for today's show is the weather. So you know, it seemed appropriate that one of us would be melting and then Micel would just be looking as cool as a cucumber as he used doess Literally wearing a sweater, I feel bad. I am currently in the basement of a home that helps, but it certainly we are appreciative of you being here despite the heat wave that is going on for you. And yes, we thought it would be appropriate time to talk about the weather, given that you are faced with weather troubles at the moment. Pple of course at one point had a relatively basic weather app. But over time, not only did Apple make improvements to its app, but it also purchased a very well known, very well loved app called Dark Sky and used that to basically, I think drastically improve upon what the weather app is possible or is capable of doing. And so we have seen sort of localized better improvements there. And I think a lot of fanciness, frankly, when it comes to the Weather app as well given What has been added by way of dark sky. Now That rosemary on your screen looks to be The Weather app So us Yeah So the weather app, depending on where you are in the world, is going to be pulling in data from a variety of sources. So here on my screen you can see it's showing the area that I am. The current outside temperature, please note, folks, the outside temperatures are measured in the shade, not in direct sunlight, veryery important if you are considering doing things like walking your pets. This temperature is way too hot for taking anybody outside, including pets Then underneath that we've got, you know the words for the current weather condition, believe it or not, it's sunny outside. and then the highs and lows of today. And underneath this, this is where the localized data pulling comes in really helpful. So at the moment, we have an amber weather alert over here in the UK, which is turning into a red weather alert, which is basically it's super, super, super hot and we don't know how to cope with it and our infrastructure is not built for this. So we're all just going to slowly toast like marshmallows over a fire. So if anybody has some chocolate covered biscuits that' be Really great time to seznd those over. They'll probably have melted by the time they get here, but we would appreciate the sentiment. Underneath this, we have the hourly forecast for the rest of the day. So as you can see now, it's about five PM and it's going to go through all of that. So it's got the general conditions. You can also switch it to precipitation. good joke and weather Wind sorry, what what is winter No idea. And then underneath that then we go through into the daily and then precipitation maps and more and more detail as we go down. So basically it on starts off super simple and then goes all the way up to complicated. Now right at the bottom, we can see there is the option to turn on notifications. and turning on notifications is pretty important because then it can actually send you push notifications for localized weather which is really great for saying like, oh, hey, you know, there' about to be a thunderstorm in your area. Maybe you want to get the laundry in off the line. It doesn't say exactly that. But it does do a pretty good job of keeping you up to date with things, which you know is always super, super handy. So yeah, Apple Weather is honestly pretty great. and If I weren't in love with another weather app, which we will get around talking about, I would use Ale Weather for my primary app Let me ask you too, when it comes to the weather app, Of course, we know that a lot of third party developers these days make use of the APIs available from Apple and the Apple Weather And so that made me think about shortcuts and what shortcuts uses when it grabs the weather. When you are doing your weather based shortcuts on occasion, do you make use of the third party app that you love for that or do you let the system handle the kind of weather outlook whenever you create these, or do you not do very many weather automations I mean, I personally don't do a huge number of weather automations. I do have a couple of automations based around sunrise and sunset because as much as I like my phone turning dark at sunset, I don't want it turning dark to light mode at sunrise. That is in the summer way too early and in winter way too late. So instead I have my alarm turn my phone back to light mode, which means when sunrise happens then I have a thing which basically goes, Hey, just set this back to dark mode unless it's after seven thirty AM. I mean, there's are these things where Unfortunately, many apps have seriously lagg behind in their shortcut support over the years. and the Weather app was kind of there from the beginning. It wasn't there right from the beginning and beginning, but it did a pretty decent job And for anything more than that, People tend to use Dark skky because it had a really great API and it was used as part of the documentation for shortcuts Obviously Dark sky no longer exists' part of Apple's own weather app now. We will get you something that's kind of a replacement for Dark skky later. But yeah, it's one of these things where I found that Most of the time if I'm making a weather shortcut, it's for someone else. And the one app that I can guarantee they are going to have on their phone is weather. So that's what I tend to use That makes sense. That makes perfect sense. Now They're frankly When Dark skky was around That was the period of time where would get quite a big difference between different weather apps in terms of the results, right? You would wonder, okay, when I'm using this third party weather app, is it giving me the best possible results? And when I was using Dark Sky, I knew that I was getting the best possible results for where I was Now that Dark Sky is owned by Apple, now that Apple has the weather API, a lot of, as I said, the playing field has been leveled in many ways. some still use third party or other methods of getting the weather. and that can make a difference. But what it does mean is you almost get to make the choice of the theme, the skin, the look and feel of your weather app and you can not worry so much about the impact that has on the accuracy of your results because again, in many ways data that's underneath is being pulled from the same place. It's sort of the styling on top. And that is why, you know, regardless of the weather apps that we talked