Anyway, I love Meteorologist and wanted it to continue. I also am a geek programmer and wanted to learn Apples new programming language Swift. So I decided to re-write Meteorologist into Swift. I also decided to modernize it with a more modern XML parser. To that extent, this new copy requires OS 10.9 or higher. (Sorry all of you 10.4 and 10.6 users - you can continue to use the older version.)
I’ve looked around at a couple of free weather feeds that are available and settled on Yahoo!’s. Interesting it is based on weather.com. There are a couple of others I know of that can be picked up later.
Anyway, I’ve reached the stage where I think this is a workable alpha copy. Note I said alpha. This isn’t even beta yet so if you’re squeamish about beta software, don’t even think of this copy. It’s crash free on my test systems.
What’s the difference? This copy has many features missing entirely. You can see them listed below. One of the biggest missing features is multiple cities. I know it’s missing so no need to tell me. As you can see below, I'm looking for feedback on which features are important and which aren't, and kind of a priority list in other people's mind. Honestly I don't expect much consensus.
In the true spirit of Open Source and Meteorologist, I do intent to publish the source when it's done. That will come later. But if you really want to see it now, let me know. It's based on both the original code and the re-write started a few years ago.
This new version of Meteo starts over and doesn't interfere with the old copy. For I'm calling the new app Meteo2. The preferences are separate from Meteorologist so nothing is imported, you have to start from scratch. But it also means you can have easily have both running in parallel.
I also used my developer account to "sign" the software so it shouldn't require any special permissions to run the app. Just a question about if you want to run software downloaded from the web.
I'm hosting the alpha copy privately, not on SourceForge. You should be able to get it by clicking here. You will need to unzip it and copy it to wherever you want to keep it for now. I’ll be posting here as I continue to update it.
As of today 10 Oct 2015, 2203 Zulu time, the version is 2.0.0.a4.
ToDo/Bug List
* Now requires 10.9 or newer (some features require even newer OS’s)
* What works and what doesn’t on older OS’s?
multiple cities
localization (ready?) - Not sure what the next step is with Xcode 7.
do we need localization for date abbreviations (Mon, Tue, Wed, etc.)? (see alternative language testing below)
display location (Menubar vs. Dock vs. Both) - does anybody use Dock view?
watch out for missing icons - look in log for message
version check
multiple weather sources (suggestions welcome but they must be free and offer XML feeds)
animate loading weather icon?
animate refreshing weather icon?
Testing in alternative languages (like Spanish with English words) - check for dates and “Yahoo! Weather”
Completed code sign rewritten into Swift 2 with modern XML parser
radar image
global units: Temp, Wind, Visibility, Pressure, etc
about
refresh timer
menubar images for: Tornado, Hurricane
show/hide temp on icon
show/hide type (C/F) on icon
show weather icon
show city name
current weather in submenu
extended forecast Y/N
extended submenu
extended icons
extended forecasts on one line
controls in submenu
Ed Danley aka EdwardD20
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FIrst, thanks for taking on the task of resurrecting my long time friendly, simple, weather menu bar app. I just installed verson a10 and so far so good.
I agree with some of the others in that maybe there's another feed that updates more often (though, weather.com most likely got theirs from our nearest airport that updates hourly itself). I have my own PWS that is reporting to both WeatherUnderground, so getting to that info through an app is always a plus (there are several that can access WU PWS in iOS). But, they might have very restrictive access to their APIs. Just a thought, anyway.
Last edit: Chuck Gould 2015-11-13
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I installed Meteo yesterday, and like some of the others, I'm having a problem with accuracy. The temperature keeps getting reported as being much higher than it actually is. I have to keep forcing it to refresh, at which point it reports more accurately, but if I put the system down and wake it up a little later, the temp is back up again. It's been going on all day.
That being said, thank you for making this attempt. I've only been on a Mac for about a year, and one of the things I miss about Windows is that whenever you want to do something like this, there are usually a bunch of free utilities that will do it. On the Mac side, however, it can be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack to find even one utility that can do the simplest thing. I so often find myself saying, "I can't believe no one has written an app for this."
