You all remember CARROT, right? The sadistic, sarcastic artificial intelligence that powers a collection of productivity and fitness applications has returned for a fifth app. The latest piece of software to join the CARROT family is CARROT Weather.
As you may have gathered from the title, this new app helps you track current and upcoming weather conditions with the snark that only CARROT can really nail. The Weather app is much simpler in presentation than its predecessors, but it’s just as robust as you’ve come to expect from this line of apps.
Running through the CARROT Weather setup takes only a minute. You’ll need to provide the app with permission to use your current location, or you can feed it a zip code or city name (after all, who wants an evil supercomputer knowing their exact location?).
Once CARROT has a location, you can view current temperature, weather condition, “feels like” temp, wind speed, and seven-day forecast. A quick tap on the bottom of the screen (or a swipe across the middle) will also bring up a short-term forecast that can predict the likelihood of rain up to an hour in advance, and another swipe can show you similar data for the entire day.
Each weather condition is accompanied by a scene of CARROT’s “meatbag” characters enjoying the sun, loathing the rain, or sitting on a park bench dejectedly eating a sandwich.
Swiping up anywhere on the screen will pull up a sheet with even more information, including moon phase, humidity, barometric pressure, visibility (for those foggy days), sunrise and sunset times, hourly weather data for today, and more specific daily information for the upcoming week.
Tapping the title bar at the top of the screen allows you to select a new location. Every location you add is kept on a list for easy access (and can be deleted from the app’s settings screen). This screen also allows you to access secret locations you’ve unlocked. You can unlock new secret locations by completing certain tasks within the app or adding specific real-life locations. There are a total of 21 secret locations to find, including Lord of the Rings‘ Mount Doom, Die Hard‘s Nakatomi Plaza, and the moon according to the app’s description. They’re not hard to find—I’ve found three so far, but none of those listed above—but some of them will require a little more work than others.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STnUiuIhlw&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=MeetCARROT]
Of course, no modern weather app would be complete without a Notification Center widget, so CARROT Weather comes with one of those, too. The simple widget presents a four-day forecast and current weather conditions (“It’s sunny! Ha ha, just kidding, it’s raining.”), and doesn’t do anything special when you tap it.
As for accuracy, CARROT Weather’s data is provided by Forecast.io, which says it’s raining outside right now. I checked, and it’s definitely not. However, I checked the built-in iOS Weather app and it also says it’s currently raining, so it seems CARROT is no less accurate than the stock application.
As with previous apps in the series, CARROT Weather injects a bit of fun into what’s usually a pretty mundane task. To celebrate the launch, the app is available for $2.99 (25% off the regular price) on the App Store for a limited time.
Other CARROT applications include the original to-do manager, an alarm clock, a 7-minute workout, and a calorie tracker.
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I don’t know if I need another weather app, but because the other apps are so much fun, and useful, I want to send a few bucks the developer’s way.
I often wonder why Yanks don’t band together to petition their government to move them out of the dark ages and metricise the country; imperial measurement systems and fahrenheit temperature measurement went out of fashion decades ago.
Fahrenheit-loving American here. ;) There are 2 things I like about Fahrenheit: (1) you can say things like “50’s,” “60’s,” and “70’s” to convey rough “feelings.” These are much more useful than Fahrenheit’s tiny individual values, like the difference between 59 and 60, or 67 and 68. (2) I live in Minnesota, one of the coldest states in the country. Average January high is -9 and average low is -22. Using negative numbers all the time really does suck, especially when you factor in wind chills that regularly exceed -40.
Just for context, negative numbers for Fahrenheit don’t start until it gets below -18 Celsius.
I agree. It’s time to say goodnight, Fahrenheit. Water freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100° C. It’s also a handy system, since the entire planet uses it. I can talk to people around the world about the weather without converting if using it. Most everything would not be required to be labeled in two systems, if we used it, improving not only productivity, but also safety. It’s estimated that our using two systems side by side costs us billions of dollars a year. It just makes sense to complete the switch.
I’d hate switching to the metric system. We freed ourselves from the motherland centuries ago. ;)
We indeed freed ourselves from the motherland centuries ago, and we actually use those same measurements the motherland used to use. Our version of the gallon is actually an older version than the British used in the 1960’s, before they began converting to the metric system. The old gallon we use is about 3.8 liters, the newer one 4.5 liters. Since Apple has converted to the metric system, I think we can complete the switc, tooh. :-)
Because the Fahrenheit system is far more closely aligned and relatable to how humans perceive temperature. For scientific measurements, sure, Celsius (or Kelvin) all the way. But for how it feels outside? This image explains everything. http://i.imgur.com/PuNzp.png
We need to tell that to the other 97% percent of the planet that uses °C for weather. :-)
Just thought of a possible answer to my previous question: Maybe it’s because they are so much subjected to ‘divide and rule’ policy that they now could not get it together for a proverbial drinking session in a brewery.
Or maybe people just don’t like having to learn new things, but the anti-american thing works too.
I know that myweatherman.com is updating their weather app to include their “instacast” chat feature. You’ll be able to get forecasts/interact with a meteorologist.
Why aren’t the carrot apps available for Android phones? Doesn’t seem fair to me. I want to try out this app but can’t. I even sent an e-mail directly to them asking them the same question. that was months ago. They never bothered to respond..
Probably because the developer doesn’t own an Android device and doesn’t want to learn a whole new operating system, I guess.
The idea is taken from “Authentic Weather”, which is way funnier…
So if you don’t finish your task list, you will be reported false weather? :D