today, you're probably going to as happy as you would be with your local weather person about the predictions that come via the app What if I want personality? What if a joke here and there is important to me? What if a little bit of u of achievement tracking would be a fun thing. Is there some place I can go to get that Yes, there is. and not only can you get some personality, you can choose what sort of personality you want because you know, we all know that choice is everything. So my personal favorite weather app, it's one that just has a soft spot in my heart, even though it threatens to kill me every other time I open it It's carrot. So C today, the startard has finally decided to grace us with his presence. It's thirty one degrees outside in Celsius, feels like thirty four. and there is an option somewhere. I've forgotten what where that is to change this into Fahrenheit. Obviously I have my phone set to Celsius because I much prefer have that because I understand what that means to me. Now you can customize what data points you get in Kot. So you can have things like weet bulb, there we go. I can add in Fahrenheit, you can have sunrise and sunset, moon phases, UV index. There's you know visibility, neck tide, things like that. There are plenty of options and you can rearrange these as well So you know you've got all of those things. eighty eight degrees Fahrenheit outside folks, there you go, That's what that is. plus also you know, relative humidity of fifty eight percent. So that'sice nice and easy to get through. Carrot pulls weather from multiple sources and you can change what those sources are in your settings. So if you go to Carrat then you can on its ocular sensor a number of times and it will get crankier and crankier and crankier at you until eventually it threatens to kill you. whichich you know, is always fun. There are various achievements U you know, where you need to debug Crot or, you know find an area with an active fire hazard, please note, folks, this does not mean physically go to an area with an active fire hazard. If there's an active fire hazard, Carrot doesn't want you there. it just wants you to look at it on your ph U so, you know, those are two, very different things. There's missions that you can do, Carrot missions to find the Gulf of Mexico. It's still called the Gulf of Mexico in cararrot. There's various horoscopes and things, there's soundtracks. There's all sorts of things going on because the maker of carrot, otherwise known as Brian, a lovely person, has been doing carrots bidding quite a well. Yes, carrot is sentient, something that you should be aware of. So sources then you can see which ones are popular near you. So there's Fa, there's Apple Weather and there's Au Weather. and then there's global providers, regional providers. So for example, if you're in the United States, then you may want NoA. If you're in France, you may want Metio France. Deutsche Veteststeinst Met Norway, there's various options. You can also add personal weather stations. so if you have hardware that can detect what the weather is doing currently and so as so forth, then that can also be provided and to be fed into carrot. I have done this before with Net Amo sensors. I'm currently looking at what option I would like to use in my new house. I still have my Net Amo stuff I've got my parents some really cool hardware over the last couple of years, so I'm debating whether or not I want to go that route myself and hook in my own option there It can also do tights and air quality index, both of which can be super important for people. It has live activities, which can start automatically, which is great for like showing you, hey, it's going to rain in twenty minutes. and then it'll switch to rain forecast for the next forty five minutes or whatever it is. You can adjust your layout to have the exact order of information that suits you. you can do smart layouts There are so many options within Carrot that if you're looking for weather app that kind of just you can make it your own then that is a great way to do it. As I mentioned, you can change the personality of carrot. you can change the politics. So you can change carrot to just be completely professional if you want. You can also take it all the way up to overkil. Personally, I found homicidal to have a nice mix of funny and pretending to try and kill you. Is it only pretending, did it actually send me this weather? Who knows. And then you can turn on off various features. So if you don't want any of the weird fun additions, which aren't weather related like achievements and your Zodiac sign and Term of the day, all of those can be turned off and then you don't have to deal with any of that and you just have very customizable on the on, you know, the custom of the latest updates from IOS weather app So it really depends, but personally, I find carrot The fact that it collects data from multiple sources and you get to choose which sources you use, which means that if you find that one source where you live, that particular little area, that little GNE like maybe you're down in a little bit of a dip compared to most of the people around you or you're up on a little bit of a hill. And therefore, the average weather forecast doesn't work, but you can pull in your own data from your own weather station and this weather service always gets it, right thenen you can select those and have exactly what you want and get the perfect weather solution which, you know, who doesn't love getting the right kind of weather Yay All right, let's take a quick break so I can tell you about this week's sponsor of IOS Today. It's NetsSuite. They say that every day your business is late to AI, you fall two days behind. How do you keep up The competition is only moving faster. Fortunately, there's NetSuite next. You probably know NetsSuite, the AI powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth, trusted by over forty three thousand customers NetSuite nexte is the next huge leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically services custom insights throughout your day. AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work anyyt timee you have a question about anything, just like you're having a conversation with a colleague Net Suite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetsSuite next where your business meets AI For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsSuite. ai slash S. buuilt