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I downloaded your Meteo2 binary, and I am trying to run it on 10.10.5. It doesn't launch, and when I run it from the command line, I get an Illegal Instruction.
Thanks!
George
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I've tried a couple of releaases -- today 2.0.0.a14 -- and they crash on start. I tried deleting my old preferences in case that was an issue. I'll attach the crash log.
Just in case this is an issue, I'll mention that my home directory is on an NFS fileserver. This wasn't an issue for the old Meterologist. My OS is 10.10.5.
@Paul (and a few others) - I just put an a15 release. This change will not attempt to modify or write to the log if the option is not turned on. I don't know why it's not working for some, but this change should eliminate those crashes.
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I do have Xcode installed but I'm not really a programmer... systems administrator. If there is something I can do to help, that you can explain to me how to do, let me know.
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Thanks Ed for all the hard work.
I'm currently using a28. The Radar Image has always been problematic in the new Meteo in both OpenWeather and Yahoo. Sometimes the windows don't seem to finish loading. Or even though it has the correctt city, it send me to the center of the US and I have to scroll to my area. I can get the Radar window to reload, but it doesn't always. Also if you hit a link/button in the Radar window sometimes you can't get back To the last window without closing the window and starting over. Maybe it would be best to Jsut sent that URL over to the default browser, rather than opening within Meteo. Let the browser get blamed for performance problems.
Thanks again!
Stan
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I've posted another version, .a5. This adds multiple cities and a call home/version check. You can get the a5 version by clicking here.
At this point, I'm going to declare the code functionally done. I would like feedback on
1) Performance
2) Missing features
3) Anything else you care the comment on
Ed
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Another update already. Fixed the following:
1) Missing "a" in "Temperature"
2) Relative Humidity has a degree unit instead of %
3) In the one-line forecasts, the commas after the day, high, and low seem unnecessary because the data is already tabbed
4) Enhanced the version check so it doesn't run home immediately. Also temporarily downloading new version from my site, not sourceforge.net.
Should be the last time you need to click here to get the latest version.
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From "extended forecasts", it's redundant to say "forecast" next to each day's forecast. The temperature data to the left is, obviously, forecast as well. I'd suggest you make it:
Monday High 50 Low 40 Sunny
Or, even better (because this sub-menu is awfully cluttered and wide):
Monday H50 - L40 Sunny
Last edit: Jim Leff 2015-10-17
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@Jeff - 1) / 2a) What cities were slow? Perhaps Yahoo! was just slow? 2b) I just get my alerts directly from Weather.com. They didn't have that option in the old days. 2c) Command-W, I totally agree, if I could only figure that one out. 3) Great suggestion, "Forecast:" is now gone. Also working on making it a little less wide to solve another problem.
Has anybody played with Radar? Comments on that?
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Gordy posted (and somehow it didn't make it here and I never saw it so he forwarded it to me privately):
First -- many, many thanks for doing this.
I have the current version (as of 10/14), and I've noted that the time shown in "Last Update" is often as much as an hour behind the current time, even though I've set the refresh interval at 30 minutes. It doesn't update even when I hit Refresh. Right now, for example, it's telling me the last update was at 9:50 PM EST, even though it's 11 PM EST (where I am) and I've just hit Refresh.
My response:
Nope, never saw the message. I’ve seen that problem with the time being old also. It seems the Yahoo! Weather display doesn’t update very often. Every time it seems really behind to me, I go to the Yahoo page and it’s showing the same time. I’l kind of hoping that problem goes away when/if I pick up another weather service.
Ed
Last edit: EdwardD20 2015-10-18
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Radar works for me, though, once again, would be good to close the window via Command W (though it's certainly not critical, so don't be too frustrated if you can't make it work!).
