How Do You Get Your Weather On A Mac?

The Miller family lives in the Midwest. We always have, and always will. What? You don’t like Midwest weather?

Just wait 10 minutes or so and the weather will change. These days, I track weather instantly on my Mac.

The 21st century is truly the information age, and many of us, as Mac users, live on information superhighway, so it’s logical to assume weather information is available with a click.

It is, it’s mostly free, rather accurate (as far as weather information can be accurate), and more handy than ever, and nearly instant. The iPhone will only make access to weather information even more critical.

What do you use to capture and track weather information on your Mac? Jack and I share a handful of Mac applications, including Dashboard Widgets that work instantly, but we keep our eyes on other tools, tool.

For me, #1 is the glance I give to WeatherPop Advance. It’s a handy menu device that sits in the OS X Menu Bar. One glance and I know temperature and conditions.

I’ve used WeatherPop and other menu bar weather apps on my Mac for years. What’s great is the simplicity, the effortless glance.

All I need to do is look up at the menu bar and I get a graphic of current conditions, and the temperature, but a bit more would help, provided I could get it with little effort (moving that mouse pointer up to the icon of the clouds is so annoying).

In Missouri, weather changes frequently, even during the day, regardless of season-- that uncertainty requires extra glances. Maybe it’s not that way in San Diego, where Alexis resides, or Bambi’s home in Las Vegas, but neither has Midwest weather extremes.

Clicking on WeatherPop in the menu bar gets a forecast, and other information. But, it’s a pause in the computing routine, and an extra click.

Since the advent of Mac OS X Tiger and the coolest of Dashboard Widgets, I’ve come to love everything about Doppler weather radar.

I use it twice; once for weather here in Missouri (the radar is nice), and the other for weather for Ron’s home in Honolulu. I can dream, you know?

Just doing a simple guided search on MacUpdate for ”weather” gives you enough Mac applications to sort through for a week.

There’s the handy dandy BBC Weather Widget. I tried it out, but London was always cold and cloudy. I figure the Widget was broken. Weather can’t be that dreary that often.

For residents of the other side of the world, there’s the Hong Kong Weather Widget, and the Hong Kong Typhoon Alert Widget.

Elsewhere in the world there are hurricanes, hence the Hurricane Tracker Companion, and Hurricane Tracker.

A long time weather favorite was Meteorologist, which works similarly to WeatherPop. It hasn’t been updated in about 18 months.

There’s weather Widgets for pilots, weather for your Mac’s Dock, a Widget for surfers and windsurfers. There’s not much of either in St. Louis.

Many of what once were weather applications for your Mac have become Widgets in Dashboard. They’re handy, more colorful, and they’re always there. Set up your Mac so a mouse move to a “hot corner” invokes the Dashboard, and you’ll get a full screen view of the weather forecast for whatever area you want.

What do you use for weather watching on your Mac? Do you use a full-featured, dedicated Mac application, or a Dashboard Widget? How often do you check your weather forecast on your Mac? How accurate is the application when compared to your real-life experience?

Share your perspective, opinion, and weather-utility related experience in the Comments section below.

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