AccuWeather: Weather Forecast 4+

Mostly great!

There are tons of weather apps available. The devs description is accurate, but I will tell you my top Pros/Cons. PROS: ~ Love the radar. Gives you an option to view the past or future. ~ A slick “Minute by Minute” wheel that pinpoints precipitation for the next two hours. ~ A ton of features that don’t overwhelm you when launching the app. The basic stuff is clearly and nicely laid out and simple taps/swipes will get you to deeper details if desired. CONS: * The “location services” pin points my house right on the mark. But, the app declares the location is a nearby city instead of the one my house is in. * I have several weather apps that use location services plus my own house thermometer. AccuWeather many times states that it is 4-6 degrees cooler than all the others. * That’s it. Some may feel those are picky things, but it is enough to knock off a star IMHO. Overall, a great app. I was happy to pay the $4 to support the devs and also get rid of the ads. 😄

UPDATE: AccuWeather no longer offers a pay once to get rid of ads. It is now a monthly or yearly fee. Besides costing much more, “family sharing” means nothing now. EVERY family member must pay the on-going fee if you want to get rid of the annoying ads. In other words, my pay once fee does not get grandfathered in. 👎🏻

Developer Response ,

Hi Bill, Thank you for being a loyal customer and for the detailed review. We aplogize for this issue. Please reach out to support@accuweather.com so that we can resolve your issue with the $4 lifetime purchase.

The Ad situation has gotten absurd.

I’ve used AccuWeather for a looong, long time. Probably since the iPhone 2. So, essentially forever. I’ve mostly enjoyed it. I wasn’t crazy when the newest design hit, and I still miss the local interaction where you used to be able to report hyper-local conditions, but they fine tuned a few things and I got over it. I never paid to remove ads, because I’m not well off (disabled), didn’t need premium, and I figured the ads probably made them more revenue than a flat fee would anyway. My infinite regrets for giving you guys my eyeball money for all that time is now deeply heartfelt.

Not only are the new Ads **incredibly** intrusive and obnoxious to a degree rarely seen outside of freemium money grab “games” (full page, won’t let you “x” out for periods of time, play loud sounds even when you’re on silent etc) but you also can’t pay a flat fee to get rid of them anymore, and those of us who didn’t pay before aren’t “grandfathered” into anything except advertising. Quite a “screw-you” to those of us who’ve been with you for so long.

I’m disabled… all I want is accurate info that I can see without waiting for a full-screen advertisement to ALLOW me to control my device, so I can do what’s necessary to get my plants/pets/partner safely and comfortably where they need to be when things turn. I guess that’s too big of an ask?

Price Increase, Quality Decrease

This was a good app until the recent update. Now you can’t see beyond 12 hours out without paying for Premium PLUS, which used to be a free feature. I’m already subscribed to Premium but apparently Premium Plus is the new Premium. Disgusting. Beyond that, the aesthetic is weird now and is trying to be too similar to The Weather Channel app. Might as well just use TWC app because they don’t charge to see 24 hours of weather. I’m deleting this app and just forgoing the rest of the year I have left for Premium since it apparently doesn’t get you anything useful besides getting rid of ads. Do companies not know when they have a good thing anymore?

Edited: The developers reached out to let me know how to find the 72 hour view as before, in the list view. I do appreciate that and I increased my rating accordingly. I do still think it’s wrong that they’ve paywalled some previously free features. I would be more interested in paying a monthly subscription if they added innovative features instead of asking users to pay for old, free features. Either way, I am glad my favorite features seem to be excluded from the paywall after all, so I will keep using the app as my default.

Developer Response ,

Hi Dawn, All users are able to view up to 72 hours without paying for a subscription. Toggle between the list view and the new graph view in the upper right-hand corner of the Hourly screen. If you need further assistance, please reach out to Support@accuweather.com. Thank you!