The web is rife at the moment with reviews that Apple’s Climate app for the iPhone isn’t fairly working as designed. Whereas some encountered sporadic points over the weekend, it grew to become extra widespread this morning as people woke as much as Residence Display screen widgets reporting “No climate information.”
It’s unclear precisely what’s taking place right here, however one prevailing concept is that this might be a problem in iOS 16.4, which Apple pushed out early final week. Nevertheless, the truth that it took every week for the issue to floor suggests there’s extra to it than merely an iOS replace.
Apple’s System Standing Web page confirms that there’s been an “ongoing” challenge since final night time at 11:00 p.m. ET that impacts some customers, ensuing within the climate service being “gradual or unavailable.” Nevertheless, earlier this morning, Apple pointed to a extra particular space, noting that “next-hour precipitation could also be unavailable for Alaska due to a knowledge supplier outage.”
In an ironic twist, the Darkish Sky app, which serves as the muse for a lot of of Apple Climate’s coolest options, returned briefly to the App Retailer final week. Apple acquired Darkish Sky in 2020, shuttering the standalone app and rolling its capabilities into Apple Climate. Though the return of Darkish Sky was clearly an error on Apple’s half, many followers of the unique app received their hopes up solely to have them dashed when it disappeared only some hours later.
From my expertise, Apple’s Climate app doesn’t seem like down solely, nevertheless it isn’t updating as rapidly as ordinary — and maybe in no way within the background. Like others, I awoke this morning to a “No climate information” message in my Residence Display screen widget, and after I tapped on it to open the Climate app, it took about 30 seconds for the present climate data to seem.
As soon as the information had been up to date throughout the Climate app, the Residence Display screen widget confirmed the proper circumstances. Nevertheless, it seems Apple has designed its Climate app to cache the newest climate information for a while earlier than it discards it as too stale; opening Climate about 15-20 minutes after the final replace confirmed a “Loading…” banner on the high that I’d by no means seen earlier than, displaying when the climate information was final up to date.
The banner disappeared after about 30 seconds, presumably after the app had downloaded the newest climate information. Nevertheless, the widget doesn’t appear to be getting updates; it reverts to the “No climate information” message after an hour, requiring the Climate app to be opened to fetch new information.
Leaving the Climate app open leads to the “Loading” banner showing each 10 minutes. That’s seemingly the common auto-refresh interval for the app, though this banner doesn’t present up when every little thing is working appropriately. The refresh could often happen rapidly sufficient {that a} message isn’t wanted; nonetheless, the habits of the Residence Display screen widget suggests climate updates would possibly usually be pushed out to the iPhone quite than ready for the Climate app to fetch them.
Is a Repair Coming in iOS 16.4.1?
Whereas the crux of this drawback is probably going associated to Apple’s back-end climate companies, it’s additionally attainable one thing modified in iOS 16.4 that’s making issues worse.
In accordance with 9to5Mac, the Apple Watch app appears to work high quality for a lot of people. If true, this may seemingly level to an issue particular to the iPhone software program.
Nevertheless, that hasn’t been my expertise. In reality, the Climate app on my Apple Watch Collection 8 is taking considerably longer to replace than its iPhone counterpart. I had initially thought it wasn’t updating in any respect, nevertheless it did ultimately present the present climate circumstances after I had left it open on my wrist for about 5 minutes. As with the iPhone Residence Display screen widget, the Apple Watch Face Issues are equally not being up to date till the watchOS Climate app is opened and has been given time to refresh.
Nonetheless, a dependable supply instructed MacRumors that Apple is engaged on a “stopgap” iOS 16.4.1 replace that might be launched as quickly as this week. Sub-point releases like this are usually solely pushed out to repair particular bugs or safety points, however there’s been hypothesis that the Climate app will likely be amongst these. Both manner, Apple’s software program engineers are undoubtedly onerous at work resolving this drawback, however we’ll have to attend and see if an iOS replace is required.