TL;DR
- It’s come to light that the Apple weather app you find on current iPhones won’t show totally accurate information.
- Evidence suggests the app will round up or down whenever the temperature is 69 degrees. Nice. Or rather, not nice.
- This only appears to be the case for the most current stable version of iOS, suggesting the possibility of a bug. That would be some strange bug, though.
It’s a time-honored tradition. Someone on the internet references the number “69” and, no matter how innocent that reference might be, someone responds, “Nice.” It’s happened millions of times over the years and by now, there’s no stopping it.
However, the Apple weather app doesn’t appear to want to play along. According to some sleuthing by The Verge, the most recent stable version of iOS blocks temperatures of 69 degrees. Even if the source of the temperature reading (usually Weather.com) says it is 69 degrees in the area, Apple’s app will round up to 70 or down to 68.
Related: The best weather apps and weather widgets for Android
You can see an example of the phenomenon in the image above. On the left, you’ll see a phone running a beta version of iOS 15. On the right, you’ll see an older iPhone running iOS 14.6 — the most current stable version. Both phones are (obviously) in the same location, but the temperature readings are different. Clearly, something is amiss with the Apple weather app.
According to The Verge’s experiments on the matter, iOS 14.6 version of the app won’t show the number 69 anywhere. Note that the 10-day forecast shown on the phone to the right doesn’t have 69 in it either, while the one on the left shows the forbidden number. The Verge also confirmed that older devices with outdated versions of iOS display 69 without fear.
It’s possible this is a bug in iOS 14.6. However, we’ve never seen a bug so specific. It doesn’t block 79, 89, 59, 49…just 69. The Verge reached out to Apple for comment, and we’ll be sure to update this article once we know more.
And, just to keep the tradition alive: Nice.
