“Apple was too scared to acquire me.” Yes, you read that right—an app dedicated to something as routine as the weather comes with a truckload of sass. The first hint you get of it is while installing it when it will call you “meat bag” (a word you will hear very often, indeed). Of course, it tells you about the weather, giving you the day’s and the week ahead’s information about the temperature, precipitation, wind, visibility pressure, humidity, dew point, and all. And it does have a very nice uncluttered, and clean interface – you just swipe across different days or tap at a particular time to get more information about it. The graphic at the top of the app reflects weather conditions outside. But there is no hiding the craziness that lurks below this normalcy. Even if it is showing weather information, there will be a saucy quote right at the top, and if you have left the sound on, you will hear a mechanical voice read it out. Be warned; you could have to end up hearing stuff like: “The sun is out! Quick, scurry back into the shadow like a good little cockroach!” We do not mind it at all, but if you are the type that might get offended, you actually can set the level of, well, aggression, to different levels, by adjusting the “Personality” of the app – oh yes, you can do that.
It goes from a relatively refined “professional” to a more amiable “friendly,” starts getting sarcastic at “snarky,” turns on the cynicism full blast at “Homicidal,” and really lets you have it at “Overkill.” You can also specify the kind of politics you want – choose from Centrist, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, and Communist, or just turn it off with the “No politics” option. In the current scenario, we have kept the personality at Homicidal and vary the politics depending upon who says what worldwide. That’s not all – the app also comes with time travel that lets you check the weather conditions from some years ago – it does not quite go as far back as the options indicate (anything beyond 2004 does not get an answer), but every trip is accompanied by a saucy remark. There is also a game that makes you look for not-so-secret locations, even while the app tries its best to belittle your efforts, and if even that is enough, there is an AR mode that plonks a large eye-like object that the app calls its ocular sensor, with weather information around it. Do you want more? Tap the ocular sensor to hear outraged remarks from the app about how it does not like the sensor being touched. Sounds crazy, right? Well, that and the fact that it does weather very well (hey, it is using data from Apple’s Dark Sky) makes this perhaps the best weather app to use in these crazy times. You can get it for free on Android, although it comes with ads and restricts you to general features (you cannot stuff like Time Machine), but you can get rid of the ads for USD 0.99 or USD 3.99 a year. On iOS, you are going to have to pay from the word go: USD 4.99 for the app. It is not often that you end up smiling when you look at the weather details on your phone. Carrot Weather ensures that happens, no matter what the weather itself is. And believe us, that counts for a lot in these times. You can download Carrot Weather from: Google Play Store iTunes App Store