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Is anybody else noticing Meteo2's CPU load? It seems awfully busy all the time (1), even though I have it checking for updates every 15 minutes (2) and it's not clear what it's doing the rest of the time.
It's also pretty sluggish for a menu-bar app -- the old Meteorologist popped up its display instantly when I clicked on it, while Meteo2 takes 1-2 seconds to respond.
A steady 6-10% of CPU on my dual-core 1.3GHz MacBook Air w/8 GB RAM
Which doesn't matter anyway, as it's consistently up to an hour behind what Yahoo is saying on its weather page and "Last Updated" doesn't change when I manually refresh.
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@Egon - I'll check it out. There should be nothing happening in the background other than the timer. Meteo2 is single threaded for weather stations (how many do you have defined?) whereas Meteo1 would multi-thread each station. That's far down on a to-do list.
Another word of note for all, Yahoo! only seems to update their weather XML every 60-90 minutes so a 15 minute refresh is overkill for Yahoo!. Perhaps when more data sources come online that will improve.
In the mean time, "don't cross the streams". :)
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Huh. It must have been something wonky with the next-to-current version ... I just downloaded and installed the latest one, and the activity monitor shows it's consuming exactly zero percent of CPU. That old version was also pretty hard to kill ... I quit it from its menu and tried to delete the app for the upgrade, and Finder barked that it couldn't because it was "open" . Finally tracked it down in the activity monitor and force-quit it.
I'd count this upgrade as a huge win.
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As many of you have come to realize, the weather.com feed that Meteorologist has been using is dying a slow and painful death.
http://feedback.weather.com/knowledgebase/articles/35599-why-is-the-weather-com-xml-data-feed-being-retired
(Yes I know that Meteo doesn’t really use the XML feed.)
Anyway, I love Meteorologist and wanted it to continue. I also am a geek programmer and wanted to learn Apples new programming language Swift. So I decided to re-write Meteorologist into Swift. I also decided to modernize it with a more modern XML parser. To that extent, this new copy requires OS 10.9 or higher. (Sorry all of you 10.4 and 10.6 users - you can continue to use the older version.)
I’ve looked around at a couple of free weather feeds that are available and settled on Yahoo!’s. Interesting it is based on weather.com. There are a couple of others I know of that can be picked up later.
Anyway, I’ve reached the stage where I think this is a workable alpha copy. Note I said alpha. This isn’t even beta yet so if you’re squeamish about beta software, don’t even think of this copy. It’s crash free on my test systems.
What’s the difference? This copy has many features missing entirely. You can see them listed below. One of the biggest missing features is multiple cities. I know it’s missing so no need to tell me. As you can see below, I'm looking for feedback on which features are important and which aren't, and kind of a priority list in other people's mind. Honestly I don't expect much consensus.
In the true spirit of Open Source and Meteorologist, I do intent to publish the source when it's done. That will come later. But if you really want to see it now, let me know. It's based on both the original code and the re-write started a few years ago.
This new version of Meteo starts over and doesn't interfere with the old copy. For I'm calling the new app Meteo2. The preferences are separate from Meteorologist so nothing is imported, you have to start from scratch. But it also means you can have easily have both running in parallel.
I also used my developer account to "sign" the software so it shouldn't require any special permissions to run the app. Just a question about if you want to run software downloaded from the web.
I'm hosting the alpha copy privately, not on SourceForge. You should be able to get it by clicking here. You will need to unzip it and copy it to wherever you want to keep it for now. I’ll be posting here as I continue to update it.
As of today 10 Oct 2015, 2203 Zulu time, the version is 2.0.0.a4.
ToDo/Bug List
* Now requires 10.9 or newer (some features require even newer OS’s)
* What works and what doesn’t on older OS’s?
multiple cities
localization (ready?) - Not sure what the next step is with Xcode 7.
do we need localization for date abbreviations (Mon, Tue, Wed, etc.)? (see alternative language testing below)
display location (Menubar vs. Dock vs. Both) - does anybody use Dock view?
watch out for missing icons - look in log for message
version check
multiple weather sources (suggestions welcome but they must be free and offer XML feeds)
animate loading weather icon?
animate refreshing weather icon?
