Outside, by Robocat - Initial Charge

I complained bitterly in August about iPhone weather applications. And, while I don’t think there’s one that does everything it should — while maintaining a clean design — I have discovered one that comes closer than all the rest.

Outside is a delightful weather application from the folks at Robocat. Upon launching the application for the first time it asks for your location (as it should) and then displays a well-designed welcome screen that explains how to use the app.

The current conditions and forecast are displayed on the screen as if you were looking out a window. The interface is very simple, swipe left to move from current conditions to today’s forecast. Continue swiping left to view the next 4 days, swipe right to go back. When looking out the window at current conditions the current temperature and “feels like” temperature is displayed, along with snow if it’s snowing, rain if it’s raining, etc.. This means that current conditions and forecasts are easily glance-able.

When looking out the window you can swipe down to get a more detailed view of the weather, including: UV index, humidity, cloud cover, wind speed, etc..

If this was the entire feature set of Outside it would be fantastic, but Robocat went one step further. Outside can send push notifications in the morning when it’s going to rain, have a high UV index, be cold, or warm. The notification times and temperatures are configurable. So, you can get a push notification every morning at a given time letting you know that you’ll need an umbrella.

There is a catch though, the application only comes with a 30-day subscription to these push notifications. If you would like to continue using the push notification feature after the 30-days, you’ll have to pay $0.99 per 90-days. It’s a fair price if you want the notifications and if you don’t want the notifications, you certainly don’t have to pay for them.

The only downside I’ve found with Outside is that it doesn’t display the forecast hourly, just daily. When I wrote back in August about iPhone weather applications that was one of the biggest problems I had with the default weather application.

It’s hard not to love this application, with or without hourly forecasts. Outside is currently priced at $2.99 and if you’ve been searching for the perfect iPhone weather application this is likely the closest you’ll get to it.

Outside – $2.99