Apple cuts Yahoo as intermediary despite rumors of increased Yahoo presence in iOS

Jun 4, 2014 07:11 GMT  ·  By

When iOS 8 rolls out this fall, people who use the built-in Weather app on a regular basis will notice a few slights changes. In addition to the app’s redesign, users will see that Apple has cut Yahoo as an intermediary for the forecast.

Instead, iOS 8 will deliver weather information straight from its focal point: The Weather Channel. Arguably one of the best-known weather services worldwide, The Weather Channel can give you a forecast for the next 15 minutes to the next nine days. The current Weather app only gives you a five-day reading.

It’s not a mystery that Yahoo draws its weather information from The Weather Channel, so Apple is merely changing the interface and cutting Yahoo out of the loop (at least for this particular function).

Earlier this year, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had reportedly prepared “detailed decks, including images of what such a search product would look like, and hopes to present them to Apple execs,” according to a number of Yahoo insiders.

“This is the aim of the whole effort here, to grab the pole position in iOS search,” said one person close to the initiative in April. “It will take more than pretty pictures, though, to convince Apple to give up Google, given its focus on consumer experience being top-notch. But Marissa wants it very badly.”

Apparently Apple won’t barge. The Cupertino giant is keeping Bing as the default search engine on iOS, with alternatives including Google and Yahoo, and with the recent Weather tweak we can only imagine that Marissa Mayer has her work cut out for her.

Customers can currently download The Weather Channel as a free third-party app from iTunes. The software offers past and future radar, customizable map layers (with radar, clouds, temperature, rain, and snow), a Severe Weather page has you covered with storms and hurricanes close to you, push alerts & badges, some awesome-looking backgrounds, travel destinations with average temperatures, average precipitation, forecasts, etc., and even Flu levels and Pollen forecasts for the U.S.

The Weather Channel will remain present as a standalone app in the iTunes App Store, as the built-in iOS Weather app will only draw the information and offer it using its own UI. iOS 8 will be released to the public this fall. Developers can immediately download the iOS 8 beta with a paid iOS Developer Program account at https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action.