Testing in alternative languages (like Spanish with English words) - check for dates and “Yahoo! Weather”
Completed
code sign
rewritten into Swift 2 with modern XML parser
radar image
global units: Temp, Wind, Visibility, Pressure, etc
refresh timer
menubar images for: Tornado, Hurricane
show/hide temp on icon
show city name
current weather in submenu
extended forecast Y/N
extended forecasts on one line
controls in submenu
Ed Danley aka EdwardD20
I'm running 2.00.a6 build 2,and seeing memory use of 1.72GB!
I've got three cities, total, entered.
If I quit and relaunch, memory use decreases to 10.4mb.
Upgraded to v. 2.0.0.a9 build 1.
Memory started at 10.5mb, but every time I check, it's creeped up. Currently at 12.5mb, and rising....
FIrst, thanks for taking on the task of resurrecting my long time friendly, simple, weather menu bar app. I just installed verson a10 and so far so good.
I agree with some of the others in that maybe there's another feed that updates more often (though, weather.com most likely got theirs from our nearest airport that updates hourly itself). I have my own PWS that is reporting to both WeatherUnderground, so getting to that info through an app is always a plus (there are several that can access WU PWS in iOS). But, they might have very restrictive access to their APIs. Just a thought, anyway.
Last edit: Chuck Gould 2015-11-13
I installed Meteo yesterday, and like some of the others, I'm having a problem with accuracy. The temperature keeps getting reported as being much higher than it actually is. I have to keep forcing it to refresh, at which point it reports more accurately, but if I put the system down and wake it up a little later, the temp is back up again. It's been going on all day.
That being said, thank you for making this attempt. I've only been on a Mac for about a year, and one of the things I miss about Windows is that whenever you want to do something like this, there are usually a bunch of free utilities that will do it. On the Mac side, however, it can be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack to find even one utility that can do the simplest thing. I so often find myself saying, "I can't believe no one has written an app for this."
Ed,
I downloaded your Meteo2 binary, and I am trying to run it on 10.10.5. It doesn't launch, and when I run it from the command line, I get an Illegal Instruction.
Thanks!
George
I've tried a couple of releaases -- today 2.0.0.a14 -- and they crash on start. I tried deleting my old preferences in case that was an issue. I'll attach the crash log.
Just in case this is an issue, I'll mention that my home directory is on an NFS fileserver. This wasn't an issue for the old Meterologist. My OS is 10.10.5.
@Paul (and a few others) - I just put an a15 release. This change will not attempt to modify or write to the log if the option is not turned on. I don't know why it's not working for some, but this change should eliminate those crashes.
I downloaded and tried a16 which crashed on start too. Are the crash logs useful to post?
I get the same crash on my MacBook Air running 10.11.1.
@Paul - At this point, the crash logs aren't useful. I've seen several but they aren't telling me anything that I can comprehend.
I do have Xcode installed but I'm not really a programmer... systems administrator. If there is something I can do to help, that you can explain to me how to do, let me know.
Thanks Ed for all the hard work.
I'm currently using a28. The Radar Image has always been problematic in the new Meteo in both OpenWeather and Yahoo. Sometimes the windows don't seem to finish loading. Or even though it has the correctt city, it send me to the center of the US and I have to scroll to my area. I can get the Radar window to reload, but it doesn't always. Also if you hit a link/button in the Radar window sometimes you can't get back To the last window without closing the window and starting over. Maybe it would be best to Jsut sent that URL over to the default browser, rather than opening within Meteo. Let the browser get blamed for performance problems.
Thanks again!
Stan
I've posted another version, .a5. This adds multiple cities and a call home/version check. You can get the a5 version by clicking here.