for every industry, ready for every boardroom. Netsuite. ai slash OS Let's head back to the show The next app that I want to mention, sort of special shout out, The Not Boring compomany makes a bunch of different apps. and one of those has won Apple Design Awards. It has been chosen as App of the Day. It is a really kind of just Simple. And beautiful and playful little app called Not Boring Weather Now again, not boring makes not boring weather Makes not boring camera and a few others and not boring weather It's just a visual depiction of the current state of the weather. And a little bit of a forecast underneath as well. So if you're looking for something that is a little bit more visual and just kind of a quick little, okay, I need to check out what the weather is and you move right along. this might be the app for you. It's just different. It's fun. Here's what Apple's editors had to say about it Created using gaming industry tech like three D modeling and lighting effects, Nock boring weather makes local forecasts delightfully interactive. Fun flourishes such as high fidelity sound effects, charming animations, and just noticeable haptic feedback. Makes the weather report anything Boring And indeed, that is the case. It looks really nice when you pull it up on your Mac and it you know is using that huge screen and you can just see the weather nice and big. It's also kind of delightful when you are pulling it up on an iPad as well That is not. Boring weather There's an interesting one in here, Rosemary because it's got a really long name Met offffice, weather Forecast. Can you tell us about that one? I can, Micah. So this one I apologize to any folks who are not in the UK. I'm not gonna to spend a huge amount of time on this one because it is so specialized. This one is a specific to the UK weather application, but it's great if you're coming here because this is the official service which decides whether or not we are having weather warnings of any kind. you know, it could be created by wind or storms so in this case extreme heat. Are they worried about the entire country melting? Maybe. I've heard that there may be paraputets and things like that, which is why there is a read more. There are currently three warnings going on So, you know, that that's Nothing to worry about. It's fine. We've only got political chaos as well as we chaos in one week. We'll be fine Weere're prz. We keep calm and carry on or at least we look like it on the outside. This app is great just for the official one, which is basically it's gonna be used by pretty much everyone. So it has you know your today, the next d is the sort of highlights. so you can see that there's red triangles on Wednesday and Thursday. That means that those are red weather warnings versus today's mearly ammber weather warning and it's got all the details there. It's useful. It does weather maps, it's got wind and temperatures and all sorts. and you know, it's very useful if you're planning on coming to the UK and you're wanting to look at what the weather's going to be like because this is going to tell you what it's officially like in the next period of time versus you know some other weather apps where I have had Metio Fce tell me with complete confidence that it was currently raining and I had clear blue skies outside. And it's because Metio Fance is the equivalent of the M offffice for France and they are great at predicting the weather in France, not so great here in the UK. So this is more of a PSay of if you have an official weather service in your country slash area Maybe download their app and check it out every once in a while just to make sure that you're on top of any weather emergencies might be happening. And if there is any kind of weather scenario happening in your area, like in your Dload the Yeah maybe download all of the apps just to keep on top of it and see which oness right. Call it a game of bingo or Roulette or something like that and just see what happens. I kind of love it slowly deteriorating. The next pick is if you were looking for an app that is a truly universal creature, then this might be for you. If you are looking for a weather app for the Mac, for the iPad, for the iPhone, for the Apple Watch, and most importantly for the Apple Vision Pro, well, Mercury weather. is your pick, other than of course, Apple's first party weather app. That's because Mercury Weather is a once again, I think does a good job of saying, look, what is the most important information that people are looking for when it comes to the weather? Let's get that up front and show them and make it easy. So you can see by the by the color of the card, what the current weather conditions are and then of course there's a big old number that tells you the current temperature From there, it can break out and be much more detailed. There's even hurricane tracking and radar inside of this app. and you can even do forecasts for when you take a trip. What's the weather going to be like during your entire trip Ver good when it comes to planning ahead and also good at rain forecasting, which is an important thing here in Portland. and I'm sure at times can be a very important thing for you. Although I'm sure Rosemary, you just plan for rain at all times, right? It just like it might rain here. What not now. what with the sun? I mean, I do always keep an umbrella in my bag for no particular reason. I have also an umbrella in my car and raincoats. It's normal at this point But yeah There's no such thing as bad weather. It's just weather that you're not appropriately dressed for. At least in theory, I would say that you know there are certain situations where there's you can't be dressed for the weather like a tornado. But yeah, being prepared for Your average daily rainfall in the UK is never a bad idea. pllus, you know, Gun umbllas can be used as a parasol as well This is a very good point. Yes, you can protect yourself from the sun just as easily as you can the rain. now Mercury Weather is available for free within app purchases to get the extra special features Tell us about the final pick on the list, Rosemary. This one, of course, has a name that is near and dear to anyone's heart who's ever watched Wild E Coyote A This one is very sadly US only. I ran a survey of a bunch of my friends yesterday to say, hey, what whether I'd be using and why? Partially because I was curious if I should have moveved from Dark skky to something else