There’s no other way of putting this – Microsoft has officially made its weather app worse. The company has gotten plenty of flack over unpopular decisions, most notably placing ads in every nook and cranny of the operating system when possible. Despite the fact that Windows is technically not free (you paid for it when you buy a new PC), that didn’t stop the Redmond giant from shoving ads down every user’s eyeballs.
Today’s Weather: Mostly Cloudy, With Ads
This change affects both Windows 10 and Windows 11 users with the weather app pre-installed (assuming you have auto-updates enabled, which is turned on by default). While the old version is a nice and tidy native app presenting plenty of weather information on the location of your choosing, the new version has essentially converted itself into a shell of a web browser (via Microsoft Edge WebView) to load this specific website, with Microsoft-approved dose of ads sprinkled around the app.
User @ChangeWindows on X (Twitter) has provided a detailed overview of all the changes Microsoft has made to the new “app”, and it’s generally not a good look. Design are now inconsistent (since it uses the original native app’s interface that are now rendered useless), Windows 10’s weather widgets are now somewhat broken, and any links you click on the app will take you to the web browser instead, which almost negates the point of the app in the first place.
To say this is an unpopular decision is an understatement – users are very much dissatisfied with Microsoft, and some has even pointed out that the new app is especially taxing on system resources, while others have gone the long way to downgrade the app to the old version. There are even several sarcastic remarks asking for Microsoft to shower even more ads upon them as well.
Pokdepinion: Thanks Microsoft, I hate it.