At this point, I'm going to declare the code functionally done. I would like feedback on
1) Performance
2) Missing features
3) Anything else you care the comment on
Ed
Another update already. Fixed the following:
1) Missing "a" in "Temperature"
2) Relative Humidity has a degree unit instead of %
3) In the one-line forecasts, the commas after the day, high, and low seem unnecessary because the data is already tabbed
4) Enhanced the version check so it doesn't run home immediately. Also temporarily downloading new version from my site, not sourceforge.net.
Should be the last time you need to click here to get the latest version.
Now in my 3rd minute of "Loading" ("Please wait while Meteo fetches the weather"). Running OS 10.11 with a good internet connection.
Finally loaded. Loads much more quickly upon subsequent quit/relaunches. Perhaps add a note that it takes a while the first time?
I miss the alerts!
Prefs window should be dismissable via Command W. And, arguably, the app should quit if you type Command Q from prefs window.
Last edit: Jim Leff 2015-10-17
From "extended forecasts", it's redundant to say "forecast" next to each day's forecast. The temperature data to the left is, obviously, forecast as well. I'd suggest you make it:
Monday High 50 Low 40 Sunny
Or, even better (because this sub-menu is awfully cluttered and wide):
Monday H50 - L40 Sunny
Last edit: Jim Leff 2015-10-17
@Jeff - 1) / 2a) What cities were slow? Perhaps Yahoo! was just slow? 2b) I just get my alerts directly from Weather.com. They didn't have that option in the old days. 2c) Command-W, I totally agree, if I could only figure that one out. 3) Great suggestion, "Forecast:" is now gone. Also working on making it a little less wide to solve another problem.
Has anybody played with Radar? Comments on that?
Gordy posted (and somehow it didn't make it here and I never saw it so he forwarded it to me privately):
First -- many, many thanks for doing this.
I have the current version (as of 10/14), and I've noted that the time shown in "Last Update" is often as much as an hour behind the current time, even though I've set the refresh interval at 30 minutes. It doesn't update even when I hit Refresh. Right now, for example, it's telling me the last update was at 9:50 PM EST, even though it's 11 PM EST (where I am) and I've just hit Refresh.
My response:
Nope, never saw the message. I’ve seen that problem with the time being old also. It seems the Yahoo! Weather display doesn’t update very often. Every time it seems really behind to me, I go to the Yahoo page and it’s showing the same time. I’l kind of hoping that problem goes away when/if I pick up another weather service.
Ed
Last edit: EdwardD20 2015-10-18
Radar works for me, though, once again, would be good to close the window via Command W (though it's certainly not critical, so don't be too frustrated if you can't make it work!).
Is anybody else noticing Meteo2's CPU load? It seems awfully busy all the time (1), even though I have it checking for updates every 15 minutes (2) and it's not clear what it's doing the rest of the time.
It's also pretty sluggish for a menu-bar app -- the old Meteorologist popped up its display instantly when I clicked on it, while Meteo2 takes 1-2 seconds to respond.
@Egon - I'll check it out. There should be nothing happening in the background other than the timer. Meteo2 is single threaded for weather stations (how many do you have defined?) whereas Meteo1 would multi-thread each station. That's far down on a to-do list.
Another word of note for all, Yahoo! only seems to update their weather XML every 60-90 minutes so a 15 minute refresh is overkill for Yahoo!. Perhaps when more data sources come online that will improve.
In the mean time, "don't cross the streams". :)
Huh. It must have been something wonky with the next-to-current version ... I just downloaded and installed the latest one, and the activity monitor shows it's consuming exactly zero percent of CPU. That old version was also pretty hard to kill ... I quit it from its menu and tried to delete the app for the upgrade, and Finder barked that it couldn't because it was "open" . Finally tracked it down in the activity monitor and force-quit it.
I'd count this upgrade as a huge win.
I always love it when things get fixed and I don't have to do anything.
You got me looking. It looks like Meteo2 take 1/2 the memory that Meteo1 uses. In my case 10.6MB vs. 23.2MB.