Or you know if from Dark Sky, from carrot to something else. and also just because I watched what our friends were doing with their weather apps and you know what weather they had. I got lots of screenshots which made me jealous. But AcMe Weather was one of the ones that came up a lot and it was from the creators of Dark Sky And it's just beautiful. It's a really pretty app U It's got great weather data. as you would expect from the people who created Dark skky, they already figured out how to get weather data before. They figured out how to do it again They've got alternate predictions so they They estimate based on multiple factors what the forecast is going to be and pull in all of those. They do notifications. There's also community reports. So if your next door neighbor is also using acne weather and goes, it's hailing, then you would find that out. You wouldn't find out there was your next door neighbor that did it, but you would find out that there was hail in your specific localized area U it's got maps, it's got so much here and I really wish I could get this and I got all excited yester evening and went and tried to download it from the app store And uh, yeah then I was a little disappointed for a while because it's currently US only, but that may change because you know, they've got to work out getting all the data sources from around the world There is no There probably is a global weather service, but I don't know what they're doing and how they're collecting all that data and how much they would charge. And at the moment, AcMe Weather is free to download and it is a twenty five dollars a year subscription Or if you want to share it with your family members, it's fifty dollars. So it's just one in purchase well the price of two in app purchases, but then it can be shared with everyone in your family And yeah, it's really great that by the looks of it and I would really love it. It's got all the widgets and all the cool things there too Give me g a try All right, those are some of the most popular and, I think, well designed weather apps. There are many weather apps available in the app store. And of course, this is always the time where we invite you to let us know about the apps that you're using. If there's something out there that you really like that we didn't mention on the show and you're going, but how could you leave off Puddle Weather. Well, let us know about Puddle Weather. Email us IO us today at twit.tv to get in touch Alrighty, we currently don't have much news going on as we are in al lull after Apple' WWDC. So we of course are keeping an eye out there. And if you have shortcuts requests for Rosemary Orchard, make sure you send those in. If you're on the beta and you're testing that out right now I remind you that we have put in the request that you perhaps send in a shortcut request have it auto generated by Sies shortcuts system and we can compare and contrast the work that gets done there. Very exciting stuff to do there. Email us again, IOe us today at twwit.tv. I also want to mention before we get into the app caps, I want to mention our club Twit offering at twwit. Tv slash club twwit. When you join the club, ten dollars a month, one hundred twenty dollars a year atwit. Tv slash club, Twit or use that QR code in the top corner there. You will become a member, which gets you some awesome benefits. Every single one of our shows ad free, just the content. You also gain access to special feeds behind the scenes, which includes sort of before the show, after the show moments. We've got a feed that covers or that has our live coverage of tech news events and a feed that has our club shows like Miccraft and Corner The newly launched media club, Stacy's book Cub, and so much more. AI use a group, all that's in there. And very exciting that we are finally able to offer chapter markers. If you're in the club, you can get chapter markers. Now the reason why they're just for the club is because we have advertisements on our free content and those are automatically added in. And so because we don't know precisely the timing there we can't get that figured out for chapters. but the good news is If you're a club member, well, you can. And so you are able to to move around in the show. Check it out Toyot Tv slash club Dear Savy, Toyota says you cant have it all. Camry, the Corolla and the Corolla Cross. You've got the tech, you've got the drive, and you've got Toyota Value that spells affordable You ready? Find yours at Toyota dot com. Toyota. Let's go places. Or thenerifa World Cup meal Dal and McDonalds Y McCick, Porooolres, Oon McDalo Polres. Inlude papita, spcnas, fresco, quuatro Mcnoggs,baso collectip as existensions, not this Ponc delivery This is going to be an extremely busy month. I have to watch one hundred and four soccer games, follow the pre game, the post game, yell useless opinions at the TV It's a li So I knew that when it comes to screening for colon cancer, the choice was clear Col Guard Pus test. It can be used at home and can only take fifteen minutes, so I can do it during halftime and not miss any action If you are forty five or older or at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with the colgard test. You can also request a prescription at colgard dot com d All right, it is time for our app caps. These are the apps or gadgets we're using now or have been using for some time or excited to be using that we want to share with all of you Sppeigen Spigen, the company that spellt SPI GEN has a new, I've talked about them before. I've got this wonderful phone case from them, this lanyard for my phone, and the little AirPods Pro case as well that has that old school look to it They have the most adorable little mag safe Organizers that you flockk to the back of your phone and mine comes on Friday, but I was too excited about it to not get to talk about it today on the show. It's called the TapSZip Magnetic Organizer and it comes in green and it's just a little it's like a little backpack that goes on the back of your phone. It looks like a little backpack and it's so cute And it also works kind of as a u in a way because it has a loop on the back of it so you can slide your fingers through and grip the phone better. But you can put a bunch of stuff in there U your, you know, your airPods if you want to. It's got places for cards, all sorts of stuff can fit inside this this little organizer and it uses the same sort of hook Look.